Last Rites for Mr. & Mrs. Common Sense

Almost to the day, three years ago, on September 27, 2019, I mused about, "Eulogy for Common Sense". One reader  told  me then  that perhaps it was much too premature  to eulogize it.  Perhaps, but what about now?

Part of what I wrote then was, "Common sense is dying from small blows and  lacerations but alas with very little blood. It is now punch drunk from a jab here, a jab there, and body punches that merely stagger the senses without really causing a knockout, not even  a knockdown. Common sense has not gone down for the count. At least, not yet. But already it has  had recurring standing counts. And that is worse than being counted out entirely. It is a pitiful sight".

World's no.1 ranked tennis player, Novak Djokovic, was denied entry into this country and was therefore not able to play at the U.S. Tennis Open to defend his title this year. His "troubles" actually started in Australia  earlier  when he was deported by the government after he was allowed entry at first, then deported.  His lawyer, after a  court battle brought on by legal challenges claimed that Djokovic already had natural immunity after contracting the virus in December, 2021 from which he recovered fully. However, before the Australian Tennis Open could begin his visa was revoked and he was promptly deported.  A friend from Australia sent me an email where the joke there was that the reason for his predicament was that his first name rhymes with "No Vac".

The more recent joke now, of course, is that Novak Djokovic could have come in with the thousands who enter the country illegally via the U.S. southern boarder, say Texas, where that state's governor could have promptly put him on a bus to New York, visa-free with full sanctuary protection when he gets to Grand Central Station or Flushing Meadows.  Two million have so far illegally entered the country across the boarders - unvaccinated, unvetted, with no entry visas - but the No. 1 Tennis player  in the world, with natural immunity from Covid, could not come in, despite the obvious dissipation of Covid concerns.   Another devastating jab at common sense. 

Madness, 1, Common Sense, 0. 

Mr. Common Sense had been in the ring so many times against many opponents, mostly questionable contenders for the title of sense and sensibility, while at ringside Mrs. Common Sense can only watch and gasp in tears. 

A woman, seven months into her pregnancy, was murdered at her home when she surprised a burglar in the middle of the night.  The suspect was apprehended later.  He was charged with double homicide - for taking the life of the mother and the unborn child. He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.

In a different case, a woman who was seven months pregnant decided she didn't want the baby anymore.  She went to a clinic where a doctor performed what was "necessary".  Unfortunately, though rare, the mother suffered from sepsis, also called blood poisoning, although it has nothing to do with poison. Bacteria had entered her bloodstream during or perhaps after the procedure, and in less than 48 hours she passed away. The doctor was not criminally liable for the death of the mother or the unborn baby, or charged with any crime.  This is not to be a political argument for or against Roe V Wade.  Treating this with the typical retort of "apples and oranges" when compared to the first scenario may be deemed logically proper, but Mrs. Common Sense is troubled by the double standard applied to both unborn babies; neither  was aware of the nuances of the law nor the intricacies of modern morality and ethics.

So, who are these contenders in the ring from whom Common Sense has been taking unrelenting punishments?

NIMBY's. This now arguably trite acronym has been coming up in conversations recently, "Not In My Backyard". Undocumented/illegal "migrants may enter through the Arizona, New Mexico and Texas boarders by the thousands each week but a hundred of them flown into Martha's Vineyard or bused to Washington, DC, Chicago and New York is abhorrently wrong!  Yes, it can be considered a political stunt on the part of the Florida and Texas governors but did it not get the national attention that nobody outside the southern boarder states would talk about, not too long ago?  Suddenly, it is part of the national conversation after almost two years of 8-10,000 per day of illegal incursions at the boarder with hardly a peep from the national media. 

"Double Standard-ers"  are also contenders in the ring that Mr. Common Sense had to face. 

Least known is that the administration, months earlier, did the same thing. Several plane loads of "migrants" who entered the southern boarder were flown to various places around the country in the early morning hours. It was acknowledged by the WH press secretary when asked but it got no more than a ho-hum from the general media. When two state governors did the same thing in bright daylight hours, there was uproar from the media. Those flown to the island paradise called Martha's vineyard "were treated as political pawns in such horrific and inhumane conditions". 

Those were the same migrants who probably spent all their life savings for passage, who went through unimaginable conditions trekking through  harsh territories from various countries of origin to get to the boarder, fraught with all kinds of potential peril along the way; but when they were flown by jet, fully fed and properly clothed, to a beautiful island, they were "maltreated like kidnapped prisoners".  Two days later the administration bussed and ferried them out to a  Massachusetts military base and housed in a compound to await further "processing". 

