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Everybody's talking at me

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By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist

If you have spent your life in a large city and are under 25 years old, perhaps even 30, you may not remember when we could just throw the garbage in a trash can without thinking.

At the Democrat Convention in Charlotte last week, there were "Garbage Police" making sure good Democrats put their trash in the correct container and scolding those that did not. I was shocked they were not born with these skills. I would have at least thought it was part of their psyche.

In some cities, there are armed special officers who root through your trash, without a search warrant, and fine you for placing the wrong things in the wrong places.

A couple of years ago, I took a pickup truck full of material to our local city run trash transfer station. I had to beg them to take the contents of my truck – some 2 x 4s and sheetrock I had removed from our home while remodeling. It wasn't on their list of approved discards.

I ate a grilled chicken sandwich in McDonald's the other evening. When I opened the box it came in, there was a printed statement telling me how many grams of fiber I should eat every day.

At my favorite hotel chain, when one enters the elevator and the door closes, one is accosted by a message that says we should recycle.

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), the World Wildlife Fund and the Sierra Club think they have the right to tell all of us how to behave, whether we are members of their respective organizations or not.

It goes on and on.

Michelle Obama says if her husband is re-elected president, she plans on working on what supermarkets sell, in order to stop childhood obesity.

STOP IT! ALL OF YOU!

This is the nanny state writ large.

When I was younger, I never dreamed it would be an offense punishable with a fine to improperly sort your garbage. And don't give me the garbage about running out of landfills. We proved in this column long ago, that this is just nonsense.

Why does McDonald's think it is any of their business to tell me what to eat?

Why does my favorite hotel chain delve into any subject other than providing me a clean, safe and comfortable room?

And why does Michelle Obama thinks she has a mandate or even a purpose in life. She is the non-elected wife of an elected politician – nothing more. We have never elected her dogcatcher.

Of course, with Social Security, Medicare and Obamacare, the government exerts the right to tell us how to live and what to eat.

Makes sense – if they are going to take care of us, they want to minimize the costs. This violates every principle of the American Dream.

I read somewhere recently if you are getting something for free, then you are not the customer. This is very true with government handout programs – those giving away things are doing it to earn votes – the voters are the customers, whether they ever use the services or not.

In fact, it is more cynical than that. They buy one's vote with the promise of something tomorrow (again, Social Security, Medicare, Obamacare) and then take it away or restrict it when it comes time to deliver.

Of course this has to be done, because the promises can't be fulfilled – the economics and math simply do not work.

For the moment, I just wish everyone, every organization would stick to their core task and do it very, very well.

It is one thing if I seek to educate myself on a subject, much like you readers who seek out the opinion page in the newspaper.

These are voluntary actions. It is quite another when someone else imposes their opinion on me, even worse when they have managed to find a way to back it up with the law. And it is just plain irritating when someone posts an opinion in a place where I don't expect one.

No thank you. Such behavior is not what the United States is about. Please, go harass someone else with you nosiness.

Jim Thompson is a columnist for The Highland County Press.

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