Try Not To Think About Gun-Toting Elephants
By Tom 'Heston' Waters
February 1, 2006
Recently, one of my editors assigned me to interview a local political candidate for an upcoming election. To say the least, I was a bit apprehensive. I don't like to breach politics for three reasons. Number one, politics are timely and as a freelance writer the best thing to do is get maximum mileage out of every article written for extended exposure and the possibility of more money. I've always shied away from topical issues (since the age of 13, mind you) and stuck to more timeless, universal issues because I never know when an article is going in or where. Writing about politics confines you to that election, or that region. Number two, I have zero to no interest in politics from a town, city, state or national perspective. I think reading about it is boring and writing about it is even more boring. People make entire careers out of complaining about politics and I've got better things to complain about. Number three, I piss enough people off. I don't need to even bother with politics to upset, antagonize and aggravate my readers. A barber told me once that you never talk about religion, sports or politics. It saves you from offending your customer base and people normally get pretty heated about those things.
Problem is, since I talked to this mayoral candidate, it's been on my mind. I really valued his platform, his vision for office and his plans to improve the city. I asked him about mudslinging and he told me that they'd trot out the fact that he was late paying back taxes. He paid the taxes, though. That's what he told me. I come to find out a week later that the dollar amount he gave me was about a third of what he actually owed, and that he hadn't paid them yet. That lying son of a bitch. And one of my papers is running a four part interview on him. I feel duped. Maybe I am naive for being gullible enough to believe anything a politician says. That's the green on me showing. I do have political views, and they lean pretty far to the right. Most of the publications that I write for slant way over on the left. Journalism in general is pretty liberal. Throw a rock in a roomful of creative types and odds are that they're in favor of free grants, funding for the arts, help for the homeless and a whole score of other touchy-feely programs for people who don't have money or are too lazy to earn their own. I'd be the wallflower plotting their downfalls. So it's almost a political agenda that I have, shying away from talking about politics. As a fairly conservative guy with Republican leanings, I'm traveling incognito in a sea of liberals and I don't want to upset the apple cart. I've never come out with most of my views but I suppose it's about time to clear the air. If I haven't offended you yet and you've been waiting patiently for years to have that button pushed, hold the elevator, because I'm about to mash all the buttons before the door closes, my friend.
Homeless people should be shot or put to work. Whatever Guliani did to get rid of them during his term as mayor, I wish we could do that on a larger scale. Drop them in a space transporter. Put them on a road crew. Give them tourist sandwich boards and get their asses into the workforce. If they don't want to work, off their asses. Leave crazy to the employed. Only in America can you make more money on a street corner in most populated cities than a full time employee at McDonald's. That's just not right. I don't care how they came to be homeless and I don't care what their back story is, either get to work or die.
The welfare system should be shut down. The one time I legitimately lost my job from a temp assignment I wrestled with my conscience for three weeks before filing for unemployment. The system is broken. We're not only conditioning the jobless to collect applications and cheat the system by phoning in contact names without ever sincerely looking for a job, but we're training the unemployed to raise their children and their children's children to be unemployed. If you can't raise and support your family like a man then that's your own goddamned problem. Use my taxes for something else. Can't pay your bills? Tough shit. Grab an application and follow up with it. Get a job, you lazy pricks! Economy's rough? My grandfather sold oranges during the great depression to make ends meet, so you're obviously not trying hard enough. Try harder. Why should I have to pay for you to sit and home and smoke pot when I'm putting in fifty hours a week at one job and writing my ass off in my spare time? Get it together. Slap a condom on and you won't have such a high cost of living. Scale it back to two or three kids instead of a litter.
And that's another thing! My core belief at the heart of political mores is population control. We shouldn't have to pay for overcrowding or its consequences. China's got the right idea. Pass your genetic code along to one kid and put on the brakes. I'm fervently and passionately FOR abortion. Picket and firebomb all the clinics you want, but we're an overcrowded planet and there's no room left! Be sensible, not selfish, and if you're going to have more than one kid, you better pay for it because if it's up to me my tax dollars aren't putting government cheese on your kids' breakfast table. Stupid people shouldn't be allowed to reproduce. Period. I'm serious as a heart attack about that. The government should regulate human reproduction and neuter anyone with an IQ below the skill base of being able to make a grilled cheese sandwich. Just because you can empty your sack into another stupid person doesn't qualify you to raise another monster with my tax dollars so he can grow up and repeat the process. It's a corrupt cycle and it's against the laws of Darwin. Maybe that's a bit more extreme than most conservative viewpoints, but that's how I feel, so tough shit.
