Nutmeggers Are All Equal, But Not So "Special" by Doug Wrenn

Nutmeggers Are All Equal, But Not So "Special"

By Doug Wrenn

April 28, 2008

Our nation's forefathers proclaimed in our Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal." It now seems to be a stretch to bear in mind that Connecticut was actually one of the colonies sharing that testament.

In a recent tragic and brutally violent domestic dispute, an 85 year-old Hebron man has been charged by State Police for allegedly seriously assaulting his 80 year-old wife in the head with a hammer. One of the numerous charges lodged against the husband is assault on an elderly person.

There are actually various degrees of assault in our state's criminal statutes, and the more specified variations also include assault against a disabled, or mentally retarded, or blind person, as well as a pregnant woman, and yes, and elderly person.

It strikes me as odd that excluded from that list of assault victims are equally vulnerable children and infants, but I suppose no one dares go down that road, lest we find justification to question a woman's so-called "right" to an abortion. It's a more egregious crime to assault a blind person who can't see his aggressor, but you deaf people who can't hear your perpetrator approaching from behind, or you mute folks who cannot shout out for help when you are being attacked are obviously just chopped liver.

It gets worse. CGS 53-37 prohibits the ridicule of a person because of race, creed or color. That means you fat, ugly, stupid, buck-toothed, balding, bespectacled, nerdy people with no sense of fashion and/or "cool," and who are totally bereft of athletic prowess, cooking ability and/or mechanical aptitude are still fair game. So much for freedom of speech and "sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me." Meanwhile, on a seemingly daily basis, aggressive drivers shout out various obscenities, foul versions of body parts, or perplexing and bizarre suggestions as to what we should do with those body parts, but apparently, that free speech is covered by the First Amendment. Somehow, knowing both the pervasiveness and the machinations of our myopically biased cultural political correctness as well as I do, I also seriously doubt that race, creed and color wouldn't at all matter if the victim were a White Catholic male of European descent. For that matter, add the attributes of gun owner, and conservative Republican into the mix, and maybe that guy should be the one wearing the silver bracelets.

I love this one: 53-34b, depriving the right of a mother to breast-feed her child. In reading between the lines, that means to do so on Main Street at high noon on a weekday. The radical feminist exhibitionists have won that battle. Heaven forbid they use breast pumps, bottles, a refrigerator and a little preparation at home first. No, they just want to hang one out in the middle of the town green to feed Junior, and "Go ahead, say something, I dare you!" Yes, I know the argument. When done appropriately, no one can really see anything of the breast anyway. True enough. And I suppose if Janet Jackson were sporting a rugrat hanging from her chest during that infamous Super Bowl halftime show, she probably would have received the Nobel Peace Prize instead of some FCC scrutiny. And yes, it's all natural. Also true. So is urination. And when I am in a rural area with no other option and desperately have to go, you can't see what is on the other side of my back as it is facing you while you are driving by in your car as I am relieving myself as discreetly as I can in the trees, either. Yet, I could still get arrested for "exposing" that which you also cannot see.

Our emasculated society has become wimps when it comes down to matters of common sense and right and wrong when the untouchable entities of women and children are involved. Ask the poor Milford beat cop who thought he was doing his duty one day a few years ago when he picked on the wrong woman feeding Junior in her car on a downtown street in the middle of the day. The fallout that came from that trivial, but still legitimately criminal issue would have made Rodney King envious.

My wife and I were at a house party a few years back when one woman not only whipped one out and started feeding Junior in front of everyone in the living room, but then she also publicly changed his diaper on the brand new couch of the shocked, stunned, horrified, wide-eyed, gaping-mouthed hosts in their very expensive home while all previously vibrant and jubilant conversation was slowed down to a few conspicuously nervous stutters. Given the size of this home, I can't help but believe that there was at least one or more bathrooms and bedrooms that would have provided far more privacy, and dare I say, appropriate discretion.

I look at these laws and I shake my head. Meanwhile, our economy is in the tank, the cost of living is through the roof, jobs are leaving the state with companies and people in droves, our bridges are literally in danger of collapsing, neither the governor nor the General Assembly can even come close to agreeing on the numbers of how much of our surplus we have lost, and yet they obsess over trans fats, plastic bags, billboards, clothes lines, idling cars, light bulbs, soda in vending machines, and militant, perverted women using their kids as an excuse to get their jollies, and making sure that the various synthetically created victims' groups are placated so that they will vote and hopefully cut a check come election time.

So why are some people more special than others? They're not. Our forefathers had it right the first time; we really are all equal. The problem is that we now live in a liberal bastion in a world increasingly influenced by liberal lunacy. Look at the Presidential race. For Republicans, the candidate only need win a certain minimum of delegate votes to realistically get the nomination. Yet, for the Democrats, the candidate must first pass the muster of "delegates," and then, "Super Delegates," primarily because you common folk can't be trusted. Why end it there? Why not have "Super-Dooper Delegates," and so on? I don't care how "special," or "super" someone is convinced he or she is; we all occasionally have to use the rest room, and we all more or less have to do the same thing when we're in there. Ah, yes! Nothing rings more of sublime human frailty and humility than flagrantly crude toilet humor! But it's still true, isn't it? Like most forms of humor, be they crude or otherwise, one major and necessary component of the humor is some semblance of embedded truth. All this super-dooper, special human status nonsense all just boils down to blatant elitism, written in neon, and outlined by flashing strobe lights.

