What makes me mad?

What Makes Me Mad?

 Charles Jordan

A democracy where politicians determine their own voting districts so that they will be reelected. A government system which lends billions and billions of dollars to banks at zero interest and allows them to invest it at 3+ percent interest  in any way they wish. An election system which predicts the results of elections before everyone has voted. An economy when there can be billionaires. A media report on nuclear radioactivity by a person who knows no nuclear physics. A poor mother with eight children. A doctor who thinks he is God. A student or faculty member who thinks it appropriate to shout down a professor’s lecture because they disagree with his position. Political correctness (a contradiction in terms). A science which decides that CO2 is a pollutant. A theory which doesn’t predict anything you can test. A society where you can’t get a job if you’re over 50. Any decision on economics which relies on an  economist. In short, all those things which violate my common sense, a clear understanding which I assume represents the collective wisdom of the saints and sages who have preceded me in this life.  Somehow this knowledge must have been encoded on my DNA. I can retrieve it without effort, almost spontaneously, when confronted with an obvious distortion or subterfuge on the part of the bad guys–lawyers, politicians, salesmen, trendy scientists, ministers, the religious right, the liberal left, actually anybody but you and me, and I’m not so sure about you.

What I don’t understand is where I got all this common sense.  Did it come from those same charlatans of the past who are so wrong today? It’s no wonder the past looks rosier than the present. But I, for one, will not go gentle into that good night, so beautifully expressed by Dylan Thomas.

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at the end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.