It's not a criticism, it's an observation.
Wrong is wrong, no matter how you look at it
Mike Cox

There is a TV commercial starting to irritate me. It is for an insurance company. The ad features sappy music and people being nice to each other because they saw someone else being nice. Pulling people out of harm's way, helping with packages, and the really hard to believe one, letting fellow drivers merge into traffic. Sort of a chain reaction.

First of all, the idea of an insurance company promoting being civil to one another is hard to take. These are the people who have been making fortunes from insurance premiums for decades and now are canceling policies because of a couple of hurricanes. The companies who sue little old ladies for their pensions over accidents. Along with the medical establishment, the primary reason we all pay so much for goods and services in America. I don't want them lecturing me about how to treat my fellow human beings.

The South Carolina insurance director even got his policy cancelled on his beach front home. When a connected politician can't get special treatment from an agency, what chance do the rest of us have?

And I am really getting fed up with simplistic solutions to complicated world problems. These little feel good ideas started, like most stupid ideas, in the 60s, when everyone was mellow and thought world peace was a simple process. If we all smile, dance, and live in communes, all the hostilities will end.

Those happy thoughts from my youth are irritating. They never came true. We all grew up and realized the world is complicated, people are a certain way and won't change, and no amount of holding hands and singing in perfect harmony will change that. If I love something enough to set it free, and it runs away, I'm hunting it down.

I also have an issue with the premise of humans not being able to do nice things for others unless reminded by a random act. We are basically good people. We hold the door for others, warn them when danger is near, and offer a helping hand. Most of us do, unless preoccupied or on a cell phone. But we will play follow the leader when being bad is the issue.

If one driver tries to circumvent the line of traffic because he feels waiting is beneath him, others will follow. Soon there is a stampede. Drive in rush hour traffic a few times, and you notice bad habits are contagious. Idiots tailgating, switching lanes indiscriminately, and camping out in the left lane multiply as the traffic increases. "But officer, that lady in the Suburban was doing it, too."

How many times have you seen grocery carts stuck on the grass or in a parking space because the shopper was too lazy to walk ten feet to the designated cart parking area? Aren't there usually three or four together? If someone else breaks the rule, that seems to justify our own bad behavior. Wrong is wrong no matter how many of us do it.

Your mother knew her stuff. Jumping off a cliff just because Jimmy did doesn't make it right.