Creature Comforts, Pancakes and Social Hysteria

Creature Comforts, Pancakes and Social Hysteria
James Owens

In an interview with Keith Olbermann, George Carlin once said the country was sliding down hill, and when Keith asked him why, Carlin replied, because “everybody’s got a cell phone that makes pancakes, so they don’t want to rock the boat, they don’t want to make any trouble. People have been bought off by gizmos and toys in this country and no one questions things anymore.”
Carlin makes a good point. Most people don’t question, don’t observe and don’t pay attention. The people who do question things are usually fringe thinkers who whip up vast amounts of social hysteria. Those behind the hysteria are people who either hang too far on the left, or hang too far on the right. Healthcare reform is going to kill your grandmother – too far to the right. Healthcare reform will be paid for by the rich and save our nation – too far to the left. In truth, the answer usually lies somewhere in the middle.
Your average American “Joe the Plumber,” if you will, is busy making a living, raising a family, trying to get healthcare for his children and wondering if his they will be able to go to college. Joe does not have time to question, and that is unfortunate because real corruption doesn’t live where Jane and Joe live, it lives where Jane and Joe cannot live, in the heights and in the penthouses far from Main Street and far from mainstream America.
What Carlin said is true; the creature comforts we have grown used to have bought us off. We are happy with our pacifiers, so please don’t take them away, we won’t ask questions or think for ourselves; we’ll let others do that for us.
So go ahead and let others think for you. Go ahead and listen to the professional Christians who have nothing else to do but tell you how to live your life. Go ahead and listen to the bleeding heart liberals who think spanking your child is a serious offense punishable by a long prison term. Go ahead and listen, but listen to both sides and make up your mind because the truth is somewhere in-between this rhetoric the fringe are hysterically spewing. And will someone please tell me where to find that pancake making cell phone?