Well, let's see... I haven't had a political rant lately, have I? OK, it's time. No, my rant about Bill O'reilly were more about his religion and general assholiness. Anyway... the present government, and the last one too, I must add... seem to want to further their fortunes by increasing their efforts in the "War" on drugs. I might not have mentioned this before, but I believe that the war on drugs is wrong, wrong, wrong. Not to mention stupid, expensive and absolutely unwinnable. Furthermore, it's ruined a lot of lives, many more than drugs themselves have. Most of the incarcerations on all levels have something to do with drugs, and many people are serving longer and harder sentences on drug charges than those serving for murder in various degrees. Does this really make any sense? But the main problem with the drug war is that it's inured us to the war-like proportions of the equipping of jack-booted thugs in uniforms of our local police. The idea is that we have to equip our police so that they can combat the drug lords, who we see depicted in... Hollywood movies. And we have to alter the laws just a little bit, to give "our side" an advantage. "Our Side", of course, doesn't mind exchanging a few little freedoms for the security of having a drug-free society, of course. Well, drug-free except for liquor... liquor is OK in the bible or something, I guess. Anyway, once the drug war is won, the jackbooted thugs will go back to being the kindly cops that they were before... well, before a major part of the population can remember... was it Reagan that started this, or someone before him? No, these fellows are well equipped to do the bidding of whoever is in power and, if necessary, whatever it takes to keep them in power. Yep, the machinery is in place for the great american evolution. It will be interesting and probably painful and possibly fatal to many of us who will witness this evolution of a representative republic into... what? I don't know. I'm afraid to think it, much less say it. If I don't speak of it, maybe it won't happen? Yeah, we'll try that, see if it works. Well, yeah, it has never worked, but what the hell, let's try it again, OK? While we're at it, let's try something else that never works, like prayer.
Yeah, I'm in a pretty rotten mood today. I got called in last night at midnight, and I don't think that I ever really got to sleep. Karen woke me up several times 'cause I was snoring and keeping her awake. Additionally, I had to work in the diagnostic area again today, but I had to run the desk, not do patients. I would much rather do patients, at least I feel that I've accomplished something... and bossing people around is not my idea of fun at all.
And I had to stay over tonight 'cause I'm still on call, and I had all kinds of equipment problems.
So I'm really tired and grouchy, and I need to be in bed.