The Important Questions

by | Dec 14, 2020

This year has been one of distraction and disorientation.

With the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, myriad questions have been part of our daily lives:

  • Are we going to die?
  • Are we even going to get sick?
  • If masks prevent the spread of the virus, why do we have to social distance?
  • If social distancing prevents the spread of the virus, why do we have to wear masks?
  • Can the virus be spread or contracted by singing in the shower?
  • What if you wear a mask in the shower?
  • What if you shower alone?
  • Should livelihoods, households, and economies be ruined because of a malady that consistently affects predictable portions of the population and has a global fatality rate of 2.27 percent?

But all of those questions are the result of deliberate contradictions and ambiguity caused by incoherent and politically motiviated health policy and public policy. And the intent of those contradictions and that ambiguity is to keep us from asking significanly more important questions.

Case in Point

If you’re at all discerning — and regardless of your age — you’ve been given innumerable opportunities to ponder this supremely important question: Are there really two scoops of raisins in every package of Raisin Bran? And if that question has ever occurred to you, as it should, it should also compel you to wonder:

  • How can we be sure?
  • How big are the scoops?
  • If the scoops were bigger, wouldn’t one scoop suffice?
  • If the scoops were smaller, shouldn’t we get three scoops or four?
  • How many raisins are the in the 1.52 ounce travel-size packages of Raisin Bran?
  • Do we really want to eat stuff cooked up by three brothers in a sanitarium?
  • Why didn’t any of the Kellog brothers go into the Army, like their biggest competitor, General Mills?

Do you see how insidious deliberate distractions like a pandemic can be?

A Simple Way Out

We could cut right through all if this confusion and subterfuge quite easily: Just buy some regular old bran flakes from brands like Arrowhead Mills or Nature’s Path, and add your own damn raisins. Then you’ll know exactly how many scoops of raisins you’re getting and how big the scoops are. And since Arrowhead Mills and Nature’s Path bran flakes contain more fiber than bran flakes from Kellogg’s or General Mills, you’ll spend so much time in the bathroom, you won’t have to worry about catching the coronavirus.

Things are only complicated if you let them be.