The No-Responsibility Nation
I know everyone thinks the lawsuit filed May 1 to ban Oreos in California is ridiculous, I certainly do. The main issue isn't the particulars of this lawsuit, it's the generalities of lawsuits like this one, the ones against McDonalds and the whole package of suits against the tobacco industry.
We now live in a nation where the issue of personal responsibility is completely dead. If you're fat then the fault must lie with the manufacturer of the foods you consume in far too copious quantities. If you've got lung cancer and smoke then the fault most definitely lies with the cigarette manufacturer, you never knew smoking was harmful! If you're shot by a crackhead in an attempted mugging then surely Smith and Wesson must be responsible. Don't blame the crackhead, everyone knows in the USA you can always find a large and wealthy corporation on which to blame your problems.
How else can someone explain the so-called 'tobacco settlement' where an industry must now pay to fund government propaganda urging citizens not to use it's products. Today only 25% of people smoke yet all of us are treated to these mawkish daily television advertisements where children are trotted out to talk about their mommies or daddies who have died of lung cancer. Completely ignoring the issue of why these people continued to smoke despite over 50 years of evidence of it's negative health effects, one resents the daily barrages of propaganda. I don't smoke so why must I look at billboards showing blackened lungs, watch simpering kids on TV and listen to whining parents on the radio? Don't even get me started on the statistic that 50,000 people a year die of second-hand smoke. This figure is patently false and bears no relation to reality; according to a researcher on a recent NPR program NOT affiliated with the tobacco industry .
All of this shudderingly recalls the show-trials conducted during Mao's cultural revolution, where people were made to parade themselves through the streets announcing their crimes as capitalist running-dogs of imperialism. Most had nothing to do with the crimes they were accused of but when this sort of government-sponsored hysteria gets whipped up the consequences are difficult to control.
The answer is tort-reform where these types of lawsuits can be stopped in their tracks. As Americans our freedoms to eat what we want, watch what we want and do what we want are gradually being worn down by an increasingly rapacious corp. of trial lawyers and a citizenry raised to believe that nothing they do has consequences. Weak-minded and greedy, these people suck at the body politic, draining society of it's vigor and depriving us of our rights. Until people raise their voices in protest we're all headed down the stony path to a continually homogenized and boring society. I for one want off that path
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10:08:35 AM 
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