Happy Memorial Day

I’m gone and there’s nothing anyone can do about it…especially me. By ‘gone,’ I simply mean that my days are numbered, and it really is up to people so much younger than I to help move this nation toward greatness. No, I’m not so naive nor so egotistical as to believe that I ever did anything to make a difference in America’s history. I voted; I served my country…twice. I bitched and wailed in a few newspaper editorial opinion pieces about this, that, and the other, but I really don’t think it made a hell of a lot of difference. Now I’m an old man who is widowed and whose children and grandchildren see little of. I’m tired and grouchy, cynical and curmudgeonly, but I refuse to give up on America.

It’s my understanding that Civics hasn’t been taught in public schools in a long time. I’d bet there’s no such thing as a Problems of Democracy course any more either. In my dotage, I can look back and say that neither course interested me that much at the time. I don’t really know how you convince younger people of what they really have and who they really are when [or if] they say to themselves, “I’m an American.”

Memorial Day is coming up at the end of this month. It’s a day of remembrance for all of those who died while serving in the armed forces of this country. It’s a day to remember Harry Hunt and Ed Hurtig. It’s a day to remember Washington Burns and Giuseppe Pialmo. It’s a day to seek out the monument in your hometown that lists the names of all of the men and women who died so that we might live the lives we do without fear of anyone telling us what we can or cannot do; where we can or cannot travel; who we can talk to and who we can’t. We are so blessed…and we take it all so much for granted. We wave flags and watch as the fire engines and the marching bands pass by. We might even spend a bit of time at the veteran’s memorial where some old guys wearing funny outfits and hats stand up and talk about their experiences in one war or another. There may even be a few people in wheelchairs down front, and some of them will have tears running down their cheeks before the whole ceremony is over. Other, younger people will walk away without really understanding of what was said or why the tears were shed.

How many of us have ever walked the battlefields of Manassas or Gettysburg or visited the site of the Battle of Pea Ridge or Glorietta Pass? We talk about our vacation to Bermuda or our trip to Paris or Rome, but have you ever heard someone excitedly speak of the time they spent at Lexington or Concord, soaking up the history of our nation began. Plymouth Rock may be no big deal to look at, but it is the place where a small band if dissidents came ashore to begin what we have become.

“I pledge thee my allegiance, America the bold…for this is my country, to have and to hold.”  I wonder what was going through the minds of Al Jacobs and Don Raye when they composed the song, This Is My Country.’ Were they thinking about those who had fought and died? Were they just writing another patriotic song? It doesn’t really matter why they wrote it; it’s a wonderful song.

I’m not certain that today’s Americans know, understand, or even really care about who they are, just as long as they can have the latest electronic gadget; as long as they can get a medal for just participating; as long as they don’t miss the next episode of whatever it is they want to watch on some streaming video. Perhaps my message should be this: America doesn’t run itself. It requires intelligent, hard-working men and women who are committed to ensuring the nation’s future; people who put the welfare of the nation ahead of the welfare of their village, town, city, or state. America First is not just some slogan to be bandied about. Who is out there, what young man or woman, who is willing to work his or her butt off to ensure that our country will remain free and that its citizens will all receive a fair chance without regard to their race, color or creed?

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Good luck, America

So, Dylann Roof was afraid that black people were taking over the world. Well, maybe that’s just not such a bad thing after all. I can hear the screams now…”Are you out of your friggin’ mind?” “Oh, come on, you can’t be serious!” “Didn’t you see all of those shootings in Dorchester and who committed them?” “Yeah, right, and all those black gangs would be taking over our neighborhoods and killing all the white people; that’s what would happen you idiot.”

Yep, possibly true. But why is it true? It’s true because a minority of the minority make all of the headlines because of their actions. I have seen the riots; I have seen the black banners; I have heard the yelling and screaming, and; I have seen the way in which we ‘educated’ whites have treated “uppity n___as” for over 200 years.

