Dumber and Dumber

My father loved chemistry. Growing up in Kansas during the Great Depression years, he tinkered with chemical concoctions in a private laboratory in the basement of his home. He painted barns and did farm labor for a dollar a day and somehow paid his way through college. He then devoted his life to working as a chemical engineer for the Huron Milling Company, one of the nation’s largest producers of monosodium glutamate.

Most Americans now recognize monosodium glutamate (MSG) as a toxin that not only makes foods taste good, but is an addictive brain killer. During his career, however, I don’t think my father or the other chemists working with him in that lab at Harbor Beach ever dreamed the product they were producing was in any way harmful to the human body. Ironically, after the Japanese cornered the market on MSG, the plant was sold to G. D. Searle & Company which used one of the buildings in the production of a new artificial sweetener, another brain killer known as aspartame.

Those were the years when Americans were sold on the idea of “a better life through chemistry.” We watched as crop dusters sprayed out towns with DDT in a campaign to wipe out the pesky mosquitoes each summer. Farmers experimented with chemicals that not only killed the insects that infected their crops, but even controlled weeds, thus cutting down the hours spent in cultivation. We happily bought new shampoos and skin creams filled with strange sounding chemicals and let dentists brush fluoride on our teeth, believing it would prevent cavities.

It wasn’t until years later that we began discovering that we had been poisoning not only ourselves but the environment around us.

The degradation of our foods, cosmetics, soils and waters was a gradual thing, but once it started, the total destruction of the quality of the things we used and depended on for our daily lives soon came down on us like an avalanche. And as it was happening, we hardly noticed.

Health advocate Dr. Craig A. Maxwell wrote on his website: “Household cleaners went from being largely soap-based to primarily chemical-based. Cosmetics such as lipstick and blush went from being made from bees wax, plant-based extracts, and strawberries to being pumped full of lead, parabens and synthetic dyes. A loaf of bread went from being nothing more than flour, yeast, sugar and salt to a confusing concoction of additives and artificial flavorings.”

Over the years the average intelligence of Americans has been dropping. In 2011 the average American IQ was measured at 88.54, far lower than the international average of 89-100. More and more students appear unable to learn, process new concepts, reason and think for themselves. More and more children are diagnosed with autism and Asperger’s syndrome.

Doctors and mental health professionals are prescribing more and more synthetic drugs designed to alter brain chemistry like serotonin and dopamine. These drugs stimulate an artificial “feel-good” mental sensation but may be doing more damage in the long-run.

The genetic modification of many of the crops that are used to produce the prepared foods that pack our grocery store shelves has been yet another troublesome issue. Monsanto Corporation, one of the largest producers of GMO seeds, has poured millions of dollars into campaigns fighting efforts to label products containing GMO foods. Someone does not want the public to know how much modified food they are consuming.

Nearly everything we use now, from cleaning supplies to air fresheners are laced with toxins like acetaldehyde, ethyl acetate and formaldehyde that attack brain cells when inhaled or absorbed through the skin. The toothpaste, mouthwash and antibacterial hand soap we use contains toxins never intended for regular human exposure.

As more and more information has been exposed, and little if anything is being done to change the way these big corporations manufacture their toxic products, we must question whether all of this hasn’t been done to us on purpose?

Is there a great conspiracy to put the masses into some kind of stupor so they can be easily manipulated? Does this explain why the wealth of the nation has so quickly shifted to that one percent, and done at the expense of the middle class?

Indeed, Americans are losing their jobs, their homes and the good life they once enjoyed during the years immediately following World War II. College graduates find themselves saddled with excessive debt that cannot be paid because they cannot find work. Labor unions have been all but stripped of their power. And there is little evidence that things will ever get better.