People on death row should be executed a week after their sentence. Once again, weeding out stupid/dangerous/overcrowded population in our country. No appeals process, no opportunity for the media and the left wing groups to lobby for the precious gift that is life, just pop the guy in the chair and throw the switch. Save the time and the tax dollars and do the world a favor. I trust the ruling of a group of my peers. If they're guilty, it's time for them to get the hell off my planet. Goodbye. Flame broiled taste for you, buddy. Don't drag their death sentence out for three years in a paper trail of appeals while they get religion and watch television in the comfort of their secluded and over-charged cell in solitary. Drop kick them to the next dimension. Most criminals with a death penalty conviction are honest about that sort of thing anyway. They know what they've done and they've come to terms with the fact that they've disobeyed the basic laws of a society they once participated in. They deserve to die. And hang people on death row. Rope can be used multiple times and it's cheaper than high voltage.
The legal system has become too bankrupt. Scam lawyers and defense attorneys who work the loopholes to bilk companies and private individuals out of millions of dollars for the wrong thing should be called out by the judge on a no-holds-barred ruling of Bullshit. See also Bullshit vs. Wade. When it's obvious that the plaintiff doesn't deserve five million dollars for a hot cup of coffee on the crotch or it's their own goddamned fault they got too fat or brought the cancer on themselves from smoking five packs a day in their cinder based trailer home watching daytime soaps for thirty years, the judge should have ultimate veto power by waving his arms around, stopping the whole case in it's tracks, banging the gavel down and shouting 'Bullshit! Case closed!' Lawyers have destroyed the system. It's lawsuits like the coffee fiasco and the cancer case and the obesity trail that drive up consumer prices, pull down publicly held stock and lower our minimum wages to cover costs over what? Bullshit.
Religion has no place in schools. Prayer can be done outside or in the bathroom or far away from the class room. Separation of church and state. Don't take your decoder ring to the bible and the constitution or scream free speech. Drop the turban, take your prayer rug, and say your rosary somewhere else. If and when I have kids, I'm going to have a hard enough time keeping the liberal hogwash spewing out of some tenured bleeding heart teacher from polluting my kids head without having to worry about them being told to believe in fairy tales. Public schools are a government funded organization designed to raise our children so that they don't grow up to be idiots who have eight children and leech off the system. God can stay outside. Class dismissed.
Drug convictions are ridiculous. Marijuana laws are a waste of time. People are going to do it no matter what. What a lot of people don't know is that marijuana was legal up until Prohibition. I saw a picture once of WC Fields with a big fat hookah plastered to his mug. Marijuana is harmless. Sure, it turns some people into idiots but they're harmless idiots who eat twinkies and watch cartoons. I'd rather contend with them on the roads than some fighting Irishman after a bottle of whiskey he drank while watching a football game his favorite team lost. Marijuana is a lot more harmless than alcohol. I used to smoke a lot of pot and I don't anymore. I do drink frequently and I employ a crack team of designated drivers or I stay at home and drink with friends. Drunk drivers are an abomination, and like Germany and most of Europe, I think people should have their licenses revoked if they're caught drunk driving. As for heroin, crack and club drugs? Population control. Let some raver girl OD. Let the crackhead wean his genetic code out of our DNA bouillabaisse. Do us a favor. You will be missed, but not by me, you degenerate.
Gun control should be condoned. I know a lot of people who hunt and if dumb people weren't allowed to reproduce, we wouldn't have to worry about their half-witted children shooting up schools or playing William Tell with their idiot friends. My friends who own guns either don't have children or keep them in a locked combination safe. It's our constitutional right to bear arms and while I don't own any, I defend to the death my right to get one if I choose to some day. If you're too stupid to own a gun, the rest of us shouldn't be punished. There are too many laws instituted, enforced and legislated thanks to the bad apples. A man should be able to defend himself. A man should be allowed to return to his roots and bag some wild life to process, cook and eat. If criminals can buy a gun out of the back of a mom and pop grocery store in the city, we should be allowed to defend ourselves. I work in the city and a lot of my views and values have changed after a refresher in reality. Life isn't like the suburbs everywhere. It's just that simple. Government grants. Nobody should get them. The majority of the most successful people in the world are predominately self taught with little more than a high school education, and if they can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and build empires on street smarts and common sense then what gives you the right to bilk the system? Do it yourself. You want to paint a crucifix in a glass of piss? Go right ahead, but I'm not going to pay for it. Let your art stand on its merits and if it's any good you'll make some money when you sell it, not when you send in the grant paperwork and live in a loft drinking wine and avoiding a real job. Can't pay for schooling? Sorry to heart that. Get a goddamned job and take your transferable courses at a community college until you can. Take out a loan like the rest of the world if further education is that important to you. Want to start a non profit agency? Get some volunteers and independent contributors to back you. Can't afford a house and you don't want to take out a loan? I hear refrigerator boxes are surprisingly cheap. That, and there's always apartments.
I think that's my two cents and then some on most of the hot button issues floating around in my head. In retrospect, I was right the first time and should have kept them to myself. But the next time you think that all writers and creative types are happy go-lucky tree hugging, bleeding heart, all-for-one and help your fellow man hippies, think again, bucko. I'm toeing the line to a hard right. Before you know it, I just might register to vote.
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