Despite all of our legislation; despite all of our efforts to integrate blacks and whites, nothing seems to be working. In one of the most advanced civilizations in history, we cannot overcome something as seemingly simple as two races living together in some kind of harmony. Even when we elected a black president, there was sufficient racism in the legislative branch – and other branches – to stop any kind of progress from being made. Anyone who tries to tell me that racism isn’t behind the gridlock in Washington is a goddamned liar! “We won’t let him get anything passed in the House.” Those are as close to an exact quote as I can remember from one Representative. “Him,” the word was “him,” and who was “he?” He was the first black President of the United States.

America was not ready to accept anything other than a white person for the Presidency. It is doubtful that America will ever be ready for anything but a white presidency. It’s too ingrained in us over our two hundred plus year history to accept anything else. We are creatures of habit; we are NIMBY’s such as there has never been. We talk of how we have advanced our civilization by trying new things, and that’s true, we have. But we sure as hell don’t want to disturb the status quo when it comes to the who of how we govern. Someone said to me, “When the Obama’s leave the White House, they’ll take all the china and silverware.” The person was only half joking. Why? Because that is the impression too many of us have of men and women in the black community. Wait a minute; who gambled away the White House china? Why it was President Warren G. Harding. How many alcoholic white presidents have we had? Too goddamned many. How many wheeler-dealer crooks have we had in the White House? Too goddamned many.

I have no sympathy for Dylann Roof; don’t get me wrong. Certainly, trying to start a race war is not the answer to bringing this country together. He deserves to pay the ultimate price for his actions. My gut feeling is that if he has already confessed to these murders, there is no reason for a trial. “That’s not the American way!” Bullshit…why isn’t it the American way? Why waste time and money to satisfy the blood lust that the media will create over this senseless and heinous act? The same should have been true with the Marathon bomber, the theatre killer, the one who shot Gabby Gifford and others, as well as Edward Hinckley. You did it; we saw you; you pay for your actions in the same manner as your actions. Within 24 hours of your capture, you are on your knees with two shots behind the ear. “Oh, my God, how brutal; how you can even think such a thing; this isn’t China where they do that. This is America; we’re not savages@” Oh, really, what would you call the people I’ve listed above…preachers of God?

Over the past 15 years I’ve watched this country begin to come apart at the seams. Statisticians tell us that crime is going down…and we’re supposed to believe their bullshit! The FBI, the Justice Department, this one and that one tell us how we’re better off than we were a couple of decades ago. Guess what, I don’t believe them. I think they are covering their butts and lying to us. Perhaps it’s because when something like Charleston or Newtown happen, it makes a big splash. Perhaps the media is doing a “better” job of covering the sexual assaults that are taking place on our city and suburban sidewalks and homes. I don’t know what it is, but things sure look pretty fucked up to me.

So what are we looking at for the future? Dylann Roof will go on trial, be convicted and when his execution date comes – somewhere in the next 10 years because of all the automatic appeals – the whole thing will be rehashed and America will once more be told that we cannot tolerate this kind of behavior, the population will be up in arms once more. Will any action have been taken to sort out the potential Dylann Roof’s in our society? No! Will any action have been taken in an attempt to control who and how guns are distributed? No. Will the NRA still own Congress? Yes. Will people still be going on rampages of killing children, classmates, adults of all colors? Yes.

Do I have reasonable solutions to all of these problems? No, not to all of them, but I have a few thoughts:

• Any member of Congress who takes money from any lobby should be immediately ousted from his or her seat in that law-making body.
• Members of the House of Representatives should not be allowed to serve any more than six terms. If they cannot get the job done in twelve years, it’s time to go.
• Senators should be allow to serve two terms in office. Once more, twelve years in Congress is quite enough.
• Certain lobbies are so powerful that they should be disbanded in some way, shape, or form. These include the tobacco, public utilities, pharmaceutical, gun advocacy, and several other vote-buying bastards who serve no useful purpose in our government.
• Certainly our jails are overcrowded. We do not possess the laws to discourage crime. Opponents of the death penalty maintain that the threat of such punishment is not a deterrent, and they may well be right. However, have we ever really tested this? One execution every ten or twelve years is not testing. Executions every day for a couple of months might get a few bad guys to change their minds about committing a serious crime.
• The Second Amendment, at least to me, means that if you own a gun, you do so to protect yourself and your home and that you are a part of a militia to guard the country. Fine, let’s put you to the test. If you voluntarily purchase or possess a gun, you will be trained and sent to wherever the United States is engaged in a ‘police action,’ or whatever we’re calling our conflicts these days. You will serve one year in a front line unit. If you survive, you will be allowed to keep your weapon when you return. However, you will not be allowed to keep an automatic weapon or more than 100 rounds of ammunition.

