No Time for Nonsense

In my local supermarket, the widest, brightest aisle is shelved high with modern snake oil.  On a good day, I am comforted by cynical self-interest.  Sales of useless crap keep the supermarket profitable and allows them to reduce prices on the items I want.  It's the same attitude that I can sometimes find to justify the nastiness of the rich kids who attend private school with my daughter.  Call it affirmative action.  The school accepts and tolerates privileged dolts to subsidize my daughter's education.  But, I can generate only so much on-demand cynicism.  Most times, I walk past the aisle of deceit, and sigh heavily knowing that, in my community, people are more likely, not less, to trust their health to homeopathics and cleanses and kelp.

Family and friends remind me that I was rude and dismissive when young.  I laughed at people who applied 'quantum' to anything, I gave a two-handed brush off to astrology and sneered at religion. People who found comfort in crackpot ideas needed to be corrected and to learn why they were so wrong.  Then, my wife socialized me.  I began to keep my mouth shut and nod sympathetically.  When asked directly about some bit of nonsense technology, I would answer with, "I've not read anything in the scientific literature about that idea."  True, but bland, and easily heard by believers as approval.

Now, my young self is back.  I've not patience for ignorance and stupid.  My eye-ball rolling muscles are again in teenage fighting trim.  My favorite movie line is George Sanders' Shere Khan in the 1967 Jungle Book when he squashes the Kaa the snake saying, "I can't be bothered with that.  I have no time for that sort of nonsense."  Indeed.  If you want to talk reality; great.  If you want to talk chakras or astrology or religion or homeopathy or angels or raw food, then just go away.  I've no time for that nonsense.

Because, here we are, with an egomaniacal conman in the White House, a religious pervert next in line, and a cabinet of moneyed crackpots.  The House and Senate are run by frauds and whores.  There's no time for irrelevant distractions.  No time to be polite.