It is absolutely amazing how easily people in American are buffaloed, manipulated and taken for fools. And when they buy the package, then they are fools. It grows more and more disturbing with every day. So much so that at times I long for a long and bloody violent war to shake things up enough so that people actually wake up and come to their senses. Something has to be able to shake these robotic wage slaves to the point where they see how marketing and advertising is taking them for dupes on a daily basis. Something has to be able to disturb them to the point where they start to see instead of just blindly following the leader.
The greasy, disgusting and filthy motherfuckers behind Proposition 6 in Florida (designed to eliminate smoking in public places to "protect" non-smokers from second-hand smoke) really make me want to paint the town with projectile vomit. This is the worse kind of human being. The kind that manipulates, uses and twists truth just enough to bend you to their point of view. And they use children as part of their manipulation. "Smoke-Free for Public Health" is inundating the airwaves with highly biased and manipulative advertisements that border on comical. A rather disgusting overweight man in a restaurant in coughing up smoke and obsessively puffing away on a cigarette as if he were sucking cock. He blows the smoke everywhere, especially towards a young and attractive African American family whose wimpy little daughter doubles over, gagging on the wisps of smoke that come her way. Yes, the message here is that second hand smoke is indeed the devil. They've learned these marketing techniques from the success of organizations like "theantidrug.com" who effectively use children to manipulate emotion in viewers and sell their point of view.
How do politicians win elections in the USA? Name recognition. Put signs up all over the lawns of as many people as possible. Why? When they go into the booth there are many candidates for many offices. Not all these candidates are of interest to every voter, and they will tend to to pull the lever for the name that looks most familiar. They do what they are told. They walk out onto the assembly line and become as much like everyone else as they can. They fit in. They allow themselves to be conditioned. The wimps and whiners are taking over. People vote to stop things that bother them and they do it with blanket movements. Extremists seduce the moderates with marketing and effective use of advertising. When PETA started using pictures of cute little animals to fill their bank coffers, other groups took notice. Here was an organization with extreme viewpoints that very few people could actually embrace, but they brought in millions by promoting the angle that they were helping cute little animals. "Socially concerned" teenaged girls were especially targeted in their marketing schemes. Need to get widespread support for your extreme master plan? Use children and cute animals in your advertising. What's next? Beer drinkers pushing old ladies down in the parking lots of gas stations to get to the beer they desperately need? Outlaw the sale of alcohol in places where nice, pleasant law-abiding citizens purchase good things like Coca Cola and Snickers bars. This campaign is coming to your television set in 2005. Let the good times roll.
If there is supposed to be a free market system in the USA, then why won't anyone let it work? A large population of non-smokers wants completely smoke-free restaurants? Why isn't someone capitalizing on this by opening a chain of smoke-free restaurants? Instead, it becomes important to push for laws that tell private business how they must operate. A privately owned restaurant is not a public place. What if someone wanted to open a restaurant just for smokers? Not possible. Restaurants are for non-smokers only. The backlash is coming and it won't be pretty.
Sorry to break it to you, but if a couple stray sniffs of smoke upset your delicate nostrils and keep you up at night having "second-hand smoke" nightmares then you are the one who needs to see a doctor. Don't you have something more important to worry about? Toughen up. Either experience and live your life or crawl into a plastic bubble and be a widdle bitty bubble boy. Or girl. Or person. Or widget. Or whatever the "correct" thing to call people is these days. I can't keep track and I'm a guy who wears skirts for crissakes.
Sorry. Just had to get that out. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming... Open your eyes, people. If you spend a measurable percent of every day trying to figure out how to live forever, then you've just wasted another day. One day they'll remove all the people and replace them with robots. I'll be dead long before then, a fact I am very glad to be aware of, but I wonder if many will even notice the switch...
End of semi-annual Dead Guy pissy mood phase.