SENILITY can be a marvelous thing. You don't stay mad at people for long because you can't remember what it was that ticked you off or even who was responsible. You can answer repeated wrong numbers with the same enthusiastic hello. And at Easter, you get to hide your own eggs. How soon they
forget — bet on itMy wife suspects I am in the early stages of senility. I resent that and I'm going to tell her so as soon as I remember where her office is.
I resent it. But in the past few months I began wondering if she was right. See, with all the talk this year about starting a gambling casino on the Big Island and the Legislature dredging up the usual ideas of lotteries, horse racing and other forms of gambling, I began to question my sanity.
I could have sworn that at just about this time last year, the state attorney general warned that allowing any form of gambling in Hawaii would open the way for the development of casinos run by American Indians.
But I thought, no, that couldn't be. Because, if that were true, people like Senate Prez Norman Mizuguchi and House Speaker Joe Souki would be reminding everyone that Hawaii is one of only two states in the entire country that doesn't allow gambling and, therefore, is protected from sudden Indian casino development. But they haven't been. And I know that they wouldn't keep this information back deliberately, would they? No. So, the only other possibility is that senility has wrapped itself like an octopus around my feeble brain.
I conceded defeat. I thought about all the fun I'd be having next Easter. There's a certain peace in knowing that you've popped your cerebral cortex and that from here on out, it will be up to loved ones to make sure you cross the streets safely and provide you with drool buckets.
But just for the heck of it I went into the newspaper library and, lo and behold, there was a story from April 1996, in which Attorney General Margery Bronster said that not only can American Indians set up casinos in Hawaii should the state pass any form of gambling, it is possible that a national Indian lottery also would be allowed to operate here. It doesn't matter that Hawaii has few American Indians. According to the U.S. Supreme Court, mainland Indians would be allowed to buy land here and set up casinos with U.S. Interior Department approval.
I was both ecstatic and perplexed. Ecstatic that I still have a few years of mental stability left and perplexed that there apparently is a form of mass senility sweeping the Legislature and administration and no one is doing anything about it.
Obviously, Mizuguchi et al. need serious medical help. There is no way they'd let a massive gambling industry sneak into Hawaii through the back door by simply proposing so-called "safe" types of gambling, like horse racing and shipboard casinos. If they weren't mentally impaired or deliberately trying to deceive us, they would have to know the ultimate impact of what they were proposing.
You might think the point is moot, seeing how all the gambling proposals died in committee this year. But if senility was so rampant this year, just think how bad it will be the next time our legislators convene. Why, they won't even remember who Margery Bronster is, let alone her warnings about opening the gambling doors. They'll be lucky if they even are able to find their way to the Capitol.
All this is not to say that there shouldn't be casinos, Indian-run or otherwise, in Hawaii. There should be if that's what a majority of Hawaii voters want. But the voters have to make that decision based on real information. Right now, it seems like it's not just those racing horses who are wearing blinders.