Meanwhile, no media attention focuses on the thousands of migrants who lost their lives on their way before reaching and while crossing the border. Nothing was nationally covered about the 52 migrants who suffocated to death inside a cargo container truck abandoned by human smugglers nor the many who drowned crossing the river. One Texas border town reported yesterday that they were running out of freezer space for dead migrants brought in every week. 

Four years ago on December 12, 2018, the title of my musing was "$5.00 Per Gallon". No, it was not about the price of gasoline but "just the rolling price per gallon difference between the gas pump prices on Fannin Street in Houston, Texas and Rue Manin in Paris, France as of a particular time.."

Well, just barely 2-3 months ago, gasoline prices did go up to and higher than $5.00 per gallon in many parts of this country.  Not quite on Fannin St. but close enough for even Texas drivers to grimace at the pump.

Climate-ers and climate hypocrites are contenders in the ring with Mr. Common Sense, indeed.  Movie stars, politicians, media personalities and social luminaries lecture us on climate change due to profligate use of fossil fuels but we know they are not serious.  They live in 10,000 square foot homes with not a single solar panel on the roof, nor a windmill standing in their surrounding multi acreages of land.  We know their home, fire places and barbecue pits and pool heaters use gas.  They don't fly commercial because private jets are more convenient.  Their yachts have no sails because wind is unpredictable while diesel engines are reliable.    We know they don't believe in rising sea levels; otherwise why do they have waterfront and ocean-view homes at The Hamptons, Chesapeake Bay, yes, at Martha's Vineyard, and San Francisco Bay, etc.  

But these folks are the loudest voices on climate.  They look down upon those ignorant "climate deniers" below as their private jets soar at 35,000 feet, spewing tons of carbon dioxide. They are so eloquent at using terms like "carbon footprint" and "existential threats" posed by fossil fuel and call for eliminating gas stoves  and furnaces in new home construction for as long as their  mansions are grandfathered into exceptions and there must be no mention of their stretched limos that ferry them to and from their galas and annual movie awards nights or their attendance to  global warming initiative conferences in their private jets and complementary armor plated gas guzzling behemoths. 

Today, here and Europe where gas prices are often the cause for anguish for many families, I am reminded of a quote. From among those who were then protesting the high prices in Paris four years ago, the quote was much too eloquently expressed with the simplicity of thought that could only come from the philosophy of a simple man. The man said, "We too are concerned with the end of the world but what we are most concerned  with right now is the end of the  month".  

The man is right. The end of the world to him is lopsidedly distant when set to a timeline that could be a mere few days to the end of the month where his budget could quickly turn vermilion red versus the green promises to hold off a global catastrophe a hundred, a thousand years from when he retires.

The "green-ers" too are contenders in the ring. They drive Mr. Common Sense to dizzying stupor with their shadow boxing and HTT attitude and self elevating platitudes toward climate. HTT stands for "holier than thou". My musing on, "In Awe of Climate" is second most read of all my musings because I think many readers agree with the futility of the promises and the premise espoused by the climate-ers among us.  Mr. and Mrs. Common Sense do not begrudge, and no one should, the successes of those fortunate ones who made a financial success of their lives but where they draw the line is when those same folks go on to lecture everyone who has a different opinion.

There are many more pages to write on what bothers Mr. and Mrs. Common Sense but  let's just have them ask three more questions.

1. Why is it that biologically male transgenders compete in women's sports but biologically female trans do not  in men's sports?  The answer: Clearly the latter just simply cannot compete in men's sports while the former can dominate (and with ease) the women's competition.

2. Why is the Air Force Academy focusing on Diversity and Inclusion by banning the use of gender identifiers like Mom and Dad, girlfriends and boyfriends, and all other pronoun insanities when the world is teetering on geopolitical/military chaos in an apparent rebalancing of global power as other world leaders perceive a weakening resolve from once the supreme example of democracy and capitalism?  A long question but we can see Mr. Common Sense shrugs his shoulder while Mrs. Common Sense only stares into the far distance, as if everything she used to take for granted as a legacy to their grand children is slowly sinking below the far horizon of a setting sun that is the USA. 

3. How did the U.S. go from exporting oil to importing again and dipping into its strategic petroleum reserves (SPR) as a stop gap measure to rising gas prices? Nobody seems to recall anymore why the U.S. created SPR' in 1975, almost two generations ago.

"Congress authorized the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) in the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA, P.L. 94-163) to help prevent a repetition of the economic dislocation caused by the 1973-1974 Arab oil embargo".

Mr. Common Sense is resigned to the idea that any administration can add to  the reason for SPR, such as a temporary relief for a mismanaged economy either from incompetence or from misguided self flagellation dictated by a few HTT's in the administration, to assuage general public outrage at high prices for a commodity that this country has so much of, but ..

There is more but I do not want to exceed the limit of the reader's capacity for anguish.  Meanwhile, I leave you with these two self-explanatory images.