Well, as if I needed more proof I'm living in whacko world, I got it yesterday (again!) with the following story most people probably already heard. For those of you who were among the thousands in a Wal-Mart duking it out for one of the twenty cheap laptops they stocked and missed it, I'll recap briefly:
With the federal Highway Trust Fund running out of money to maintain the nation's highways, Congress needs to consider new sources of revenue. Several suggestions on just how to do this have been proposed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Among them is the suggestion that the federal government tax hybrids and other fuel-efficient cars!
So, if Americans can just snap out of their "psychic numbing" for a moment and think back on the past couple of months to the price of gasoline, imagine a governmental body suggesting that folks not driving SUV's that guzzle 14 gallons/mile (that's hyperbole, not a typo) be penalized for driving vehicles that conserve gasoline for those who do!
Well, that's got to be one of the most insane ideas I've heard of since, oh, since the one of Michael Brown forming a consultant firm to help companies avoid the pitfalls of emergency planning like he created in FEMA!
It just proves that when it comes to leadership in government, the cream does NOT rise to the top. Someone please pass me the Prozac!
1 comment:
I read this stuff and am seized with a feeling I can only describe as "reactionary cognitive dissonance."
Some people who suffer from the "real thing" go to bizarre lengths to avoid inconsistency between their cherished beliefs and the facts.
I read in an article about the Darwin Exhibit the following:
"Only one out of four Americans believes life on earth today has evolved through natural selection. Three-quarters of Americans, in other words, still do not accept what Darwin established 150 years ago. Just under half of all Americans believe the natural world was created in its present form by God in six days as described in Genesis. They believe, incredibly, that the earth is only a few thousand years old."
So twenty-five percent of us are surrounded by all these people going to bizarre lengths to hang on to their belief, against mountains of evidence to the contrary, that the world was created in six days and the doctrine of the talking snake.
And the more bizarre they become, the more strange I begin to feel. I mean way way back there in 1966 I remember coming to this space where I wished I had just dropped out of high school and been content with a beer in front of the tv. I was having a real difficult time with the realization that what I perceived was so different than what the people around me perceived.
But I never ever imagined, even in my most hallucinogenic moments, that I would be surrounded by so many demented souls. It forces me to go to bizarre lengths to hang onto what I know (as opposed to believe) to be truth.
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