It’s the same thing every spring — on the second Sunday in March we dutifully set our clocks forward and “spring ahead” into Daylight Savings Time, after which we all spend the next several days in a tired, confused and generally discombobulated miasma. After 40-some years of this time-change business, I’ve never met another human who enjoys the process, and if our cat’s early-morning screams are any indication, domestic felines aren’t on board either.
Why do we indulge in this time-shuffling sleight of hand? There’s a long history — you can look it up on your own time — but the gist is that it was first proposed by Benjamin Franklin as a fraternity prank that subsequently went awry.
Each spring when this crap happens, I find myself wondering: How the hell do my conservative friends keep letting this happen?
(I’ll pause and give a quick shout-out to all the right-wingers in Arizona, who — along with the good folks around Gary, Indiana and the rare MAGA-ite in Hawaii — reject this time-change nonsense out of hand.)
Each fall, true-blooded, God-fearing, freedom-loving American men and women (and only the men and women) give an hour of their lives to the United States government OF THEIR OWN FREE WILL! Conservative friends — what the hell’s going on? I understand why the teat-suckling liberals would line up to do the Nanny State’s bidding, but when did you all become so sheep-like and docile?
Most of you quibble over paying taxes and are paranoid/assured educators are brainwashing children with graduate level law theories on race, but every spring you happily hand over sixty minutes of your life to the federal government? You don’t raise a ruckus, you don’t blockade a bridge — hell, you don’t even wave a flag, and that confuses me because your flag game is really solid.
And what are you trading away this hour of your lives for? — an extra sixty minutes of sleep come November? A date that — and this is true — was only only decided upon after fierce lobbying by the candy industry, who wanted extra daylight for trick-or-treating…
Worse, when the government gives that hour back to you, you just accept it?? I’ve never heard you ask a single question about what the government has done to that hour while it was in their possession. You conservatives are convinced that a series of rushed-to-market vaccines are going to permanently modify our genetic codes, yet you’ll give the federal government five months to do whatever they want with your hour, and when they give it back you don’t say a single thing about microscopic trackers or chemtrails??
Conservative friends — you used to stand for something, and while that was rarely nothing greater than an intransigent opposition to anything that smacked of the rational, still — it was something. But this time — I don’t know what’s become of you.