These are very rough plans and will have to be worked out…by whom? Aha, therein lies the rub. Who creates and who enforces these rules and regulations? Won’t be me; I plan to be dead. Good luck, America; you’re going to need it!

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Just think about it

I suppose that if we really wanted to, the United States could always find a way to keep its population from growing by sending its young men and women to die somewhere. Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Nigeria, Columbia or any Central American country, or any other African country for that matter, and we could send in the cannon fodder, just for the hell of it, right?

What is wrong with us; no, not us; what is wrong with the President, the Congress, the Department of Defense, and the rest of the idiots who believe that we, the United States of America, must stick our noses into the business of other countries? Isn’t that why we have a United Nations? Just because that operation happens to be headquartered in New York – a fine place from which spies from other countries have a field day studying American processes – does not mean that we are the chosen one to send our children out to die. Why don’t we headquarter the UN in someplace like Berlin or Paris or Moscow or Milan? Let those people take the lead in interfering with what’s going on in other nations? Why not; the answer is simple; they wouldn’t. They are too intelligent to interfere. It’s a freaking wonder we haven’t sent some troops to Gaza and some to Israel…just to be fair.

These “wars,” for that’s what we seem to be calling them, are costing us billions of dollars. However, I really don’t care how many goddamned dollars we’re spending, we’re also killing and maiming our young men and women, and that, my friends, is the real tragedy of war. Oh, look, isn’t that wonderful; we’ve created an entire new charity; it’s called the Wounded Warrior Project; give now, and support our veterans. Bullshit and I’m not saying forget the wounded warriors. I’m saying that we should stop interfering in things that don’t concern us in order that we not have a need for programs like the Wounded Warriors. We have the technology to create arms and legs, hands and feet; we don’t have the technology to mend the minds of these young men and women. We cannot take away the memories of what they have seen and what they’ve been forced to do to protect themselves.  Post traumatic stress disorder [PTSD] has become an ingrained part of our vocabulary. We hear it every night on some ‘news’ program or other. We ‘find’ the causes of it, but no one, as yet, has found a cure for it. Therefore, because we have the ability to do so, let us lessen the opportunities for people to endure it.

There are so many things that are in need of support here at home and America still has to find away to insert itself into the business of people abroad.  I kept hearing that we went to Korea to stop the “red menace” from taking over the country and then moving on until all of Southeast Asia was under the iron fist of the communists. I heard basically the same thing when we went into Vietnam. Then what happened? The bastion of communism, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’ went kaput. The red menace was a menace no more…at least that’s what we believe. With KGB’s Killer Putin in charge, one never knows what to expect. The Middle East is a different story. We have no business interfering with tribal warfare. Let them kill each other; it’s just adding a bit more bleach to the gene pool. We have enough problems at home to take care of. How about spending fewer dollars on defense and a few more on (a) increasing the minimum wage to something above the poverty level; (b) protecting our borders to  the south from an immigrant invasion that is going to cause us nothing but problems in the future; (c) strengthening our infrastructure so that every time I drive over or under a bridge, I’m not terrified that the damned thing is going to collapse under me or crash down on top of me; (d) revitalizing cities like Detroit and others that have been allowed to go to hell in a hand basket; (e) revamping our educational system in order to allow future generations to compete on a world stage that is becoming smaller and smaller; (f) rewriting our tax laws to allow average Americans to at least attempt to live the American Dream; (g) taking a hard look at our immigrant population and getting rid of those who are abusing what we have to offer without buying into our language or culture – yes, there is such a thing as being too nice.