A quintessential trademark of liberals is that they think with emotion, and not logic. So, off they go, writing these inane, useless, feel-good, warm and fuzzy pieces of drivel called legislation, as they wax euphoric, having now saved the elderly, the blind, the disabled, the "mentally retarded" (as written verbatim in the law), pregnant women, minorities, and whomever else they deem "special" from endangerment. (Trees, Earth and the Spotted Owl, some goofy three-eyed fish and a silk worm that can hum a few bars of "Yankee Doodle Dandy" are perhaps subjects of a whole other article another time!) But in fact, they haven't saved anyone. Most criminals don't even know what the laws are, and if they did, they would not be at all deterred anyway. Do these rocket scientists under the big, tarnished dome really think the a crook says to himself, "I'm willing to do 5 years in prison, but not 10, no way, that's where I draw the line!"? I understand that an elderly person is typically more vulnerable than a younger or even a middle-aged person, but imposing a heavier sentence for the crime does not deter the commission of that crime. It only elevates certain individuals above all others in their human status. I think our benevolent Creator might have an opinion on that matter. Furthermore, it creates false hope in people who are naively duped into thinking they are now under some imaginary umbrella of extra protection, and that fabrication in itself is simply cruel.

Many of these ludicrous laws are written with the mindset that they are "hate crimes." Maybe it's just me, but saying, "hate crime" is like referring to "sweet sugar." It's redundant. Even a crime of passion between lovers is committed out of hate at the heat of the moment. Crimes by definition are hateful acts. One's race, creed, color, age, or even disability does not alter that fact. If the crime is perpetrated, the hate is already there. Hate crime laws protecting deemed victim classes already exist. They're known by such names as harassment, threatening, assault, criminal mischief, murder, etc.. All these ridiculously redundant laws only create more laws, more need for more paper, and thus kill more trees, and aren't we supposed to save them, too? Heaven forbid we cut down a tree that is still being hugged by a liberal, just to create more paper to write reams of more pages of laws already written, passed, and printed on the books. (Oh, yeah. I wasn't going to mention that, huh?) Yes, it is all a vicious, unending cycle. Are you getting dizzy yet?

Somehow, sex crimes make victims more special, too. I am in no way making light of anyone who has suffered through such an atrocity, but since when is a sex crime more significant than a murder? Yet, besides the popular and trendy TV show, "Law & Order, SVU," ("Special Victims Unit), some police departments, including in Connecticut really do have "Special Victims Units." What makes a rape victim more special than a murder victim? Don't both people have the equal right to expect not to be either sexually violated or killed? Let's face it, when any of us is a victim of crime against persons, or even against our property, we all feel "special."

We have further elitism on the telephone, on city buses, in advertising, in polling places, and in various other public places. Since when has Spanish become a national language, even if a secondary one, and who declared it so? And what is so "special" about Spanish? Why am I only pressing 2? Why shouldn't I also press 3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12, etc… on the phone? What about people who speak French, Italian, German, Polish, Hebrew, Gaelic, Greek, Russian, Portuguese, Swahili, Farsi, etc..? And how about all those Chinese people and all their dialects? Why isn't there Mandarin, Cantonese, etc.. for all of them? Just like with children, deaf people, mutes, and yes, White, Catholic males of European descent, once you start down the slippery slope of making certain groups of people special, better, or even different, the door to that Pandora's Box never closes. Try as you may, there will always be someone that you forgot and left out. Isn't that discrimination? Aren't we trying to avoid that?

This is what happens when those entrusted with power can't be trusted. This is also what happens when those in power try to do what feels good instead of what works and what needs to be done. The result is determined by what is desired at the beginning of the quest. If you are hungry, you will derive far more benefit from eating a carrot stick than popping a chocolate bon-bon into your mouth. But the chocolate bon-bon makes us feel good. Yes, exactly. I am saying that while Rome, or in this case, Connecticut burns, our "leaders" for lack of a better term, are lying around at leisure, like pampered prima donnas, popping bon-bons into their mouths without a clue or a care. Meanwhile, we, the great unwashed, are still all royally screwed, but they all feel wonderful, and in between, lies more of a vast chasm than a disconnect to reality.

As the schoolteachers of my long ago youth could well and probably would zealously attest, mathematics was never even remotely my forte. That is why I sit at this keyboard, writing and banging out cultural polemics chock full of daily observations of life, peppered less than gingerly with my trademark snide, snarky quips. So I don't know if the numbers of excluded individuals and groups from our criminal laws are any more or less than the number of laws that we have on the books. But common sense does tell me this: if you simply include all citizens collectively, rather than individually, we won't have to have as many laws for that incessant one person or group that we typically forgot, and always will typically forget.

In the end, we're all equal, but none of us are really all that super, or even special, like it or not.

Doug Wrenn