It was proposed at a time when communities were lit by candles.
It was enacted as a way to save energy.
It was justified to help farmers and protect children.
And, quite honestly, it’s pretty much BS today and has long needed to be done with.
The week prior to this article, the United States Senate passed by unanimous agreement the “Sunshine Protection Act”, crafted by deadbeat Trump Party Senator Marco Rubio and Democrat Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. Of course, it doesn’t “protect” the sun or sunshine. But what it does is it ends the time change from Daylight Savings Time to Standard Time, making “Daylight Savings Time” permanent in 2023.
The air-fluffed ego-driven media have been obsessed with how this unanimous agreement was passed, especially since certain Trump Party senators have been rather notorious about not letting this kind of bill get brought up, never mind get voted by unanimous agreement. All it would take would be one of them to say “no” for the unanimous agreement to be denied and they would have to resort to the endless process of committees and subcommittees and debates and filibusters. Others are worrying about if members of the House of Representatives would allow this to get passed and on to the president’s desk to sign. A few more are whining about how we should use “standard” time instead of “Daylight Savings”.
Personally, I don’t care which time we stick with, “daylight” or “standard”, just as long as this semi-annual ordeal ends. And here’s a crazy thought… maybe those senators and/or their staff decided it needed to end and allowed the bill to get passed on in the easiest way possible.
The original justification for Daylight Saving Time was brought up by Benjamin Franklin as a way to prolong the setting sun and save on candles. But, here’s the catch: Franklin brought it up in jest, and did so anonymously through that era’s version of “The Onion”.
Think about it: would you consider anything from “Cracked” or “The Onion” seriously?
And yet, that’s what nations started to do during World War I, supposedly to “conserve fuel”. It was repeated during World War II as year-round “War Time” and then ended. In 1966, it became codified nationwide, pausing only briefly under some flimsy excuse of saving energy, and then resuming after the claim was made that children were getting slaughtered by drivers because they were walking to school in the dark.
Even if it was true, the purported benefits of messing with our clocks twice a year are either non-existent or simply BS.
First, the idea that kids would be walking to school in the dark doesn’t match with today’s school times. Here in my neck of the Atlanta area, children are getting picked up at the bus stop around 6am, long before the sun shows up over the horizon. And… walking to school? With today’s hypersensitive and hyper-protective parents? No, if they don’t personally ensure that their precious tax deductions board that taxpayer-funded yellow mass transit vehicle, then they are playing chauffeur and then racing like the a-holes they are to get to work.
As for “saving energy”? Well, let’s see… first it was justified to “save fuel”, then it was paused in the 70’s to “save energy”, and then justified again when they messed with when these changes would occur to “save energy”. Which is it? Either you allow it to “save energy” or pause it to “save energy”, but you can’t use the same justification for both! Regardless, the U.S. Department of Energy, along with a few other agencies, have all said that whatever “savings” exist are negligible.
Consider all the homes and businesses that have climate control running year-round. Consider the number of homes and businesses that use computers and high-definition TVs that use electricity year-round. These are things that weren’t around fifty years ago. Yes, fifty years ago it would have been gauche to leave a light on in the room. Today we leave far more powerful devices up and running without a second thought. So, no, there is no “energy savings” by changing the clocks twice a year.
But do you know what we do get with this time change nonsense? Interrupted sleep cycles. Traffic accidents. Workplace injuries. Strokes and heart attacks. And it doesn’t matter if the time change happens during the weekend or the middle of the week, you are disrupting the sleep cycles of people that take a while for their bodies to adjust. This is a tool of torture being used universally twice a year under the pretense of “saving energy”. It has been statistically proven that vehicle accidents increase every time we change the clocks. Same with workplace injuries. There are also an increased amount of heart attacks and strokes reported at hospitals during that time.
And all for a non-existent energy saving and for precious tax deductions that are already being chauffeured about when it’s still dark.
Let’s get brutally honest here… Daylight Savings Time or Standard Time, either way, one of them needs to end, and end sooner rather that later. The threat to workers and commuters are proven, unlike the claims being used to justify keeping this tool of prisoners imposed on us all. There should be no reason whatsoever to bar this bipartisan bill from being passed and signed into law. Those in Congress who think otherwise are operating from a position of ignorance, hysteria, myth, and outright BS.
End this torture. Period.
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