Pine Nuts with McAvoy Layne: Tailgaters, good hearts and 'Operation Drawdown'
Submitted by editor on Mon, 07/15/2019 - 12:15pm
Will you agree with me that most people are good-hearted? Even robocallers, when they are done antagonizing the general public, must go home to their loving families and their loving dogs. Even tailgaters, when they are done terrorizing the general public, must go home to their loving families and their loving dogs. Well, maybe not tailgaters.
I don't care who you vote for, and I don't care who you pray to, but you will be my friend and comrade without further introduction if you will just refrain from tailgating.
However, if you do tailgate, here's what your retribution will be, should I become superintendent. First, you will be lifted off the roadway by a giant magnet suspended from a police helicopter and unceremoniously deposited in a prison yard, or perhaps dropped into Lake Tahoe, depending upon what kind of a mood I am in on that particular day.
People sometimes ask me, "But didn't you say you never met a man you didn't like?"
Actually, that was my first wife who said that, and I might have said it myself before I got tailgated.
When you peel back the tough exterior, most people are soft-hearted inside. Though I did once know a man so stingy that he would peel a potato in his pocket so you couldn't see it, and then pop it into his mouth the minute you stepped outside in search of a potato.
Mark Twain tells us, "The average American is true to his Christian principles 363 days out of the year. The other two days he visits the tax office and the voting booth."
Tom Paine told us in 1776, "We have it in our power to begin the world over again." Mr. Paine was reaching out to 2019 America.
In the final analysis, we have no permanent enemies, except our weapons of mass destruction, which have put us in harm's way, and if we don't put ourselves out of harm's way, well, my friend, that could bring us a bad day.
So here's my plan…we, the United States of America, in a public display the likes of which the world has yet to see, disarm a nuclear weapon, and send that disarmed nuclear weapon on a world-wide tour of all 197 countries. If we cannot get a denuclearized weapon, well, we shall mock up a replica. I offer an image here in the second photo.
Gathering signatures of heads of state along with worldwide approval as it circumnavigates the globe, 'Operation Drawdown' will pick up momentum and public activism as it goes. Public pressure will mount and keep the tour going until, like a giant magnet, it disarms every nuclear weapon in existence, and we can heave a collective sigh of relief.
At first there will be holdouts, of course, but immeasurable public pressure will prevail, and a safer world population will live on to fight that other clear and present danger to our survival, our radically changing climate, about which we can talk soon. Let us first purge the earth of our most ominous threat, then we can get serious about cooling the planet to a tolerable temperatures.
— For more than 25 years, in over 4,000 performances from Leningrad University in Russia to Piper’s Opera House in Virginia City, columnist and Chautauquan McAvoy Layne has been dedicated to preserving the wit and wisdom of “The Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope,” Mark Twain. As Layne puts it: “It’s like being a Monday through Friday preacher, whose sermon, though not reverently pious, is fervently American.”