Does all of this mean that I’m opposed to a strong military? Absolutely not, because we need a strong military if we are to survive.  We require a dedicated military that can respond at a moment’s notice to threats directly against the United States. My military service was limited, for the most part, to reserve activities. However, I spent a tour at the Pentagon, and it was one of the most rewarding times of my life. For many, the discipline and structure of military life are critical, and we have the best damned military of any nation in the world…but let’s not waste their lives so generously or to protect the assets of a few wealthy people. That’s wrong, and as a country, we should know better.

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The war in America

There is a war going on in America. It is a war that is so silent and yet so deadly that most Americans don’t even know it exists. The only public evidence of this war took place nearly ten years ago. On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh, an anti-government radical militant detonated a truck bomb that destroyed the north wall of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The bomb killed 168 people. It wasn’t the opening salvo by right-wing militia groups but it was, by far, the most devastating to date.

We see on television the civil wars in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, and other places around the world, but we rarely think of our own country as being in a similar situation. No, there aren’t rebel groups with tanks and surface to air missiles…that we know of, but there are any number anti-government groups, generally organized around the issue of gun control, that might at any moment decide to make themselves known via the McVeigh phenomenon.

A little over a year ago, Donna Leinwand Leger, writing for USA Today, noted that according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, “…the number of groups operating in the USA reached an all-time high in 2012.”  She added that, “The center tracked 1,360 radical militias and anti-government groups in 2012, an eightfold increase over 2008, when it recorded 149 such groups. The explosive growth began four years ago, sparked by the election of President Obama and anger about the poor economy, the center says. That growth is likely to continue as the groups recruit more members with a pro-gun message, the center’s senior fellow Mark Potok said.

As Congress continues its threat to impeach the President; as Secretary of State John Kerry returns home without any accord between the Palestinians and the Israelis; as we see the chasm widening between the one percent and the rest of the nation, it’s frightening to believe that we have over one thousand militias, any one of which could suddenly decided to attempt a takeover of a town or hold hostage a city by different forms of violence.

Perhaps one of the signs that the right wing militia is becoming more active took place last month when a married couple, Jerad and Amanda Miller killed, without reason, two Las Vegas police officers and an innocent civilian. Alter Net wrote, “Police say they proclaimed “the beginning of the revolution,” and laid an American Revolutionary flag and a swastika symbol on the dead officers’ bodies before turning the guns on themselves.” Incidents of this nature appear to be on the rise in a number of states across the country.

It seems to me that most of us just chuckle when we learn that one of our neighbors is a member of the such-and-such militia, and we may remark that he, or in some cases she, always was a little on the strange side…”if ya know what I mean.”  Please don’t get me wrong; I am not trying to cause a panic among the few folks who read this blog. What I am trying to get across is that we stand damn near as good a chance of having more idiots like the Millers, McVeigh, Dennis Marx, who attacked a Georgia courthouse and was killed, and many others doing their best to take potshots that undermine our way of government and life and diverting assets that could well be used elsewhere.

Americans are so used to seeing terrorism in other parts of the world that we have become, somewhat justifiably, complacent as well as ignorant to the fact that it could happen here. Even after the episode with Timothy McVeigh, people appeared to believe that he was just a nut, and we really had nothing about which to be concerned. Few even considered the fact that McVeigh had spent time with the Michigan militia which advocates armed resistance to federal authority.

Have I gone completely around the bend on this topic? No, I don’t think so. There are protests daily near several federal buildings in Washington. Thank God that they, while noisy at times, are confined to carrying protest signs against this thing or that. For the most part, protests appear to center on two major topics: guns and birth. Groups are terrified that their guns will be taken away and that the federal government will then control them by armed force and they will have no way of defending themselves. The pro- and anti-birthers protests center on whether or not a woman should or should not be able to do with her body as she wishes.

On a purely personal note, I often wonder if Homeland Security is fully aware of the amount of dissension there is in our own country. This group doesn’t want to pay taxes because they believe all of their money is going overseas to help some country in Africa…and they hate black people; or going to make the rich richer in Washington because they see how many Congressmen are now millionaires; or feel that they aren’t receiving any benefit from the taxes they pay because they won’t or don’t want to take the time to see where the money actually goes. There are any numbers of reasons why some Americans hate America. The federal government is too big and interferes with the states; the states are taking too much and giving too little. It goes on and on and on ad infinitum and ad nauseum.

