Who is Destroying the World This Time?

Maybe I've just been around too long. Maybe I have a 'slant' on things that is too skewed by longevity and skepticism.  But in my experience (considerable; you can grant me that) there is always some group whose singular focus and agenda somehow manages to really screw things up for the rest of us.  Maybe they weren't overtly 'out to get us' but they certainly succeeded, nevertheless, in doing us real damage.  

I used to think it was Lawyers who destroyed the world.  Thanks to Lawyers we have to print warning labels on plastic bags ("This is not a toy") and can no longer buy decent cold medicine.  And we have to watch TV commercials, ad nauseum, for their class action law suits.  Lawyers are the reason Doctors pay exorbitant malpractice insurance and we pay exorbitant medical bills.  I recently read that each US lawyer drains the national economy of $1million a year in productivity.  And they appeal to our worst instincts.  Don't even get me started on the fact that so many of them go on to be Politicians!

(I'm going to let that one ride - too hard on the old nervous system. Politicians are out to destroy the world in favor of their careers and protected health insurance plans that are only for them.)

I have to admit, though, that Lawyers sort of moved to the background for me a few years ago when Accountants stepped up to try their hand at screwing things up.  They changed the 'rules' and started helping people and businesses hide mistakes of bad judgement and greed and poor decision-making.  No longer were balance sheets something to 'inform' an investor - but something to trick an investor.  Hide the debt.  Cover up the bad investments.  Transfer the blame to some convenient sham corporation.  Accountants really, really messed things up.  They gave us Enron and mortgage-backed securities and the mess the US Postal Service is in. And a lot of them are intimately involved with the IRS.  Need I say more?  Yes, Accountants are bad.

And Bankers... (no - again, too hard on the nervous system to pursue that train of thought.)

I could easily get sidetracked here with Televangelists ripping off old ladies to support their lavish lifestyles (that God wants them to have!) or Kindergarten Teachers who got the whole "he disrespected me" business rolling for today's special brand of thugs and gang members.  Frankly the Writer's Guild has a lot to answer for, in my opinion, for the strike a few years ago that brought us all on a collision course with insufferable Reality TV and the Kardashians.  Realtors in cahoots with Appraisers in cahoots with Bankers tried their best to do us in as well - and may actually succeed yet!  

But now I'm thinking the prime candidates - those who are making MY world nearly intolerable - are Advertisers.  I am advertised at everywhere I go, in nearly every activity. Driving down the street I am subject to city buses that are billboards in and of themselves.  I am exhorted to patronize realtors or banks, or have my teeth cleaned, eyes checked or bones scanned by this or that 'professional' - a term used quite loosely these days - every time I drive, turn on my TV or open my mail.  Talk shows - and an alarming number of 'news' shows and 'news' articles for that matter - are simply advertisements for someone's new book or movie or TV show.   My email program tacks on three or four ads related to the  actual subject matter and content of my private (ha!) email messages and clutters my computer screen.  I can't just read a news article on the internet anymore - they are mostly videos instead, all of which require me to suffer through an advertisement before I can see what I wanted to see.  The whole "product placement" notion has gotten so out of hand that I am forced to watch commercials for cleaning products in the middle of decorating shows or commercials for cars in the midde of 'action/dramas' and, mostly, commercials in the middle of other commercials.  Ads for windows and water heaters come included in my utility bills; my milk carton is trying to sell me cookies.   We are in Advertising Hell. 

Is it worse than Lawyer Hell?  Politician, Televangelist, or Accountant Hell?

ArghhHHHH!!!