#905 Contrasts

The other day I was reading The Week magazine and I came across three articles that made me shake my head at the variety of human endeavor. A study in human contrasts.
Kind of like how identical dog DNA can produce a Chihuahua and a St. Bernard.
The first article was on the folks over in Iran. Apparently one of their ministers was caught lying. He had overstated his education by saying he had received a doctorate degree from Oxford University. Perhaps the degree was in “advanced resume enhancement.”
In any event, the Iran parliament impeached him and fired him from his job.
If you think that’s harsh for a little fibbing, consider this. At about the same time across the ocean, in Columbia, 27 army officers and soldiers were also fired.
All they did was kill civilians.
Yep. Apparently, they randomly killed poor folks in order to pump up body count reports. Said they were guerillas when in fact they were just unlucky poor people.
Sort of an inflating their resume type of thing—but not with bodies of knowledge, with actual bodies of human beings.
So, innocent human beings killed by army officers and all the officers got was the unemployment line. No mention of a trial and prison or other punishment.
I guess because they claimed they were enemies even though they now know they weren’t enemies, their murder doesn’t count as murder.
Poor people get the shaft. If one of them had killed someone and lied about it, he’d lose his job—and his head.
The third story helped put things in perspective. There was a huge ballyhoo about the money spent on the presidential campaign this year. An unprecedented amount to elect the leader of the free world.
Or, judging by the stock market, at least the world that is currently going at a deep discount.
As it turns out, the presidential and congressional campaign expenditures combined came to 5.3 billion. But never fear, our priorities are clear.
We spent a full 6 billion on Halloween candy and decorations.
Halloween, where we defy death by eating food that makes us fat and kills us.
The ultimate study in contrasts.
America, ya gotta love it.