Would a moving company that didn’t respect a “This Side Up” sign on the carton holding grandma’s precious china keep your business? No, they would answer for it. Yet today’s authorities turn precious common sense upside down and get away with it.

For decades we were lectured about the dangers of smoking cigarettes and second-hand smoke, but now the whole of New York City smells like pot. You can get a contact high on the street walking to church.

According to well-established neuroscientific findings, the human brain is not fully developed until the mid-20s, and criminal defense lawyers cite “immature teen brains” when making their case because teens “are more likely to act impulsively, on instinct, without fully understanding or analyzing the consequences of their actions.” But if they want to cut off their sex organs or breasts in the belief that they’re actually the opposite gender, facts about immature brains get thrown out the window, officially—schools are actively encouraging transgenderism, and President Biden pledged his support for “trans youth” in his State of the Union speech.

The reason for legalizing marijuana is fairly obvious, the state sees tax revenue. But surely, politicians wouldn’t actively promote a bad habit just to make a buck, would they? Perhaps the public is lulled into that generous assessment in part because they think cigarettes are harmful and pot is not. Years ago, I heard that a single joint equals a whole pack of cigarettes. Here’s what the medical establishment word on it is:  “As compared with smoking tobacco, smoking marijuana was associated with a nearly fivefold greater increment in the blood carboxyhemoglobin level, an approximately threefold increase in the amount of tar inhaled, and retention in the respiratory tract of one third more inhaled tar . . .”

So, the pot thing is about money. But what on earth is behind the state ignoring what parents have always known—even when their children weren’t in trouble with the law—which is that teenagers are impulsive and do dumb things? There’s a sex-change industry now, so there’s money in that too, and the state will get a piece of it eventually. But even pot merchants aren’t allowed to sell to anyone under 21 or their licenses will get yanked. Not so for medical professionals selling bodily mutilation. If common sense were grandma’s china, it would be in a thousand pieces by now.

So, legal pot is about the state drooling over money. And agreeing that children have the temperament and maturity to opt for elective castration and mastectomy is about trolling for LGBT votes. That explains the (despicable) politicians’ motives. But what explains citizens not questioning the glaring disconnect between the war on cigarettes and the welcome of pot, between what science says about frontal lobe development and state-sponsored trans propaganda? Maybe it signals the age-old conflict between what people wish to believe and what common sense tells them is true. Maybe they fear if they question one tenet of rickety modern reasoning others will immediately collapse. Better to go along with the whole kit and caboodle than risk the perils of thinking too much. To compare and contrast decades of preaching about the hazards of smoking with this complete U-turn for marijuana would mean acknowledging government will do anything for a buck and doesn’t care about us. Ouch. Your kid coming home from school with the news “they” want a sex change could mean sleepless nights and pacing the floor and possibly standing by helpless as they are mutilated for life. It’s a debilitating nightmare, but one that can be avoided by blindly choosing to join the local chapter of Proud Parent of a Trans Child, secure in the knowledge that the President of the United States will “have your back.” Yikes.

Obviously, thinking is overrated, and inconvenient, and more and more “authorities” are very comfortable with that being the case. Recently Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) spoke to the press outside the U.S. Capitol. His subject was illegal immigration and why it should be condoned. With a perfectly straight face, he proclaimed: “Now more than ever we’re short of workers, we have a population that is not reproducing on its own at the level it used to.” You can’t make this stuff up! Americans are making babies all right Senator, it’s just that they’re killing them off at close to a million a year, and you’re one of the biggest cheerleaders for it. There’s no way his idiotic comments could pass a compare-and-contrast test, but he knows they don’t have to: Reporters won’t call him on it and most voters aren’t paying attention. Besides, the senator has no intention of introducing into the minds of the public any doubts about the overpopulation hysteria they’ve been fed since the 60’s, which is part of the rationale behind “abortion is a social good” thinking. And, also threatening to the Democratic Party, doubts about if and when life in the womb deserves respect. Much easier to keep on believing that unless new life can survive outside the womb it doesn’t count. Excuse me, but if it can’t survive outside the womb, isn’t that a really good reason for leaving it in there?

So, abortion fangirls (and boys), as you toss confetti in the air, tootle your party horns, and slap yourselves on the back over your “I Am Woman Hear Me Roar” midterm victory, ask yourselves this: Precisely what “enemy” lays at your valorous feet? And at the feet of (despicable) politicians taking victory laps? Babies. Oops. Best thing really is to leave the compare-and-contrast stuff out of one’s day-to-day musings. After all, common sense is overrated and inconvenient. Which side is up? Crash.