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Government,
people are silly, need to demonstrate peace This week two items were in the news that deserve a little attention in this column: Senseless violence and silly taxes. Secret Service agents were involved in a brawl Saturday in California, in which an agent actually bit off the tip of a man’s ear. He should have learned, if not from his own judgment then from Vincent Van Gogh and Mike Tyson, that ears should be left alone. One would hope the Secret Service could escape hiring agents with strange ear fetishes. Then again, if an agent takes a bullet for the president, perhaps we would all feel less guilty if we knew it was the agent who bit someone’s ear. For some reason, people seem unable to grasp the concept of peace, or at least of non-violence, and not just in the Secret Service. Israel and Pakistan are fighting again, Hindus and Muslims are killing each other in India, and apparently the United States plans to bomb Afghanistan into next century. Countries are like little boys fighting over G.I. Joes. Someone should take all the leaders of all the world’s nations and sit them in a time-out until they think about what they’ve done and apologize. After all, someone has to be the first to be mature on this planet. Besides fighting with their own citizens and with other nations, governments also seem to have a need to vex and annoy people whenever possible. For example, 22 states are considering an additional tax on cigarettes to increase revenue. In New York, the price of a pack of cigarettes may reach $7. If I smoked, this would make me pretty angry. Honestly, why not pick on a new crowd? The rising cigarette tax seems to be a way to take advantage of people who are addicted and will therefore have no choice but to be overcharged. Smoking-related health risks are far from a shock these days, so why not just let adults make their own decisions about smoking without making them pay through the nose? As for the hefty price tags deterring teen smokers, children always want what they cannot have and will find a way to smoke if they want to badly enough, with or without new taxes. It is very akin to the way people fight, with or without treaties. So the big moral of today’s story? People are silly, and people invented and operate governments. Therefore, governments do a great deal of silly things. Unfortunately, people will have to live with our silly governments unless someone successfully demonstrates a peaceful anarchy. Sandy
Stafford is a sophomore theatre/TV major from Nederland. |
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TCU Daily Skiff © 2002 |
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