You have a dirty mind. This is NOT a discussion of excremental over-inflation. We are talking about Form Over Substance.

A 62-year old man, on doctor-recommended sick leave for stress, went to the beach to unwind. Seeing  a shark heading for a group of children, he rushed into the water, wrestled the shark into submission, and saved the children from becoming fish food (well, shark food). His reward? Obviously, he was fired from his job when his exploit was captured and posted on YouTube so that his boss found out that his de-stressing was carried out at the beach.

This raises the old bromide “No good deed goes unpunished” to a whole new level.

[The boss clearly agrees with W.C. Fields who, when asked how he liked children, responded “boiled.” We have reached a point of civilizational collapse at which personell policy trumps childrens’ lives. His boss could have just said “OK, fella, that sick leave just became your vacation. After all, we can’t set a precedent for shark wrestling as therapy. It would be too hard on the sharks.” The boss is probably right. Mako shark is delicious. We eat them, they eat us. Fair is fair.]

“Zero tolerance” has gone mad. No amount of virtuous action can offset the smallest picadillo. “Ve haff rules!”

A lot of rules. In fact, enough rules that nobody knows what they are, even the people who make them.

But this is great!

How better to keep the peasants in line? In a 1960s movie entitled “Mickey One” starring Warren Beatty, the lead character, who has been enduring the third degree, finally shouts “All right, I’m guilty!” The disembodied voice of his interrogator says “Guilty of what?” to which the interrogee answers “Of not being innocent.”

There you have it. The ultimate triumph of complexity: everybody is always guilty of something, probably a felony. The only reason you are walking around in the fresh air, rather than sharing a cell with Bubba the Cannibal, is prosecutorial discretion.

This mechanism is guaranteed to keep the social pot from boiling over, since nobody wants to stick their neck out, or their head up, for that matter. So our betters can steer the ship of state without fear of mutiny. No transfats! No guns! No soda! No baby formula! Let the endangered coyotes eat your kids!

Don’t you feel safer?