Today is a tough day to laugh. I think we may need Ammo Grrrll today more than ever as she mulls over UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES. She writes:
The road to hell, it is said, is paved with good intentions. No news there. I’m quite sure I have provided plenty of the paving tar in my life.
America has an obesity epidemic. The average woman now weighs more than the average man did in 1950. When I went for my every-five-years “annual” physical, I noticed that the single seats in the waiting room of my clinic are now about three-quarters the size of a large loveseat for two. Good grief! You go away for five lousy years and even the furniture gets fat!
I would like to make very clear that I understand that weight control is one of the most difficult struggles on God’s green earth. I have shared before that I have probably lost the same 20 pounds 20 times. Excess weight always finds me again, perhaps by laying down bread crumbs. (Doh! Bread good. Maybe should go to Mall for Cinnabon. No, too hot, maybe should just have more ice cream…weight gain a total mystery…) Oops, I digress.
Still and all, I have always had a benchmark at which I knew I had to get serious once again. I have chipped away at the problem and in the last couple of decades have forced myself not to allow more than nine excess pounds to creep on before I take action. Once it’s hit double digits, the fight gets much harder. It’s not that I am more disciplined than anyone else; it’s just that I simply can no longer stand to be overweight. Plus I have thrown out all clothes over size 6-8, save one emergency pair of baggy size 10 jeans. When it’s go naked or lose weight, I almost always choose the latter. You’re welcome.
Despite the decades of vicious slander and leftist education about our beloved country, Americans are a kind and compassionate people, infinitely forgiving and generous. Nobody wants anyone – especially of course, “the CHILDREN” – to go hungry.
And so we offer free breakfast and free or reduced-price school lunches and free food stamps and welfare, medical care and housing. Probably every person has been in line at a market when the person ahead of them has paid with her plastic welfare card, plus WIC coupons, for fruits and veggies, bread and cereal, meat and eggs. They may be told that sugary sodas or snack foods are not allowed. And that person has taken out instead a wad of cash to pay for the crap she can’t get for free. Talk about having your cake and eating it too!
And it shows. As Orson Welles said, “Gluttony is not a secret vice.” Could not Food Stamps actually be at least one CAUSE of the obesity epidemic? If one has a limited food budget, presumably one must emphasize protein and vitamins over nutrition-free crap. But if the former is free, well then, one can supplement healthy stuff with all the crap one can carry.
America is one of precious few countries in human history where the poorest people are also the fattest. I think that is also because the same habits that keep some people fat – low impulse control, inability to delay gratification, poor planning – also keep them poor. But that’s for another day. Others (me and thee for sure) simply love food and eat too much. Sadly, a mere 100 calories a day more than your body burns – one extra Tablespoon of butter or a couple of Oreos – will result in a weight gain of 10 pounds in a year. Sigh. Math is not only hard, it’s merciless and no doubt sexist.
It is well documented what welfare has done to the black family in America and thousands of white working class families in England. Economist Willam Easterly’s book The White Man’s Burden explores the devastating effects of foreign “aid” in Africa. Birds are being slaughtered in numbers only dreamed of by the late Rachel Carson in her seminal Silent Spring – only it’s not by DDT but by windmills for the Left’s precious green (as in $$$) energy.
And it is not a matter of “if,” but “when” a woman or girl will be attacked because of Obama’s clinically-insane bathroom directive. Oh, well. To make an unappetizing omelet, ya gotta break a few eggs, no? Our betters tell us we will get used to it. Who cares about individual inconsequential people? It’s “humanity” that liberals love.
Unintended negative consequences abound even for the most well-intentioned projects that seem at first blush to be without a downside.
But at what point can we conclude that many of those devastating consequences – of open borders, of sanctuary cities, of unvetted jhadist “refugees,” of a well-funded anti-cop campaign, of relentless efforts to disarm law-abiding citizens – are entirely intended after all? Are, indeed, the very point.
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