LIFE WITH IDIOTS:
Years ago, travelers used to be able to hop on an airplane without disrobing and going through metal detectors. We can largely thank the disappeared hijacker D.B. Cooper for pre-boarding harassment we started to face in 1972. Because of a single screwed-up person, hundreds of millions of travelers are forced to subject themselves to low-level radiation just before being squeezed like a sardine with plastic forks and knives in an airplane for a four-hour flight to visit granny.

We even have to remove our shoes because one person wanted to show off his Jihadiness. Fortunately similar travel requirements weren't put in place following another would-be terrorist carrying a bomb in his undershorts.

And this is where the pet in my peeve lies. In nearly all areas of our life, we’re subjected to some nuisance because of the past actions of a tiny minority. Have you ever tried to open a bottle of aspirin that’s been wrapped in that hard plastic, with a childproof cap, covered at the top of the open bottle by an impossible-to-remove hard paper lid, and then filled with cotton? That’s all mandated now because manufacturers have to entomb their products based on the lowest of human intentions.

Governments at all levels spend billions of dollars each year imprisoning criminals who can’t distinguish right from wrong. How on earth is that right or proper to those of us who follow the law? Just think how much more money we’d be able to keep or how much simpler our lives would be if we weren’t continually having to engineer around the lowest common denominator in our culture.

In a society that doesn’t intend to conquer people or land, the military is strictly defensive. Even looking at a military that plays a good cop role around the world, all of the money spent to build and maintain a modern army wouldn’t be necessary if governments and people didn’t behave so hostilely to its people or neighbors. Call this $400 billion per year spent just to keep the barbarians from the gate or protecting our country from a single megalomaniacal nutjob from parking a nuke in Cinderella’s Castle in Disneyland. I’ve always thought the best military deterrent would be to place some guy named Eddie in front of a nuclear button and feed him coffee and Red Bull all day. The world would always have to make sure they didn’t push Eddie over his fragile edge just to ensure their capital doesn't glow.

Maybe there’s a day not long in the future when humans won’t have to make allowances for morons and union leaders. I’m not counting on that happening in my lifetime, however.