According to Uncle John’s Great Big Bathroom Reader, circa 1998, the US city with the highest per capita number of psychiatrists is Washington DC.
Go figure.
The book also makes the claim that “medically speaking, the correct order of intelligence,””of three given choices, is “moron, imbecile, idiot.”
Not that I would suggest that there is any correlation between these tasty little nuggets of fact. I just marvel at the things you can learn in the bathroom.
So, uh, do you think that maybe all of the psychiatrists have abandoned their DC populace since ’98, leaving in their wake a barrage of morons, imbeciles and idiots?
Hmm.
I guess what I’m getting at here is that this whole impending “war” is really bothering me. It’s confusing. Distracting.
It’s leaving something of a residue on my daily routines — even down to my meditative time in the restroom.
Even though I try to relegate the issue to the back of my mind, it refuses to go anywhere for very long. Perhaps it’s because I reside in the mythical generation referred to as “X.”
For the longest time I remember taking exception to the claims that our supposed listlessness, our tendency to “slack,” could be tied to the fact that we were a generation that has aged without the shadows of a large-scale war. As if that would be something about which we should be remorseful.
And then there was September 11th.
The shock of it — the sense of confusion, fear, and defensiveness. The plethora of American flags casting the light of red, white and blue everywhere one might look. And the Bush family politic, round two.
I have a theory, a joke to myself really, that George W is actually a clone of Bush senior that has been nurtured in some secret chamber of the shadow government’s headquarters for use at a moment when the war machine had enough popular support to launch world War III. Kind of like Dolly the sheep, only much, much scarier. And much more dangerous.
I know, I know, that’s probably a bit drastic. Nevertheless, here we stand with a government prepared to incite the wrath of extremists everywhere.
But are we prepared to handle the consequences? And do the powers that be really care?
These are the things I have trouble understanding, the things that invade my thoughts at the most inopportune times.
In light of the protests staged this weekend, including one right here in Memphis, there are lots of people that share my feeling of unease. And how kind of President Bush to intone that he would not base any of his decisions on voiced opinions, both domestic and international, but rather upon what he considers “right for history.”
And here I sit, in Memphis TN, relegated to the group numbering in the millions that isn’t sure a war is what we want, or need for that matter. Here I sit unable to really form an opinion since I know that there is a major dividing line between information classified and declassified. And unable to obtain any of that information, I find it terribly hard to be lured onto the pro-war bandwagon.
All I can really hope is that I don’t end up having to tell my children about the horrors of “World War X.”
