The total number of American dead in all our nation's armed conflicts going back to the Revolutionary War is estimated at 1.3 million.... Yet those numbers are dwarfed by another scourge. It’s one we don’t talk about very much in presidential politics, an oversight I’d like to do my part to change.... In the ensuing 113 years [since the first automobile fatality], vehicular traffic on the highways and byways of this country has taken a toll in human suffering that can be accurately described as a holocaust. The total number of dead from that September day in 1899 to this October day in 2012 is approximately 3,573,384.Horrifying. Yet those numbers are dwarfed by another scourge. Of the 62,947,714 alive in that 1890 census, it is widely believed that all of them are dead. Nor are they alone. Tens of millions more Americans have also lost their lives.
I write today to say that the author of the piece does not do enough in calling for the Presidential debate to include a question about how they will deal with automobile accidents. No, any would-be President must be asked to provide his solution for death!
15 comments:
One estimate of the total number of humans that have ever lived on earth is around 20 billion. The current population of the earth is around 7 billion.
Since a third of us in the history of the species are still alive, maybe death already is on the wane.
The President has become OBE. It's time to release him from his trials.
Eric Hines
Is that OBE 'out of body experience' or 'overcome by events'? Somehow I think either one fits.
I don't understand why people think government and laws are the answer to problems like highway deaths. Apparently they didn't see how making drunk driving illegal didn't reduce incidence much, public awareness of the evils of it did. ABS brakes didn't need to be mandated, we saw their value and wanted them on our cars, so the manufacturers made them options, and when enough of us showed we wanted them, they made them standard. My dad got seat belts installed in the new family car in 1965, well before they were mandated. When enough people saw the value of them, they'd have become standard anyway too.
Douglas, it's because of the "there oughta be a law" crowd. Far too eager to surrender their freedoms in the effort to keep everyone else safe (whether those people want it or not). It's the same reason there are helmet laws (to me, the solution is simple: if you choose not to wear a helmet while riding and suffer a head injury, the government is absolved from paying your medical bills... problem solved). It's the same reason the sale of transfats are banned in NYC. And so on, ad infinitum. It's not enough for those people that THEY make the right choices, others must make the same choices or else the should suffer the loss of their own liberty (through fines or imprisonment).
As you may be able to tell... I have a REAL problem with that.
There are also 54,000,000 (+) dead babies since Roe v. Wade.
The problem is, we've got to bring the federal government in on this effort to preserve life, because otherwise there are neither individuals nor institutions with a vested interest. They all just fatalistically take the existence of death for granted. The feds, though, they know what's good for us, and they know anything is possible if we just believe in government for a change.
...they know anything is possible if we just believe in government for a change.
So, can I look forward in Obama's second term, when he has more flexibility, to seeing an education law mandating the teaching of believing in Tinker Bell?
Eric Hines
I wonder how the % of the population killed in auto accidents compares with the % of the population killed in accidents involving horses in the pre-auto era?
David - I don't know about percentages of the population, but I've always read that the accident rates were a lot higher. In this article, scroll to "rein of terror."
(Which is no knock on horses or the people who love them. In fact, Grim has written excellent essays on the subject, one on President Bush and cowboys, and the importance of staying calm when a horse is at his most dangerous - and on the real physical courage shown by John Wayne in doing his own horse stunts. It's just how it is.)
You're thinking of this piece, I think. You're quite right. Horses are deadly. It's just for that reason that taming and training horses is glorious: so glorious that Hector, in the Iliad, was distinguished by the epitaph "Tamer of Horses."
That's the main one, and I enjoyed rereading it just now. But I know you also wrote some specific things about Wayne and his bravery on set...possibly in response to the kind of person who twits him with cowardice for not serving active duty in WWII, though I'm not sure about that. Your writing caused me to take an interest in his films which I'd never had before; and in good time, too, since I found a copy of Rainbow Valley on my second Iraq tour. (On the same shelf as a complete set of Firefly, come to that, which was when I first started getting some of your other references.)
Perhaps this one? It's true that any man who does his own stunts on horses -- as Wayne did -- has trained himself in courage.
If it wasn't that one, that one will do! Thanks.
There's also this one, where I quote you. :) But I think it was in reference to the last one.
I wrote that last one a few months before I went to Iraq myself, as it happens. Re-reading it, I see what a gift it was to have the opportunity to go.
" The feds, though, they know what's good for us, and they know anything is possible if we just believe in government for a change."
Ah, yes, if we worship at the temple of the government, we might find eternal life? Too many headed there already.
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