Things I Still Don't Get

I never claimed to be the smartest guy around, regardless of what my I.Q. scores indicate to the contrary.  To be perfectly honest, I’m absolutely certain that my own score is proof that those test scores, when combined with my observation of the world around me, prove conclusively that they’re bogus.  There’s just too much that I don’t get that, according to the test results, should be crystal clear to me.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying I’m stupid.  Far from it.  I have multiple degrees and a fair assortment of alphabet soup for my letter head, but choose to not use.  Either.  The letterhead or the soup.  It’s just that there are a fairly good number of things, which, despite my persistence, I still don’t get!  For example:

• I went to high school in northwest Dade County (Miami) Florida in the late 60’s and early 70’s.  Miami experienced probably as much racial tension in those days as any place else in the United Stated.  My high school was fairly evenly integrated.  I honestly don’t remember any racial problems, yet every time there was even a hint of trouble anywhere in the county, film crews showed up at my high school.  I don’t get that.  It’s like they were hoping a race riot would break out so they could score a story.  I’m proud to say they always went home empty handed.
• Our government has the ability to tell you when and where the cow you’re tenderizing for hamburgers was born, what it was fed every day of its life, and which side roads it took to get to your butcher before you selected it from his cooler, but can’t track the movement of millions of illegal immigrants.  What’s that all about?
• My family heritage is that of immigrants.  They came here legally.  They adapted to their new nation, culture, language, and way of life.  No one renamed streets in their original language or printed instructions in German for them.  It worked well as a program.  They came to America and became Americans.  Why have we changed that?  It works.  What’s the deal?  I don’t get it.
• What I do get is that when I moved to the Netherlands, I had to take written proof that I was enrolled in a language class to get a work permit, and if I wanted to get a permanent visa, I would have had to pass a spoken and written language, history and culture test to get it.  They didn’t change their culture and language to American English to keep me from being offended by their native Dutchness, and what English they did employ was UK English.  It’s a policy that makes perfect sense.  Every place except in America.
• Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker were made public examples because of their adulterous lifestyle.  They were forced, in the court of public opinion, to step aside.  Martin Luther King did the same thing, and we have a national holiday for him, and name roads after him.  I don’t get it.
• If a white man and a black man who are equally qualified apply for the same job, why is it discrimination if the white man is hired, but not if the black man is hired?  Isn’t reverse discrimination still discrimination?
• In the last 5 or 6 months, four policemen have been brutally murdered in the Tampa area where I live.  At least two individuals have gone on shooting sprees resulting in the deaths of men, women and children.  Have we slid so far into depravity that the only way left for us to reconcile problems – real or imagined – is to head out with a loaded automatic weapon and shoot up everything and everyone in sight?
• When did we become a generation of entitlement instead of one that achieved goals by working towards their accomplishment?
• If two kids are functional illiterates, why do we pass one for no other reason than he can swish nothing but net from half court, or throw a football accurately 60 yards at a full run?  When did athletic ability become more important to our society than moral character?
• When did promoting gambling become the responsibility of he local news outlet?
• Advertisers are telling your children that you are stupid, and they’re telling you it’s OK to lie to your children if you cover up the evidence of the lie by using their product.  When did that become acceptable?
• We are a nation that has been conned into believing we ‘need’ corn alcohol (ethanol) to power our automobiles.. We dilute fossil fuel with this product, and that supposedly makes it more environmentally safe.  In order to produce 1 gallon of ethanol from corn, you consume 1 ½ gallons of fossil fuel.  Combined with the ethanol, our net consumption is 2 ½ gallons of fuel (1 gallon of alcohol and the 1 ½ gallon of fossil fuel used to create it.)  My car is now using 2 ½ gallons instead of 1 gallon to go travel same distance.  That’s not the worst of it.  We are investing so much of our home grown corn in the production of this unnecessary fuel additive that we are importing food corn from communist China, the people who brought you toys with lead paint and drywall with arsenic!  China will never have to invade the US – we’re letting them slowly poison us leaving behind an empty land with a fully functioning infrastructure.  Our government is doing this to and for us.  And we’re sitting back on our collective supersized backsides letting them do it!  Now how stupid is that?  I just don’t get it!

I’m just getting warmed up.  The more I write, the more I think of, but I think I’ll just stop here before I have a brain fart and my head explodes.