Cowboy Confessional

Q: What do Cassandra and Al Gore have in common?

A: Nothing.

That poor tart of antiquity (Cassandra, not Al, though he may well be old enough to qualify) knew with certainty what the future held, and nobody believed her. Gore on the other hand has prophesied on his and excited a throbbing mixed mass of the guilt-ridden yuppies, aging hippies, and anyone easily frightened by news anchors with serious facial expressions.

Brian Williams’ scowl has been known to scare small children into wetting themselves. Some adults too.

The cycle has become more predictable than any of the prophesies from the alarmist industry. We can go back to Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring where she predicted mass species annihilation due to some pesticides, and as an indirect effect condemned millions of children to die from malaria that could have effectively been controlled with judicial use of the pesticides she caused to be banned. Rachel could be rightly accused of inciting an anti-intellectual riot resulting in manslaughter.

Her process — one of taking some small scientific theory or reality and extrapolating worst-case scenarios — has oft been repeated. A mere six years later Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb claimed that in the 1970s “hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.” Yet the only wide-spread starvation that occurred where caused by governments creating artificial food shortages as weapons … or in Hollywood where actresses upchucked their excesses.

This parade of false prophets has continued unabated. Some predicted the end of natural resources in the 1970’s and even the end of the human species by the year 2000. Oddly, the only thing that died at the millennial turn were a small piece of my liver, that collided with a dose of Jack Daniels … all night long.

One would think … well maybe not. Perhaps one should think about these serial sages and their apocalyptic predictions, and then think about Al Gore.

Try not to think of him too much as the side effects are unpleasant.

Gore is the modern Malthus, taking premature trends and projecting pandemics and pestilence. Al’s predictions are about as accurate. Often echoing other eco-prophets, Al’s earlier Earth in the Balance book and various speeches claimed we would have no arable soil, no forests, oceans devoid of fish, and no oil.

Funny. I had fish for dinner last night, with a nice salad (grown in soil I assume), and went for a walk afterwards in a redwood grove before filling my tank of my pickup.

I won’t pick on Al anymore (today). But the history of doomsayers is long, going back to ancient Greece and perhaps further. Of their dire predictions, very few have come true. Take what political apocalyptics say with two grains of salt.

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“I support the troops!” was the obviously insane declaration of the old hippie I was arguing with. His gray ponytail flapping in the Berkeley breeze was a flag of suspicion. But being a cagey animal, I first asked exactly how he was supporting the troops.

“I’m trying to bring them home.”

I laughed, and with what is now a well practiced follow-up replied “Seriously, what have you done for an actual enlisted man or woman. Have you donated to a family relief fund? Helped build a wheelchair ramp at a wounded soldier’s house? Welcomed home a vet? Sent some cookies to the battlefield?”

He snorted and in a challenging way asked if I had. A stone cold “yes” shut the old hippie up and thankfully got him and is lingering aromatic mixture of pot and patchouli to leave.

Helping men and women who risked it all requires only slightly more brain cells than the old hippie had left. There are more ways to help than you have time to research.

The best place to start is at America Supports You web site. The links there guide you to any of a zillion local or national groups who help service men and women and their families. If you are stuck trying to decide how to help, then drill down into the “help for the wounded” section. They need the most help, and deserve every ounce of it.

Don’t be an old hippie (but that should go without saying).

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We often accuse government workers of being lazy. I have found an exception — a man of profound focus and dedication to the … er … task at hand.

The city of Kinokawa, Japan recently demoted an employee who, in a steady nine-month span managed to rack-up an astounding 780,000 on-the-job page views of a porn site.

That’s about 4,000 pages every working day.

However, he is the only person in that government office to be commended for his diligence.  Nobody else in the office noticed his wanking work habits.

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