Is It Just Me?

Dumb and Dumber

Is it just me, or does anyone else wonder where the responsibility of the electorate has gone?

There appears to be no shortage of outrage out there (strident on the right, disorganized on the left) over supreme court nominations, disaster response, war in Iraq, environmental stewardship, balloning deficits, and ethical lapses at the highest levels of government. How is it that we have come to this? Who is to blame?

Well, certainly, blame can be rightly put square on the shoulders of the current administration and there are no shortage of voices out there calling for just that. What is missing is the sense of outrage at ourselves. I mean, we put this sorry group of bunglers right where they can do the most damage. I don't hear anyone chastising us - the electorate - for what we have done.

Why is that? And how did it come to be in the first place?

One might say that the electorate was not entirely to blame for the first corronation of King George. The honor of that coup goes straight to the supreme court. That said, the second election is harder to wiggle out from under. Slightly more than half of the people voting in the last presidential election voted for George Bush, and that is after experiencing him for four years.

How is it that half of the participating electorate voted for a man who can barely get more than four words out of his mouth before he has to stop and wait for the next synapse to fire? How is it that the electorate bought dubya's contention that Sadam Hussein was responsible for 9/11? How is it that the few who vote in this country could believe that the proper and responsible fiscal policy should be to reduce revenue through massive tax cuts to the weathiest one percent while at the same time increasing spending by going to war against a third world tin pot on the other side of the globe (and creating the greatest terrorist training tool conceivable in the process)?

How can this be?

Want to know my theory? It's the lead in our bodies. Yup. You see, back in 1923, when the auto was just starting to make its big splash, a fella named Midgley invented something called tetra-ethyl and saw that it reduced knocking in car engines. So far, so good. Problem is tetra-ethyl is basically lead and it started going into every tank of gasoline, and then promptly out the tail pipe and up our noses. This was the case for the next sixty years or so and by 1986 when it was finally banned in the US, there were shocking amounts of lead in the environment, and also in us. In fact, those of us alive today (those born after 1923 and before 1986) have 625 times more lead in our blood than our ancestors had 100 years ago (this from Bill Bryson and his work "A Short History of Nearly Everything").

Now, as you all know, lead is a neurotoxin. It leads to physical and mental breakdowns, up to and including the staggering jags, halucinations, and death. My belief is that enough of us are mentally unhinged and dumbed down due to lead poisening that we have elected an incompetant and corrupt administration (amoung other things).

Just look at our level of entertainment if you doubt the premise. "Reality TV" (or just about any TV for that matter), modern sports, congress. I have no proof of this of course. I do wonder at the decisions being made all around me. We seem to be incapable of looking honestly at ourselves and our environment and putting two and two together. We are in massive denial (or perhaps a group hallucination).

Whatever the case, I don't get it, but that's just me.

Copyright ©2003-2007 Phaedrous
posted by Phaedrous @ 9:45 AM