Mr. Lincoln hit the nail squarely on the head when he told us, “You can please some of the people all of the time. You can please all of the people some of the time. But you can’t please all of the people all of the time.” The frightening thing is that some of the people who are not pleased any of the time appear to be growing in numbers. Until the government stops looking abroad for problems to solve and begins to look inward, USA could, in the near future, stand for the Ununited States of Anarchy, and that would be just too damned bad.

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Our own home grown terrorists?

America is petrified of home grown terrorists, correct?

We appear to believe that these home grown terrorists will attempt to set off bombs in Times Square in New York or use something like Sarin gas in our subways, correct?

American’s believe that these home grown terrorists will poison our water supply, the feed for our animals, and commit openly heinous crimes that will cause great death in human terms and destroy our infrastructure, right?

Allow me to postulate another scenario: What if these home grown terrorists had been planted in the United States decades ago? What if their parents were the original sleepers and raised their children to infiltrate various groups in the United States? What if they eventually infiltrated a single political party that already had a somewhat dubious reputation and whose sole goal appeared to be repression of those not in positions of power and to abet the rich and shameless who, other than knowing how to make money off the backs of others were unequivocally stupid in the ways of the real world?

Let’s give these home grown terrorists a group name, shall we? Let’s call them the Tea Party. That’s right; I’m openly calling the members of the Tea Party home grown terrorists. The founders of the Tea Party state, “Our mission is to bring awareness to any issue which challenges the security, sovereignty, or domestic tranquility of our beloved nation.” To that extent, what have they actually done? The answer is that they have attempted to fulfill this so-called mission by disruptive, demoralizing, and devastating the two-party system of government in the United States which has, over two and a quarter centuries, brought this nation to a leadership position in the world more rapidly than has ever been achieved by any civilized nation in the world.

Think about what has happened since the cowardly attack on the United States since 2001. Although they waited until three years later, when perhaps 20 percent of the shock had worn off, the Tea Party moved in to fill a void and to appeal to the less intelligent about their goals and objectives. Let’s take a few of their core beliefs and examine them. I freely admit that I do not have the capability to examine them to the depth that perhaps they should be, so let me give simplistic explanations.

The first of the Tea Party “Non-negotiable core beliefs” is that “Illegal aliens are here illegally.” Well, duh, that makes a whole hell of a lot of sense, except it doesn’t say anything about what should be done. Illegal aliens are here illegally because the jobs they are willing to take are jobs that the average American citizen won’t touch because they are hard, back-breaking labor, without which, you and I would probably (a) not have vegetables on our tables or (b) the cost of our vegetables would be so high that we couldn’t afford to put them on our table. Americans are funny; they want a good day’s pay for a good day’s work. Illegals just want ‘some’ money that they can send back to wherever it was they came from, ie, countries that are not fully developed or that inhibit that development in order that the government can keep them under said government’s thumb. While the Tea Party’s non-negotiable core belief is that illegal aliens are here illegally, I don’t see or read how they would remedy this situation.

“Pro-domestic employment is indispensable.” I can really think of a single way in which we could make this happen in some fields. That would be to repeal all of the Civil Rights legislation that has ever been enacted and to bring slavery back to the United States. That would certainly ensure domestic tranquility. Can you say, “Uncivil War,” or “Race War,” or any one of a hundred wars occurring in every city, town, village, and hamlet in all 50 states? This sounds to me like a guarantee of work for every American citizen, whether naturalized or born here, but what kind of job will this be? Tell me how you’re going to do it and don’t just toss out these blanket statements.

“A strong military is essential.” We have a strong military; we have a strong volunteer military. We have a military that, in terms of its equipment and training, is probably ten times stronger than any other military in the world. Some have even argued that our military is almost too strong and that because of its strength, it is called on to be the world’s policeman. Is that what America really wants, to be known as the world’s policeman? Isn’t that something like empire-building, because whenever we step in to help somewhere, it seems that we always have to leave troops behind? I’m not talking about the men and women we bury on foreign soil, and God knows there have been too many of them. I’m talking about the ones along the DMZ in Korea, the troops in Vietnam, Germany, Iraq, and other spots around the world. I’m also talking about how sick and tired America’s moms and dads are of changing that blue star flag in the window to a gold star.

