Disillusionment?

"Our insignificance is often the cause of our safety."      Aesop The older I get the more disillusioned I become.  The world seems to be going mad. Politicians are running riot and destroying values that have served mankind for generations. To keep control, one can understand them trying to persuade people into the, 'we can destroy the word in five seconds if we want to,' age.  But is the threat of total destruction viable? What is being achieved? The New Zealand politicians are getting sillier than ever.  Pointless legislation that achieves nothing seems to be the only thing they dream up to justify their existence.  But why do they bother?  What is the point?  Why change something that doesn't need changing?  How can 120 politicians possibly pretend to speak for more than four million people?  As far as I'm concerned, they can't and don't.  They are not elected to twist the laws of human nature to their advantage.  Their sole job is to manage the infrastructure and provide roads, health, policing and defence.  Not tell us how to live our lives.  Nor do they have our permission to dictate what we eat drink or smoke.  Anyway, their numerous decrees are inconsistent. When one examines the international food outlet proliferations, one sees a massive increase in fatty foods promoted as desirable.  Take MacDonalds for example and there are many others.  'Give us children from the age of three and they will be our lifetime customers.'  As a result, childhood obesity is sky rocketing and future health costs will be enormous.  Besides, there's nothing sexy about big bums and breasts.  Waddling is decidedly unfashionable and couch potatoes watching endless TV ads for convenience foods create a vicious circle of laziness ringed with over eating.  But fatty foods pay taxes and thus politicians survive financially. The anti smoking legislation is highly suspect.  Kiwis are living longer and costing the state a fortune in old age health care costs.  The 'paid experts' now inform us that smokers die about ten years earlier than non smokers.  They pay about a billion a year in cigarette taxes, so just who is financing whom?  Yet politicians have decided that smoking is to be banned in public places.  One suspects that they believe following the trends of overseas totalitarian regimes will somehow make Godzone a true democracy. If one considers the cost of keeping old people alive, smoking should be encouraged because of the increase in taxes paid.  With 25% of the population smoking now, if this were increased to 50%, the taxes paid would double.  This would provide more affordable old age health care.  The only thing politician care about is money, so why are they coming down on smokers?  It doesn't make sense.  But then again, today's politicians aren't particularly sensible.  They're the only group of self-confessed experts who don't need academic qualifications.  And it shows.  They lack the logic of commonsense.  Their mental capacity is limited and they live in a world divorced from reality. There is evidence that smoking may cause cancer in people with certain genes.  But there is also evidence that most smokers live to a ripe old age.  Many non smokers also die of cancer.  What will be the next anti social fad to be blamed for causing death?  One should remember that warmongering politicians have caused more deaths than smoking ever will.  But it's politically incorrect to mention this obvious truth.  Perhaps exercising will one day be regarded as causing unnecessary deaths?  Will the Olympics be barred because they cause deaths among athletes?  Please show me an Olympic athletic that doesn't die sooner or later.  Show me any group of people that don't die at the end of their lives. The opinions of smokers are regarded as politically insignificant.  Thus, they can safely be ignored by the self righteous brigade.  All I will say, is let the 'we know it all' fund their own old age health care.   With death being inevitable, why bother discriminating against any particular group?  But I guess commonsense and logic are not politically acceptable in our increasingly stupid world.