Mind game of mixing apples and oranges can help us cope

To the Editor:

No matter which side of the political fence you prefer, daily attention to what is happening to our country can bedevil you. For your peace of mind, what do you do? You can, for example, leave the fray by either straddling the fence or by closing your eyes, your ears and your mind to policies that should distress all unbiased observers. You might try sabbaticals, where you drop out for a while and then revisit the disheartening results that are now this country’s norm.

So as to remain sane and sociable while staying abreast of the news, try something that will reduce your stress – a mind game where you mix apples and oranges. Create an imperfect comparison that lampoons the bad results that turn your stomach.

Take a recent story that describes “Gas-hungry EU (goes) wobbly on Russia.” This is a simple story. The European Union has a stop-order on the expansion of a Russian natural gas pipeline – “South Stream” – which will increase Russian supplies to Europe by 25 percent. (Russian natural gas already accounts for about a third of the European Union’s needs.) The EU’s stop-order is an effort to put economic and diplomatic pressure on Russia over Ukraine.

The problem? Some of the EU members and one of the EU candidates need what Russia can deliver. Many countries in central and Eastern Europe already receive significant gas from Russia and are reluctant to criticize South Stream.

In the United States, we have been denied approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, phase 4 of a vital means of transporting oil from Canada to the United States. “In January 2012, Obama rejected the application … of phase four. In April 2014, Obama … extended review of Keystone XL indefinitely … until at least after the Nov. 4, 2014 mid-term United States elections.”

If you were to compare a willingness to import vital energy from an unfriendly source to an unwillingness to import vital energy from a friendly source, that would be close to comparing apples and apples – reasonably objective, but boring. Instead, enjoy the satisfaction that satire makes possible.

Our apples and oranges approach compares those oil and gas pipelines to a different type of pipeline through Mexico: This one transports people. (A United States Marine who made a wrong turn into Mexico is not eligible. Mexico has laws, don’t you know. And our leadership respects – without exception – the rule of law.) This inhumane human people crosses our unprotected southern border and extends at least 40 miles to the United States. So the leadership of the United States is unwilling to import vital energy from the north, but it is willing to import diseased, indigent children from Central America.

Simply put, our leaders are willing to pay four billion dollars short term to import lice, scabies, TB, swine flu, measles and chicken pox.

In every apples and oranges comparison, there is usually a lemon. The lemon is an overlooked solution caused by incompetence. At the same time, thousands of our soldiers are being given pink slips to reduce our defense outlays, Obama is asking for four billion dollars to process the hordes crossing our unprotected border.

Why not pay the same soldiers soon to be canned to protect this border by enforcing our laws? Which do you prefer – an intact military that secures our southern border or hordes of diseased kids that infect everything north of that border?

Don’t look for Obama’s supporters to acknowledge an apples and oranges comparison that satirizes Obama’s flawed results, even if a security crisis is at hand. Although many of his flock are smart, well read and steeped in research, many of them seem to know the price of everything, but the value of nothing. Goodwin White Jr.

Camden