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Dangerous Activities

By Theresa Fritz Camoriano

How do the “intelligentsia” or “smart people” decide which dangerous activities they will praise, which they will disdain, and which they will make illegal?    

While the “smart people” claim to be motivated by concern for public health and safety, their contradictory positions make it clear that they really have a completely different agenda.  For example, they make celebrities of people who do things that are very dangerous, like rowing a boat across the Atlantic Ocean, climbing a sheer, snow-covered cliff, or riding a bicycle along narrow, winding roads next to fast-moving cars, while, at the same time, they make it illegal for us to drive our cars safely if we are not wearing our seatbelts.  Does this sound like someone whose primary motivation is public safety?

In addition, they insist we should be tolerant of people who engage in promiscuous sex in bathhouses and public restrooms, spreading deadly diseases like AIDS, while, at the same time, they want to make it illegal for a restaurant owner to welcome customers who smoke.  Again, does this sound like someone who cares mainly about public safety?

If these “smart folks” really are so concerned about the safety of “the children”, why do they force taxpayers to subsidize an “extreme park”, which attracts children to go skateboarding where they can fall down a steep slope and crack their skulls? 

Obviously, the claim that their primary motivation is public safety is false.  There must be another motivation that is much more important to them.

If you listen very carefully to these “smart folks” for any period of time, you will realize that what they really care about is being “cool” and “fashionable”.  They say they want to be a “world class city” (translated “cool”), and they look to the people and places they consider to be “cool” and want to imitate them.  If you recognize that their real motivation is coolness and that public safety is just their cover story, then their positions begin to look much more consistent.

Since smoking is considered to be a very uncool habit, they want smokers to be forced out of restaurants and bars and into back alleys, even though this approach is more likely to expose innocent passersby to secondhand smoke.  As for seatbelts, they believe that, if they have to use a seatbelt that wrinkles their fancy clothes, making them somewhat unfashionable, then everyone else should be forced to wear a seatbelt and wrinkle their clothes, too!   With respect to foods and obesity, they think that, if they must deprive themselves of sweets and fats, because they want to be fashionably thin, then it is only fair to punish anyone else who dares to sell or eat such foods and anyone who packs on more pounds than the charts recommend.  If they have to suffer to be fashionable, then the rest of us will be forced to suffer, too! (For our own good, of course.)

But the trouble with fashions is that what’s cool today may be passé tomorrow, and what is currently “out” may suddenly become “in”.  One day eggs are considered dangerous, and the next day they are a trendy health food.  One day, being skinny is healthy and the next we’re told that it is healthier to carry a few extra pounds.  The food pyramid is suddenly rebuilt, retro fashions that were “out” are “in”, global cooling is passé, and now global warming is all the rage.  It’s very hard to keep up!  No wonder those folks who consider themselves to be so smart are always so stressed-out and angsty!  (It must be a terrible burden trying to keep up with the trends in order to know how to dictate to the rest of us all the time.)

I just try to imagine what might happen if respect suddenly became trendy.  What if it were “in” to treat every single person with respect, even if they smoked or were fat, and whether they were rich or poor or middle class?  What if the “smart people” decided it was fashionable to be able to disagree without becoming disagreeable, without attacking the person with whom they disagreed, and without forcing others to conform to their views?  What if the “smart people” respected all of us enough to stop trying to force us to do things their way and instead respected our right to pursue happiness in our own way?  Wow!  Now that really would be cool!

Policeman:  “How did this accident happen?
Driver:  “My wife fell asleep in the back seat.”

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