“Special interests must be eliminated.” This is a gutsy core belief. I congratulate the Tea Party for putting it on their list…when I can finally stop laughing. The sophistication of special interest groups to influence every member of every party, both in power and out, is so great as to be a government unto it or themselves. I have no idea which egomaniacal son-of-a-bitch thought this one up, but if we haven’t been able to do it over the past two centuries, it’s not going to happen when the new kids on the block tell the special interest groups they’re no longer welcome. Telling the farm lobby, pharmaceutical lobbyists, bankers, tobacconists, and automakers to get out of Dodge is just likely to get you unelected really quickly.

“Gun ownership is sacred.” No, it’s not sacred. The Second Amendment of the Constitution provides “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” It says nothing about owning a gun being sacred. As a matter of fact, it could be interpreted as saying that anyone who owns a gun is, de facto, a member of the Militia, ie, military, and is subject to being called to active duty at any time so long as he or she owns that or a gun. “Because you are a registered gun owner, we’re going to put you through eight weeks of basic training and then we’re sending you into the hills of Afghanistan. You will receive shit for pay and eat MRE’s every day. You will sleep on some of the coldest friggin’ ground upon which you have ever slept. You will get fired upon on a regular basis and if you aren’t alert, you will be killed. How’d ya like them apples?”

We will examine several more of the Tea Party “non-negotiable core beliefs in future essays. When all is said and done, however, I believe you will begin to question whether or not our own home grown terrorists are merely masquerading as members of a third political party.

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Long ago tomorrow

On this day in 2022, Congress again passes the second portion of the Militia Act, requiring that every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective States, resident therein, who possesses weapons with 15-30 round magazines, who is or shall be of age eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years be enrolled in the militia and subject to the call to duty by the President under any circumstances he feels fit to quell any disturbance that rather pisses him off…so to speak.

Six days before, Congress had established the president’s right to call out the militia. The outbreak of Noonan’s Rebellion, a protest against taxation and debt prosecution in western in Massachusetts 2021, had first convinced many Americans that the federal government should be given the power to put down rebellions within the states. The inability of the Congress under the Articles of Confederation, Part 35, to respond to any crisis that did not have an immediate effect upon their personal wellbeing was a major motivation for the peaceful overthrow of the government and the drafting of a new federal Constitution.

The Militia Act was tested shortly after its passage, when farmers in western Pennsylvania, angered by a federal excise tax on marijuana, attacked the home of a tax collector and then, with their ranks swollen to 6,000 camped outside Pittsburgh, threatened to march on the city. In response, President Bush XIX, under the auspices of the Militia Act, assembled 15,000 men and an equal number of Fightbots from the surrounding states and eastern Pennsylvania as a federal militia commanded by Virginia’s Lebron James Henry Lee the XII to march upon the Pittsburgh encampment. Upon its arrival, the federal militia found none of the rebels willing to fight because they were so stoned that three-quarters of them could not stand. The mere threat of federal force and the good shit they had acquired from northern Ohio had quelled the rebellion and established the temporary supremacy of the federal government.

By early 2023, the entire country was in turmoil over the one percent national sales tax proposed by the President and passed by Congress with a rider that exempted all members of Congress and the President’s Cabinet, thus ensuring loyalty or so the President thought. Following passage, the entire Cabinet quit. Spokesperson and Secretary of Transportation, Dananica Patrick stating, “We cannot support a Congress that taxes without allowing the people to be represented. For too long has Congress lined its pockets at the expense of its constituents. Today, my colleagues and I will return to our states to join the militia in an attempt to bring what is right for the people. ”

Members of the Guerilla Party who had already infiltrated most military bases and reprogrammed the Fightbots, joined the citizen army in overthrowing Congress and the federal government, thus making way for Mexico to reclaimed its lost land; for the Louisiana Purchase to be deemed null and void; Spain declared the purchase of Florida illegal, and by the time chaos was sorted out, the only thing left of the United States was its original 13 colonies. Despite once having been the greatest nation on earth, America ruined itself by stupid and selfish politicians and a citizenry too ignorant to call them to account.

