I'm on vacation.  No TV, no computer, just my phone, my iPad, my kids, and my grandchildren — although, of course, I still skim the headlines every day.  I am also seeing how eerily familiar the way people in another state are living is, but it's another blue state, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.  Since the trip began, I've been struck by the abject abandonment of common sense in favor of rote obedience to absurd rules.  We are trained monkeys, following senseless pronouncements that improve nothing.

Start with the airport.  For some reason, my TSA Pre-check status didn't make it onto my ticket.  So I was in the line that required me to take off my shoes and stand with arms over my head to be scanned.

I put every darn thing in bins, of course.  My iPad in a separate one, of course.  I was behind another elderly lady, this one with some major physical issues.  The TSA agents took her sturdy, three-footed cane and handed her a slim wooden one to get through the scanner ordeal.  It was barely enough to keep her upright.

Once she was through the scanner, they pulled her aside, and I watched as she was patted down, head to toe, for about five minutes.  This lady was so clearly not a terrorist that a caveman could have told you so.  Old, overweight, barely able to walk.  Ankles so swollen that it looked painful.

I got to watch her ordeal because they patted me down, too, all because I'd forgotten I had a pill in my pants pocket that I was meant to take on the flight.  I was made to take it out, show it to the agent, and then they patted me down, focusing on that darned now-empty pocket.  Maybe it was a terrorist weapon?

When I got to my destination, at midnight, the near-empty airport announcer droned on about making sure to keep masks on.  After driving my rental through a violent windstorm to my ultimate destination, I settled in.  The next day, I noticed that the mask BS was just as bad here as in California.  My young grandkids were well trained.  Mask on whenever they went out the door.  Even outdoors at the farmers' market, there was a guard making me pull mine up.

The city, a tourist destination, is full of people in the ubiquitous blue Chinese mask, the one that may or may not (Russian roulette, anyone?) have graphene in it.  I've written about how it's a known carcinogen, especially when inhaled.  A lot of kids walking around with their parents were in those masks.

Then I read the headline that the CDC "guidance" includes keeping kids in masks seemingly forever, even while letting adults breathe.  Rand Paul asked them to provide some rationale for it, which I'm sure they will ignore.  There simply isn't one.  So I wonder if it's a lead-up to an attempt at making children take the vaccine.

There are enough horror stories of vaccine reactions, and enough unknowns about the long-term consequences of taking it, that vaccinating those not prone to get the disease anyway ought to be off the table.  Common sense would dictate not giving vulnerable children an unapproved substance.  But money talks.

The other thing I've noticed scanning the headlines is that the Biden administration was apparently surprised by our burgeoning inflation, which even I, no financial brainiac, predicted in print a while ago.  Janet Yellen said it wouldn't be a problem, after all.  Common sense, again, suggests replacing her with someone with a brain.  Well, replacing the whole administration would be nice, too.

All I can say is, abandoning common sense, they took the things we actually buy off the list of inflation indicators.  That was a while ago, during the last Democrat administration.  You know, food, gas...the stuff our let-them-eat-cake superiors don't have to deal with day to day.  That way, they could push solar panels made by Chinese slaves and feel good about themselves for "fixing" the planet.

I know people who now need to make really hard decisions.  Things like whether to buy overpriced gas to commute to a job that barely feeds the family or just to give in and take the enhanced unemployment benefits being handed out like candy and stay home.  Common sense says to take the money and run.  That is countered by the pride of providing for the family.  Which one will win?  And no matter which does, will it be enough to feed the family as prices skyrocket for the common things we buy?

The common sense of the common man was the making of America.  What will happen to us now that our hyper-educated, self-styled elite have dedicated themselves to the abolition of common sense?

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