Selective Memory and Texas Hold'em

Selective memory seems to be increasingly popular these days. Like Facebook stalking, it began its career masquerading as a social faux pas and has now become a large part of the lives of the most sophisticated, intelligent, Hamilton-beloved people on the planet- the citizens of the United States of America.

It's a shock to discover that that illustrious body has fallen so far. Imagine! A world in which the American public debates the relative merits and negative attributes of an Alaskan governor's haircut and forgets- oops!- some silly things that used to be important, such as a few wars with rising death tolls and the impending threat of nuclear devastation.

Well, guess what, folks? Look around and you'll see that that description's not far from the mark. The plague of selective memory is here- and seems to have taken over the whole known world (or at least the whole known world with the time to cruise the Internet searching for free samples of Cialis).

This wouldn't be quite so shocking if I wasn't quite aware that every red-blooded, patriotic American knows the cardinal rule of any good card game. Never forget the cards you've seen- and most of all, never forget the cards you're playing.

Take Texas hold'em. Five cards out on the table for all to see. In this case those would be Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea, Iran, and for a hoot let's throw in the complete wreck of a job this country does feeding and educating its poor. Shouldn't our fine-historied citizens be able to remember those five simple things? Especially when they're right in front of their faces? (A neighbor's son who just died in Afghanistan. A second cousin who joined the National Guard and ended up in Iraq...)

But they don't. We don't. And I sure wish we were only playing Texas hold'em for marbles because as is, we're playing with our lives and the welfare of our country and of the world. And it looks like we're losing, because we keep forgetting which cards are on the table.

Time to step it up, America.