The Definition of 'Crazy'

It’s always easy and entertaining to make fun of history in a Monty Python kind of way; to say what if, as if ‘if’ were some kind of Frankonian monster ripe for resurrecting at the snap of a finger. Much more difficult to see the lunacy of current policy. If Reagan had killed Kaddafi, who is to say that would have been the end of it?

Fact: For several years after we sent a package bomb into Kaddafi’s tent (killing his daughter among others) we never heard from Kaddafi again. Fact: He behaved himself for a time like a kid after a spanking. And then, we seemed to have lost the concept altogether and the likes of Kim Yong-Il, Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez were able to make their mischief unimpeded, turning the whole class into an uproar.

Now, nobody is learning. The teachers have fled the premises. The school is has become wildly dysfunctional and you have some version of William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies” going on everywhere you look.

Enter the 12th Imam to put a stop to it. I expect he’ll have enough buckets lined up to put out the fires that are raging; to snuff out the fuses that are burning toward setting off a nuclear holocaust. If not, it doesn’t really matter what any of us do.

For a brief while, we thought it was Obama who would fill the bill. We gave him every chance. We even called him ‘savior’. We were convinced that he was the one who would bring us together. He made quite a convincing start of it, giving speeches all around the world and drawing adoring crowds everywhere he went.

Now we know it was all just so much hot air, effectively causing the polar icecaps to melt and the bears to seek shelter inside an ever shrinking population of whales. Curiously the oceans didn’t rise as predicted and the island of Manhattan still stands (although we did our best to bring her down by other means).

As much as we make fun of Kaddafi, we still shy away from looking in the mirror to examine ourselves. The definition of ‘crazy’ is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. What we are doing in almost every aspect of our public policy is the same thing over and over again. And all it’s done is accelerate our fall from grace.

Spring is just around the corner and all of us here in the northern latitudes can put our snow shovels away and breathe a sigh of relief. Soon time to put some of the old stuff out on the curb for yard sales or for sanitation to pick up. Don’t plan on going anywhere though. Gas will likely be around $5 a gallon.

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