By: centraljersey.com
It’s late Tuesday morning, and I’m thinking back to a very intense political discussion I heard in the Cup of Joe, on North Main Street in Pennington, about four hours ago.
U.S. Congressman Rush Holt was there, talking with a tableful of people that included former Pennington fire chiefs, Charles "Chico" Marciante and Tony DiCocco.
There were talking about what happened in Tucson. What else?
They were talking about guns and what effect the media may have had on what happened.
The guy who did the shooting out there seems quite disturbed mentally, and of course it’s possible he would have shot all those people even if certain sectors of the media, and certain politicians, weren’t busy promoting the dumbing- down of America for their own ends. I leave it to you to argue about who in the media, and what politicians, are doing that. I can’t be bothered. I’m immune. I don’t use television or radio for the news and, with rare exceptions like Churchill or Lincoln, it will be a cold day in hell when I get into any politician’s speech.
Spending 10 minutes reading a decent publication gives me 50 times more than I get from the same amount of time watching or listening to the media on the television or radio. What I mainly get from them is a voice in my ear that keeps repeating a favorite line from Ecclesiastes: "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."
Their business is the dumbing-down of America, one of the few boom industries we have left around here.
I’m quite fond of Arizona and that part of the country. My sister lives there and so does a very good friend’s daughter. I love the desert, as they do. It is so peaceful. There are signs of people almost nowhere. Quiet and still.
Interesting, for want of a better word, is the "debate" over illegal immigration into Arizona and the rest of the country. There is no way to disprove that the vitriolic political climate, particularly on that issue, in that state is connected to what happened in Tucson.
Every time I turn around, I’m hearing or reading about our unemployment crisis. And every time I look around, I see Hispanic men and women, some of whom have been senior citizens for decades, doing hard, demanding physical labor. If they can do it, I have found myself asking myself, why can’t some of our precious young unemployed, who have been living here for generations, do it?
One of the greatest comical/political lines I ever heard came from an African-American comedian – his first name was Lorenzo, I believe – that I heard on a late night talk show about five years ago.
He was talking about a "hot topic" that was going around then, which was the idea of building a wall along the entire length of the southern border of the United States. The wall, you see, would be meant to keep out illegal immigrants.
After a wide-eyed pause, Lorenzo asked: "Who’s gonna build the wall?"
After a pause that seemed to betray embarrassment, the audience laughed. They knew who it would be, and so do you and I. And that’s why the wall hasn’t been built and never will be.
How dumb can we get? Dumb enough to sell machine guns to anybody and allow them to hide them when they walk down the street, that’s all. Two-faced.
You got to be kidding me, y’all.
John Tredrea is Staff Writer for the Hopewell Valley News.

