A little Rant for your Holiday Weekend
I really hate the Kingdom of King County (by which I mean to say that region that dictates to the underlings throughout the rest of Washington...it is rather curious that they keep the capital in Olympia). Last year "we" passed a political correct Nazi bill that pretty much made it illegal to smoke anywhere except in a 20 acre field while under a sprinkler provided by the local fire department - yeah I know, I can't only blame King County, but I hate it none-the-less.
Yesterday I heard that the Washington Politically Correct Religious Police were gloating about the fact that Washington State has the 5th lowest smoking rate in the United States! (Of course, I don't recall being surveyed?) All manner of soundbytes celebrating the "battle against tobacco" or the "fight against preventable diseases" Did you get that? Preventable Diseases...hmmm...
Naturally, what do they mean by "preventable diseases"? Two things, really: smoking and obesity related diseases. We've being hearing a lot lately about how fat we are, haven't we? And the Kingdom here is spending LOTS of indoctrination money in order to steer our kids away from tobacco and high-fat foods.
Many job places these days are seeking non-smokers, and while I've not seen it yet, you can expect "weigh-in's" to start soon too...because if a workplace can show their insurers that their employees are slim nonsmokers then their rates go down! Plus, none of those difficult absenteeism rates from heart attacks and throat cancer.
Well, news flash to the Kingdom: Sexually Transmitted Diseases are HIGHLY preventable diseases as well, and from what I've read, more dollars are spent treating and researching things like HIV, genital herpes, et al than is being spent on smoking and obesity related research and treatment. You likely know, off the top of your head what the obesity rate is in America, but I'll bet you had no idea that up 25% of us have genital herpes, did you?
Are your employers thinking of screening for HIV before hiring? Maybe screening to see if a potential employee is a bit too promiscuous? Is the state looking to pass bans on promiscuity? Maybe spend some dollars trying to encourage abstinence amongst our kids?
Ohhhh...but, James...we all know that abstinence doesn't work! Heck, sex is so foundational to our being, we simply can't be expected to curb that appetite.
Ummm...I'm sorry, did you say appetite? Ummm...I'd imagine - crazy me, I know - that eating is foundational to our being and yet somehow...someway we expect people to curb THAT appetite? My experience has been that EVERY animal on the planet would be severely obese if they had easy and regular access to as much food as they wanted...so why should we be surprised? Using a condom as a prevention to the bad effects of promiscuity (by that I mean having sex with anyone who is NOT your spouse) is the equivalent of encouraging vomiting after overeating - it MIGHT work, heck it usually works.
So, here in Washington, you can demonize and isolate smokers (because we can catch their disease as they contract it), but you don't dare insinuate - publically - that people with HIV or Genital Herpes or cervical cancer might have gotten it because of their bad habits. Fact is, I know people who have died of lung cancer and never smoked a day in their life and were never regularly around people who smoked a day in their life. And yet we LEGISLATE smoking and we will soon begin to LEGISLATE eating, but we will never - it seems - touch the sacred cow of carefree sex. We'll work our way around it while we go on suffering and causing others to suffer- not in the proces sof contracting the disease (as with smoking) but in the aftermath of our non-nicotine related high.
Second hand smoke! Please, do you have any idea how many babies' CSF samples we test in our lab? A positive result of said CSF is far worse, I can assure you, than than the results of sitting in resteraunt for an hour next to a smoker. These preventable STD's do NOT merely affect the people who chose NOT to prevent it. How many babies are born with HIV?
And the Kingdom's solution is like encouraging fat people to vomit their meals and smokers to sit alone in fields...away from the rest of us - 25% of whom are waiting to give our babies encephalitis.
I think I'll fire up the Churchwarden this evening and blow my smoke in the direction of King County.
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Comments
you're just jealous because you didn't get to make the Hitler comment first ;)
Point well taken about the commies, though. Didn't they start by targeting everyone who wasn't them (and even a few who were) all at the same time?
sf
Of course, the problem is that when a new crowd takes over the government, you get a new morality like we have now where even an insult to any minority group except is a greater evil then, say, spreading STD.
-Rick
PC morality is perverse in that what a Majority member of the society (white males) says about a minority is generally judged in light of the worst possible meaning or motive from the statement, and is divorced from that person may have actually done. For example, for me to utter the "N" word would negate any number of millions of dollars given to help blacks, and it will never be as bad as what Jessie Jackson said about "hymie town." Consider Trent Lott being ousted for what he might have meant about what a theoretical victory for the Dixie Crats *might* have meant for the country.
This kind of weird PC logic, where words are actually worse than deeds, and where smoking is worse than spreading HIV, is being legislated, because it's what the majority of the people evidently want.
- Steve K
For instance, why on earth should non-smokers be allowed to tell a Cigar Shop that they can no longer host a "Cigar tasting" night in their establishment???? It's completely unfair...and worse is coming.
And...how about the "kingdom" be consistant? How do we go about "shifting the burden" of STD's to fall solely on the promiscuous?
And RE taxes? Well...yes sin taxes are often levied on liquor and tobacco and nowadays we hear talk of sin taxes on high fat foods. Again, let's be consistant - what can we tax to try and help pay for the fiscal and moral burden we as society bear because of STD's? And also to try and help encourage people to avoid promiscuity - from which there is a great deal (likely far greater than second hand smoke) collateral damage.
Well, we could change laws so that proof of adultry is a CRIME. We could tax the heck out of pornography. We could mount an abstinence campaign in the public schools that would equal the effort presently being made with regard to smoking and obesity (wow...crazy idea!)
Hey, we could tax condoms, which while providing a fair degree of protection from STD's, they at the same time tend to give people a false sense of invulnerability. And besides, no one REALLY NEEDS condomns were they to follow a traditional Christian pattern of living (which btw would completely eliminate STD's)
I'm sure I could go on....
James....seems you've painted yourself into a corner though. If you actually want "them" to apply this kind of thinking across the board to STD and the like, one has to then accept overly agressive smoking laws. You won't have one w/out the other. You seem to be advocating it though.
I would much rather they stay out of it altogether...but that's not going to happen....not ever.
siiiiighhhhh....if I didn't have a child, I'd go buy smokes now, and probably never stop.
Arguably, issues surrounding promiscuity and STD'sare FAR more of a public health concern than smoking.