December 14, 2006 Issue

There is a well-known study that involved placing frogs in a shallow pan of cool water. It the water was heated rapidly the frogs could easily jump out of the pan. However, if the water was heated gradually the frogs remained in the pan until the water boiled, killing the frogs.

The study had nothing to do with torture, and I want it to be known I have been a friend of frogs since childhood. The study showed that when potentially disastrous things happen slowly creatures don't become alarmed until it is too late.

Thirty years ago if you told anyone in Destin that there would be a monstrosity at the base of the bridge and the entrance to the harbor no one would have believed you. But after 30 years of one condominium after another sprouting from the white sand along our beaches, people got used to the intrusions.

Individual property owners in Destin may not like the increase in taxes and insurance they are faced with this year. The increase may be akin to boiling the water too fast. Until now people have been complacent as costs have escalated.

Our nation has become numb to an ever-increasing level of violence that would have been unacceptable years ago. Films and television and video games aren't the cause of violence, but they are a reflection of what Americans are willing to tolerate.

Our country ignores the education of its most precarious youth, continues to lose the war on drugs,and sits idly by as the gap between rich and poor widens and our middle classes sinks into credit card debt. With few regrets, our government spends $2 billion of our money a week in a hellhole none of us will ever even visit.

The violence in Iraq that we all are a part of should not come as a surprise to a violent and short tempered country with little capacity for short, or long term memory. Thirty years after the debacle in Vietnam our government sends our troops off to a catastrophe in another part of the world.

Our leaders argue semantics. "Is Iraq a civil war?" they ask, with hands clasped and pensive countenances. The answer is "Not anymore." The mayhem in Iraq has passed that stage and gone to ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Three thousand dead soldiers and 30,000 wounded ones are far too great a price for this country to have paid in a sick, misguided folly. The countless dead civilians and the destroyed country we will leave behind will be a lasting reminder of our visit there.

Whether on a local level or on the world stage, our citizens have been encouraged to be complacent, to be docile, and to "Watch what we say." The temperature of the water in our society's pan has been rising steadily for so long now that many people don't know if they're relaxing in a hot tubor getting cooked in a crab boil at Nick's. By the time they smell the Old Bay seasoning; it's too late.

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