622 The Two Way Sewer

622 The Two Way Sewer

It's why we have all those shootings and a lot of other bad stuff. A sewer with two way traffic.

Look at it this way: The solipsists have taken over the world, guys who think everything is in their heads except themselves. The world's imaginary and they think they are the only reality. So, if they go out and off a bunch of soldiers at Ft. Hood or in an office building in Orlando or Oklahoma City or in a high school in Colorado or a college campus in Virginia, what of it? It's only their imagination.

Coming one way down the sewer is this notion. Coming up the other direction is reinforcement. Rugged individual. Founding fathers. My Own True Religion and a personal relationship with an (imaginary) deity. This two way effluvium is a perpetual motion machine that gains strength as it flows.

Reaganism turns to isolation, turns us to a jungle mentality turns us to solipsism. Solipsism turns us to a jungle mentality, turns us to Reaganism.

Health care for the masses? Not on your life. There ARE no masses. Just me. And I got mine.

Torturing prisoners in secret jails? No worries. Neither the prisoners nor the jails are real.

Energy costs? Guys who set the prices don't believe you're really there, so what's the big deal about charging more?

The Ft. Hood shooter? People are making a big deal out of his Muslim-ness. But that's not what this is about. This is about a guy who hears voices in his head and the voices tell him to kill and he does. What does it matter: the "victims" don't exist. Of course, it seems the sewer flows are interrupted now and then -- like when the shooters get shot. But no matter. The bullet and the resulting injury or death are mere figments of one's imagination.

He could have held any other set of beliefs and felt and acted the same way. A solipsist shrink "curing" imaginary illness in imaginary patients isn't a whole lot different than a solipsist Muslim lauding imaginary suicide bombers and killing imaginary co-workers (and that's who the victims were!)

The Orlando shooter? He got fired by his imaginary employer and took revenge.

Do these people know they're doing this? Probably not. An ordinary person having this self evaluation would probably imagine himself a loony bin and check himself in.

Meantime, the sewer with the two way traffic keeps building up more of ... um ... what sewers build up.

Shrapnel:

--A listener wants to know this: why Boehner says his name "Baynor," and not "Bone-er." Still trying to figure out whether she means "Bone-er" as in "error" or bone-er as in lack of erectile dysfunction.

--Why do conservatives cling to talk radio and the liberals rejected it? The right craves marching orders, the left does not. Which is the main reason Air America has never been a hit.

--They sell goose calls in hunting stores in middle America where there are no geese. That's bad for the hunters and good for any stray fowl who does a flyover. Now, why not elephant calls?

We didn't get to be the way we are by being the way we are. I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.®

©WJR 2009