Abduction - Part III

OK. This is really simple, so the build-up may seem to have been gratuitous, but bear with me.

It may seem to you (and it will, if you're sane and conscious) that the world does not make sense. The people in charge (and it's part of the American mythos that achieving power is *good*, and is something that is only managed by *good* people) take actions of which the perfectly foreseeable outcome is that hundreds of millions of less powerful people will suffer hideously. And they tell you that those actions are good and right, and that they will have completely different outcomes from the ones that any child could anticipate. Giving untold billions of dollars to rich people who don't need them will help you and your starving neighbor. Paying hundreds of billions to fight a pointless and destructive war will help you much more than spending ten or twenty billion to give everybody free health care. After all, you don't want to see your starving neighbor's child saved from death, because it's obviously his fault that he's not rich and powerful. (If he were truly *good*, then of course, he would be. If you have a job and he doesn't, then it is obviously because you are a better person. If she's sick and you're not, then likewise.)

There is a word for these ideas. They're nuts. (They're also evil, but let's confine ourselves for the moment to declaring their manifest insanity.) So why does anyone believe them? Why do so many people believe such a broad array of insane and destructive things that aren't true, and then become confused when the proverbial fecal matter hits the fan (as in New Orleans, or as in Iraq, or as in a global economic meltdown)?

[And don't misunderstand me about "people in charge." I do know that our current president is admirable and an immeasurably better person than recently-retired Caligula. But he (Obama) is not the one in charge.]

...incomplete, much more to come. I'll get back to abduction, and how it can help you, in just a moment.