David McElroy

If I handed you a box of rat poison and urged you to take a bite or two, you would shove it back and angrily ask, “Why in the world would I consume poison on purpose?!”

Every time I see people drinking alcohol, I ask myself that question. I can’t figure out why anyone intentionally consumes something which is known to cause cancer and which can cause a host of other health problems. The biggest puzzle to me, though, is why people consume alcohol when they can look around them and see the social costs — deaths, injuries, addictions, destruction of families, and a host of other issues.

I’ve been thinking about this for the last few days because of a Canadian radio documentary I heard last week. CBC’s “Ideas” program has an episode called “Alcohol: Tonic or Toxin” and I strongly recommend you listen to it. (It’s 54 minutes long, but it’s worth the time.)

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When I first saw the tweet, I was pretty sure it was a joke. Police in England have been making a big deal of “getting weapons off the street” for years now, so they tweet photos of weapons they’ve confiscated.

But surely this photo was a joke. Right?

“These items were found during a #weaponSweep near #MackworthHouse #AugustasSt during #OpSceptre,” said the tweet from police in the Regent’s Park area of London. “Safely disposed and taken off the streets.”

But it was a real tweet from real police in London. It appeared that someone had frisked a local handyman or janitor and stolen his tools.

I see two pairs of pliers, two small screwdrivers and a pair of scissors that would be at home in any office desk. The remaining item might be a file of some sort, but I can’t tell for sure. I just know it’s bizarre to consider these common tools to be weapons — and it shows the end result of a world which tries to use force to eliminate risk.

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They didn’t seem like people I would like. I was walking down a long aisle at Walmart behind a couple and a boy who I assume was their son. They were snapping at each other about some disagreement.

He called her a “bitch” several times. She had a choice word she called him, but I won’t even repeat that one. They didn’t seem to care that anyone else was around. The young boy just walked in silence.

Then I noticed the back of the woman’s t-shirt. I had trouble reading the typeface at a distance at first, but then I realized what it said.

“Take me as I am or watch me as I go.”

My first thought was to laughingly think a man would be lucky to watch her leave, but then I thought more seriously that the slogan sounded like an attitude they might both share. And then it occurred to me that this is a common attitude among modern people who don’t want to see their own flaws and their own responsibility to improve themselves.

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