What’s going on? Doesn’t it seem recently that bizarre behavior is occurring with increased frequency?
On the criminal behavior front, just a week or so ago we had the three guys in North Carolina who videotaped themselves castrating men in the basement of their house that they had ever-so-cleverly named “the dungeon.” Elsewhere, it appears Google is, or until recently was, hosting a “boy love” blog site called “Paiderastia: The Boy Love Revival.” In addition to the dozens of teachers found to be having sex with their students, we now have a high school assistant principal in Florida being prosecuted for asking some of his young charges to videotape their sex acts and bring it in to him so he could watch it. Then there are the homicide charges brought against the parents of a baby who died of a heroin overdose, the man’s conviction for drowning his girlfriend’s children in a lake and the woman who plead guilty to slitting the throat of her friend’s baby. Have we gone nuts?
And the political world doesn’t appear to be much less bizarre. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is now denouncing Howard Dean for nothing less than … dare we say it? ... pandering to Christians. Has the man no integrity? According to the Task Force, Dean grossly misrepresented the Democratic Party’s official position on the definition of marriage when interviewed recently by the Christian Broadcasting Network. He said his party’s position is – perhaps now would be a good time to ask your children to leave the room – marriage is between a man and a woman. Can you even imagine that? Well, it sure upset the Task Force. They said he should know better than to say such a thing, and have demanded he correct it without delay. I guess that leaves the rest of us to pray he does the right thing.
Let it not be said, however, that republicans don’t have problems of their own. It is now reported that, ostensibly to protect our freedom, the National Security Agency is busy invading our privacy. Apparently, they are collecting a comprehensive data base of every phone call made by every citizen in the United States, whether or not we may be suspected of any criminal behavior whatsoever. The irony, of course, is that this particular program is being done in total disregard of the fact that one of our most sacred freedoms is supposed to be our expectation that we will be protected against unwarranted government invasions of our privacy.
Then, can any solace be found in the fact that both parties seem to be confounded by the illegal alien problem? When we travel to Mexico we are warned that if we break their laws we will be put in prison, and there is little our government can do to help us. By contrast, however, a friend told me that on Cinco de Mayo in Santa Ana, California there were Mexican flags being flown all over her neighborhood by illegals with the words “Conquer America” emblazoned on them. Are we to presume that, when they achieve that goal, they would improve our country by making it more like the one they left to come here illegally?
Then, just as we appear to be ready to concede that our nation’s borders should be abandoned as the anachronisms of intolerance that some now say that they are, our government gets all bent out of shape when Mexico’s government wants to legalize the possession of all narcotics for personal use. Why? In the absence of borders to impede migration, I don’t view this proposed legislation as much of a problem as it is an opportunity. If nothing is going to be done about our country having to absorb their labor force, wouldn’t it at least achieve some level of parity if Mexico’s culture were to absorb our drug addicts who, no doubt, would have been given a significant incentive to migrate south?
In the aggregate, bizarre events such as these, in addition to many others not mentioned, are leaving me with the sense that we can soon expect to witness the mushrooms screaming from the castle gate that the tomatoes have mashed King Spud and are taking over the Kingdom. Or, maybe it’s already happened and we just failed to hear the alarm. Maybe we were all just too busy with other things to pay any attention to it happening.
The other day I contacted a Christian minister to see if he would have an hour to spend with a friend of mine who had asked if it would be possible to talk to that minister about Jesus. To my amazement, in effect the minister responded that his schedule was too packed to do it, but that, if I thought it necessary, he would try to find someone else who might have the time. Among other things, I might describe that as being too busy. But, it also serves to exemplify how we might have gotten ourselves into the position we are all now in; where what should be right is somehow spun as being something that is wrong and what is wrong we are told is really right, and as a people we have been conditioned to turn a blind eye to both these lies and their consequences. How else might one explain how we as a people have come to accept a government that would even consider court-martialing a soldier because he exhibited the temerity to say the name of Jesus Christ in a prayer while in uniform? Yet, we have, and, though it might make Orwell proud, to me it is but another tragic example of the bizarre.
The only question that remains then is whether we as a culture have passed the point of no return. If so, I expect that we should prepare ourselves to see the occurrence of even more bizarre behavior in the future. On the other hand, if we have not, allow me to take this opportunity to suggest that a remedy to this malaise is going to require something more than bumper stickers and billboards telling people things like “Friends don’t castrate friends.”
© 2006 Clifford C. Nichols, Esq.
Cliff Nichols is an attorney practicing criminal defense/entertainment law in Santa Monica, California. He may be contacted regarding this editorial at either (310) 917-1083, cliff@cliffnicholslaw.com or www.cliffnicholslaw.com and you may join his blog at www.thedailystand.com