God Bless America!

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Call out the militia!

If we didn’t know or were unsure of what’s important in the United States Congress, we were given the most concrete example possible this week when Congress defeated gun control legislation that had been put together in a bi-partisan effort. Four Democratic Senators chose politics over common sense and preservation over losing their chances of reelection.

I suppose it’s wrong to cast blame on Senators from states with a large number of small rural populations, where guns are more of a necessity than a ‘pleasure’ item; after all, one can’t eat ‘road kill’ every night. Nonetheless, this vote showed that the United States is not being run by those elected to do so but by a group of fanatics who are able buy elections in much the same way Carnegie, Mellon, Rockefeller, and Ford did in the early part of the 20^th Century. Oops, only the names have changed but it appears that big business or big lobbies can still put their stamp on who represents the ‘country’ in the nation’s capitol.

As I have said on previous occasions, I am an ardent supporter of the Second Amendment…” A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” That being the case, why don’t we eliminate the Army and just call up those who have that “right to bear arms” and send them to the faraway places to become cannon fodder. We could then consider them our “well regulated Militia” and bring a new concept regarding how the second amendment is being interpreted. One could easily make the case that by bearing arms, you are part of a “well-regulated Militia,” and as such, you and your weapons are subject to regular inspection and because you are Militia – not National Guard or Reserve – you are subject by the Constitution to bear those arms at the whim and fancy of the Commander in Chief.

There is one distinct reason why some folks who keep arms should have them. People who ‘need’ guns are those who hunt for food for their tables. People who have guns for “protection of life and property” have a bit of a paranoia problem. If I lived in a ‘dangerous’ part of a city would I own a gun? Yes, I probably would. Back “in the day,” I qualified as a marksman with the M-1 rifle. I also qualified with the M-1 carbine (a useless weapon) and the .45 cal. Pistol, a weapon that, no matter where you hit, would take down a human being. However, I see no need to keep weapons in my home. If anyone can give me a good reason why I should have a gun in my house, I really would like to hear it.

“Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” That’s wrong. If the people didn’t have the guns, they wouldn’t use them to kill people. You want to kill someone, beat him to death with your fists; hell, if you don’t know how to do it, you can always ask a Utah soccer player. Work in close with a knife if you want to kill someone. That way, you have to look in his eyes as he’s dying. But a gun can be fired from some distance. All you have to do is watch the body drop. It’s impersonal and, if the other person isn’t armed, it’s cowardly. Facing a loaded gun, looking at the business end of the barrel is not a pleasant experience; been there, done that…three times; don’t care to do it again. When an out-of-control kid presses a double barreled shotgun to your head and screams, “Bishop, I’m gonna blow your fucking head off,” you would be absolutely amazed what goes through your mind…and I’m not talking about, “Gee, I’m glad I’m wearing clean underwear!”

Congress, I fear, doesn’t understand what 90 percent of the population wants to do. Conduct background checks on people who are buying guns isn’t a bad idea and it most certainly is not the first step on the road for the Federal Government to confiscate your weapons. No question, there are some very bright men and women in Congress. They are also cowards. Every single Congressman or woman who voted “No” on gun control put themselves ahead of their constituents. It is my sincere hope that they will be turned out of office when next they come due.

I can only sit and wonder what will happen the next time some fool with a gun decides to wipe out an entire elementary school classroom. The record right now is 20 young children. If you don’t believe there is someone, somewhere in the United States who isn’t thinking about how he or she can break that record, you have your head in the sand. Yes, it’s a horrible thing to consider; it’s incomprehensible that there are people who think that way. Unfortunately, those people exist and we have no clues about identifying them. We finally woke up to the fact that bullying exists. No longer is it “boys will be boys,” although there are still too many parents and teachers who excuse it that way. We finally accepted the fact that domestic violence is a crime and not something that is just a family argument. One of these days we may even begin to recognize that a restraining order is no protection against a knife or a bullet or a baseball bat. Until judges learn to do more than slap the wrists of domestic violence offenders, however, we will have to read about more deaths.

