Thoughts from the ammo line

Ammo Grrrll meditates on LIFE 4 DUMMIES. She writes:

On my most recent trip from Arizona to Minnesota, circumstances were such that I had to beg a ride to the airport from our friend and neighbor, the Paranoid Texan. He graciously accommodated me, but he also had a previous time commitment. This meant that I had to go to the airport three hours before my flight. Which was fine with me. I love airports. It’s just flying I hate.

So I sat happily eating oatmeal and drinking coffee at the Paradise Cafe and watching the infinite variety of humanity parade by, cellphones in hand. The Paradise Cafe in Terminal 3 is right below the escalator and every few SECONDS – I do not exaggerate for comedic effect – the following message was intoned by a woman’s voice with a vaguely British accent: “The escalator is ending. Please watch your step.” People tend to obey a British voice, which we perceive as both polite and “smart,” as opposed to a Southern voice which we have been encouraged by bigots to think of as dumb.

You’re never going to hear: “Hey, y’all, git off this here movin’ stair thingy. Dadgummit! I mean now!”

I am amazed that the employees of the Paradise, who have to listen to this message hundreds of times an hour, do not snap and record a prank message: “As any blithering idiot can see, the escalator is ending. Stop texting and get off now or you will fall in a big fat heap.”

I could take it for only half an hour and then had to flee the message to the relative peace of my gate personnel making sporadic boarding announcements. But it gave me a chance to think about just how thoroughly the Nanny State invades every aspect of our lives, how infantilized we have become as a nation of once-proud, independent adults.

The coffee cup in my hand warned me that my coffee was “hot,” even though that was no longer true. If I spoke only Spanish, it was kind enough to remind me it was “caliente.” Why they failed to warn me that it was also wet I cannot say. It’s only a matter of time. If I poured it into my empty cereal bowl and plunged my face into it, I could drown. If I ripped the cup into tiny pieces, it would theoretically be possible to sustain a paper cut which could get infected. Danger, Will Robinson!!

When I got on the plane, I was instructed how to fasten – and unfasten – my seat belt. Since it had been several hours since my car ride to the airport — the Paranoid Texan will not even pull out of the driveway until everyone in the car is buckled in, no exceptions — I was clearly in need of a seat belt mastery refresher course.

The trigger warnings, the safe spaces, the plush toys, the Play-Doh. Biting your bologna sandwich into the shape of a gun will get you suspended from school. Monkey bars on the playground, tag, dodge-ball are all dangerous relics of the Olden Days before children wore helmets to skip.

Young men of my father’s generation, the same age as today’s wretched college crybullies, were storming the beaches of Normandy and Anzio, being strafed by machine gun fire from real triggers. An uncle I never met, my father’s older brother, perished in the Pacific. His picture in his dress Marine uniform graced Grandma’s upright piano til the day she died.

I would love to thank him, of course, for giving his life for liberty and country. But I would be embarrassed to show him a piece of chalk and explain that pitiful muscle-free men the age he was when he died, now cower in fear from a graffito which mentions a political candidate they apparently don’t care for. Or tell him that the latest cause which has them wrapped around the axle is the “right” for men to potty in the ladies’ room if they are feeling girlish that day. Are they confined in mental hospitals, he might ask? No, Uncle Leland. See, they are the victims, demanding the safe space that eluded you that day in the sky when everyone returned from the sortie but you.

They are parasites who live off your ultimate sacrifice. They have accomplished nothing and probably never will. Even their “oppression” is second- or third-hand at best. Two or three generations ago, black people and their allies braved fire hoses, vicious dogs and worse to win basic civil rights. This current crop of cretins and thugs of every color frequently have to write hate mail to themselves or fashion swastikas from their own poop. Which, come to think of it, expresses their ideology perfectly. Rest in peace, Uncle. Semper Fi.

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