Keep It Pithy Part 7

And I'm looking in the mirror here....

Here's something that really surprises me: The more stuff I have, the more stuff I want. And so I looked around and saw that everyone else was the same way. It was not until I had a few things that I noticed how this works. The material stuff is addicting!

Remembering my parents, I try to fight against the "stuff addiction." I refuse to buy jewelry or trinkets. I don't need expensive toys like Jet Skis or s...o...b..owers. I keep the material things under control, and I banish thoughts of them from my brain. Besides, I am very busy. My life doesn't include window-shopping or paging through mail-order catalogs by the pool or jaunts to compact disc stores or Home Depot. These are all invitations to spend money unnecessarily....

Greed is the destroyer of success. You cannot be creatively successful and greedy at the same time. I'm talking about both material and emotional greed here.

Sorry, Wall Streeters. No apologies to you guys.

(photo credit 6.1)

Note to Hillary Clinton. Why keep coming up with more government programs to give our tax money away, when you could teach us all how to make a fortune on our own? You invested $5,000 with Robert "Red" Bone, a commodities trader later under investigation for allegedly manipulating the market, and got back profits of $73,000 a few days later. Tell us your secret, Hil, and we might vote you senator for life!

Change that offer to "president"?

The most ridiculous part of our American system is this: Different rules apply to the rich guys.

It's not supposed to be that way, right? Our country was designed to be "for the people." The people, not the rich people.

In short, this country has developed a ridiculous blind spot: the power and glorification of money.

This is truly an affliction. It is holding us back as a nation, as a community. The true heroes of America are not the new Internet billionaires or the overpaid sports stars and movie actors or the wise guys who jack up their companies' stocks. The true heroes of America are the men, women, and teenagers who go to work for a modest wage, fulfill their responsibilities to their families and friends, and are kind and generous to others-because that's the right way to live.... The working people of the United States are the most important ingredient in the enduring American story.

But the rich and powerful have forgotten or never learned that bedrock truth. Or they simply don't care.

But forget them.

Each of us is, to a large degree, in control of our own lives.

That includes me; that includes you.

Why is there so much drug and alcohol abuse in America today?

Simple: Alcohol and drugs make huge profits for legal and illegal organizations.

Simple again: Much of the population is bullish on intoxication ... ["I want mine"]. And set in their ways. Dedicated pot smokers believe they are "mellow" and look down on crackheads nodding out in alleyways or deserted bas.e.m.e.nts. Young professionals sniffing c.o.ke know that they're on top of the world, masters of the universe: The drug tells them so. The country club set, knocking back martinis and Manhattans and Cosmopolitans, looks down on the rednecks at the noisy beer joint across the county line, and the writers and intellectuals at the local college sneer at both groups for being "alkies" but believe that a trip on the latest psychedelic drug is an intellectual adventure. But everyone has one belief in common: I can handle my "drug of choice."

Here's the takeaway: If you are after success in America, substance abuse can be your downfall.

Some of the drugs may have changed since I wrote the above, but the moral is the same. Self-indulgence, and especially harmful, debilitating self-indulgence, is not going to give you what you want. It will keep you from getting what you want.

But it's not that simple. Do you know anyone who is "just saying no"? I hope you do, but I have several reasons to doubt it.

Try these (the stats have changed since 2001, when I printed this list, but the story line is much the same):

1. There are in excess of 10 million "heavy drug users" in the United States.

2. Approximately 70 percent of street crime is drug related.

3. Approximately 70 percent of all child abuse is committed by substance abusers (this includes those who abuse alcohol).

4. There are more than 1 million DUI arrests annually in the United States.

And now, voters in several states, as we saw in the 2012 elections, think that it's "b.i.t.c.hin' " (if you recall that word from California in the late sixties) to legalize marijuana.

There are three basic strategies needed to control America's drug problem. First, impose coerced drug rehab on all criminals who are arrested and test positive for narcotics. Second, use the U.S. military to a.s.sist the Border Patrol from Brownsville, Texas, to Imperial Beach, California, and use the Navy to a.s.sist the Coast Guard. And third, sentence major and persistent drug sellers to banishment in faraway federal penitentiaries.... Back in the 1960s my father told me that anyone who dealt dope was a parasite, a person beneath contempt. I always remembered that. How many children are being told that today, especially in the ghetto neighborhoods? What do kids think when they encounter the sleazy dealer?

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE KIDS

Hollywood Sleaze, Wrongheaded Educators, Nutty Judges, and Other Problems Knocking on the Door