Grand Irony
“Irony” is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as: “A state of affairs or events that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often amusing as a result.”
Life offers us, it seems, a parade of many ironies, big and small. The Canadian-American singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette captured quite well life’s quotidian ironies in a song from 1996 titled, aptly, “Ironic”. The first verse goes as follows:
It’s like rain on your wedding day. A free ride when you’ve already paid. Good advice that you just didn’t take. Who would have thought, it figures…
Big ironies, however, often involve higher stakes. One of my favorite examples is the tale of former New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. As the reader will recall, Schneiderman was, as described by NBC News, a vigorous “advocate of women’s rights.” The New York Times called him: “A prominent figure in the #me too movement.” He was also rabidly anti Trump. As noted by the New York Times, on December 26th, 2017, Schneiderman filed his ONE HUNDREDTH legal or administrative action against the Trump administration. And Schneiderman often waxed eloquent about the respect and fair treatment women deserve. It came as a shock to many, therefore, when, in May of 2018 he was accused of sexual misconduct. In that month, FOUR credible women came forward publicly to accuse him of not just abusive behavior, but behavior that was VIOLENTLY abusive. All four accused Schneiderman of hitting, slapping and choking them without their consent. Actress Tanya Selvartanam said that Schneiderman spat on her, choked her, called her his “brown slave”, ordered her to call him “master” and say that she was “his property” and demanded that she find another woman to participate in a “ménage a trois.” That’s SOME women’s advocate, isn’t it? The sublime irony here prompted columnist Ann Coulters to exclaim: “YES! There IS a God!”
Now, beyond ironies small and big, there are sometimes ironies that are so gargantuan, so contrary and so untoward, that they must be called “Grand Ironies.” I’ll describe two.
The first Grand Irony I’d like to discuss, involves the 2020 Democrat campaign primaries. The New York Post reported that, as of February 28th, the Democrat Party, in aggregate, has spent over ONE BILLION DOLLARS on Campaign 2020! (That figure has gone up even higher since that article). A single candidate, New York City’s former mayor Michael Bloomberg ALONE spent in excess of 539 million dollars. Another billionaire, Tom Steyer, spent over 186 million dollars. The remaining candidates spent 375 million on TV and radio, and another 262 million on digital adds. In addition to the monies spent, the Democrat 2020 campaign has filled countless hours of prime time programing and consumed an incalculable quantity of print. And, after all of this, they have narrowed the candidate field to two candidates: 1) JOE BIDEN AND 2) BERNIE SANDERS!!!! I’ll repeat that: The billion dollar Democrat vetting process identified: 1) JOE BIDEN AND 2) BERNIE SANDERS as their BEST CANDIDATES for the Presidency of the United Sates!!!!!!! ….Really?…..Really! Let’s look at these two a bit more closely.
First, there’s Joe Biden (the front runner), who is SO senile that he’s made campaign speeches that are so muddled that many have been used, verbatim, as campaign adds… for Donald Trump! So senile that, at a recent campaign stop in Michigan, he couldn’t stop himself from swearing (“You’re full of s**t!”) and poking a Detroit Auto Worker (who had questioned Biden’s commitment to the Second Amendment) and even appearing to threaten the man. So senile that he can’t stop himself from fondling and sniffing women and girls ON VIDEO as well as biting his wife’s hand as she was stumping for him! So senile that he admitted, ON VIDEO, to getting a Ukrainian prosecutor fired by threatening to withhold US aid (in other words, EXACTLY what the Democrats have accused President Trump of doing).
Then there’s Bernie Sanders. Mr. Sanders, who, although NOT senile, is stone cold OUT OF HIS MIND. He is CRAZY. Howling at the moon CRAZY. Arm waving all over the place CRAZY. Spittle flying all over the place CRAZY. Uninhibited shouting all the time CRAZY. And all of this craziness is apparent even before one analyzes WHAT he’s saying, which is even CRAZIER! What Mr. Sanders has been saying is that major changes are needed in the WORLD’S most successful economy. (There are multiple indices to support the “most successful” descriptor, but one simple one is that the poverty level income in America is THIRTY ONE TIMES THE AVERAGE POVERTY LEVEL WORLD WIDE!). So, in an era in which the United States can boast extremely low unemployment, rising incomes, exuberant governmental support of the poor and disadvantaged and a strong national defense, Sanders want’s to… SWITCH TO SOCIALISM???? Really?… Really! Next Sanders wants to completely switch America to government run health care, effectively dismantling a system that currently insures 91.5% of ALL Americans, with 67.3% covered by private health insurance and 34.4% by public plans. By the way, if you noticed that these figures add up to more than 100%, it’s because some people have coverage by both. (Source: wikipedia.com).
So, after spending ONE BILLION DOLLARS in advertisements and foisting endless televised debates on the innocent American public, the Democrat Party has selected Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders as the BEST THEY HAVE TO OFFER???… A Grand Irony, no?
The next Grand Irony I’ll mention involves the legendary health and safety consciousness of the trend setting state of California. Readers may be aware that California has the most stringent health and safety laws in the known universe. I don’t contend that all of these laws are bad, but the the degree to which California legislates the lives and lifestyles of its citizens is breathtaking. In 2012 alone, for example, California issued SEVEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY health and safety laws (Source: CNN). These included a prohibition against importing SHARK FINS, a ban against teenage use of tanning booths and ban against the sale of caffeinated beer. In 2010, California banned the inclusion of TOYS IN HAPPY MEALS. And then there are the ubiquitous disclaimers found in small print on packaging and wrappers that say something like: “The state of California has determined that this product may contain 1 part per billion of a chemical that may, (in massive doses), cause tumors in mice.” (The parenthetical term is mine, for emphasis.)
Now, given this state’s obsession with health and safety, it is shocking that California’s immigration laws and policies have rendered the state a virtual “petri dish” of communicable diseases. The severe epidemic of California’s homelessness and vagrancy has given rise to mountains of garbage, infestations of insects and rats, and contamination of streets with needles and human feces. These conditions have given rise to diseases previously found only in history books and religious books from long ago.
One of the so called “biblical diseases” now found in California is leprosy. Although a number of “fact checker” websites claim to “debunk” concern over leprosy in California, an infectious disease authority, Dr. Marc Siegal of the NYU Langone Medical Center, has written that: “It seems only a matter of time before leprosy could take hold among the homeless population in an area such as Los Angeles County.” (Source: The Hill, September 8, 2019). Recently the Keck Medical Center of the University of Southern California released a study of ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY SEVEN CASES from 1973 to 2018. Although still rare, this disease is not going away and is likely to rise due to the squalid conditions now present in parts of California. Typhus (NOT thypoid, which is more common and much less severe) is another medieval disease that has killed millions in the past but is seen rarely in modernity, seems also to be making a come back in California. Just 13 cases were reported in 2008, but 2018 saw 167. Likewise, bubonic plague, the so called “Black Death” of the 1300s (a bacterium that is carried by rats and fleas and that killed 60% of all humans in Europe and Asia), is making a comeback in California. And, in addition to these menaces, other “third world diseases” such as tuberculosis, hepatitis A and virulent staph species, as reported by Forbes Magazine (source: Chuck DeVore, Forbes, August 19, 2019) are: “spreading aggressively in San Francisco and other California cities.” So, the upshot is, that a state like California, where they fret about some chemical found in a few parts per billion concentration, has become, by their own political fiat, a breeding ground for horrific diseases previously eradicated by civilization. Grand irony, wouldn’t you say?