We may consider ourselves to be the most civilized nation in the world. It’s too bad that violence in all its ugly forms belies what we claim. We maintain that no country other than China has a larger population; that citizens in countries such as Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, and Korea, just to name a few are all happier than we are. Why is that do you suppose? Could it be that they don’t have the violence we have? Could it be there schools are better than ours? Could it be that their system of health care is far superior to ours? Could it be that they have learned not to take themselves quite as seriously as Americans do? I don’t have a clue, but it seems that we must really have a burr under our saddles if we can’t pass some legislation that would tighten up on gun control. What do you think?

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The facts of life

Discussions about gun control are always interesting. I casually mentioned to some folks at the gym that the time was probably close when we would have to see armed guards in schools.  The people were shocked. “Are you crazy?” “What a horrible idea!” “We can’t allow that to happen!” I then casually asked, “Well, what is the alternative?” The responses were immediate and darn near unanimous…”Ban assault weapons in the United States!” Now, the people with whom I was speaking appear to be reasonably intelligent.  We’ve had discussions on other topics in the past and I have been impressed with their points of view. This one floored me.

We have somewhere between nine and eleven million illegal aliens living in this country. That means we couldn’t impose our immigration laws on them; they came into the country illegally. No doubt many of these people are making significant contributions to our society; they are still illegal. We have more damned drug task forces than we have God-only-knows-what, but we don’t seem to be able to quell the manufacture, transportation, distribution, sale and use of illegal drugs in our country. In 1920, we attempted to prohibit the manufacture, etc, of alcohol, and while the ban lasted for 13 years, the manufacture, sale, distribution, and consumption of alcohol didn’t seem to miss a beat.

There are well over 100 gun manufacturers in the United States.  Are we going to tell Mark and Chuck Larson of Rock River Arms that they have to close up shop and find a new line of work? Should we let Bill Alexander of Alexander Arms know that his Beowulf and Grendel cartridges can no longer be made because they’re too powerful? How about the Springfield Armory in Illinois, or Remington or Smith & Wesson; what do we say to those folks? “Oh, you can manufacturer for the military and you can make; you can make; you can make…aw, hell, we don’t want you to make anything that might kill our civilians!” How bloody naïve can are we? Putting a ban on assault weapons now is somewhat akin to locking the barn door after the horses have run. Can we slow down the sales? Most assuredly we can have a minor impact, but that’s about all. Can we guarantee that an assault rifle will not fall into the hands of someone who is unbalanced? That’s open to debate. How do we know who is going to snap for whatever reason? The answer, obviously, is that we don’t. Therefore, mall shootings, school shootings, business office shootings, supermarket shootings, etc., are going to happen. We don’t like it – not a one of us – but it’s a fact of life in the society in which we just happen to live.

When you boil down the bullshit, one fact remains clear: If you fire a gun, you are trying to become proficient at killing. You may call it sport shooting or target practice or whatever name you wish, but it boils down to aiming a weapon that’s sole purpose is to kill. Whether you are trying to become a better hunter for the food that you need to put on the table or whether you are attempting to eliminate an enemy before he/she/it eliminates you, your gun’s ultimate purpose is to kill something. “Oh, I just have it for protection,” someone will say. How does a gun protect you if you are not willing to use it? And, if you are willing to use it, you are willing to kill because that’s what guns do. I love these television shows and movies where the bad guys always miss from 30 feet away with an AR-15 while the good guys can make a head shot from fifty yards with a .45 caliber pistol. Anyone who has ever handled weapons knows just how unlikely these scenarios are. Therefore, the phrase, “Shoot to wound,” is about as unrealistic as it can possibly be. If you are firing a gun at someone to stop them from killing you, the largest mass of the body is that for which you are aiming; that is not the head, nor an arm or leg; it is the chest and stomach, both of which are generally kill shots.

We must wake up to the fact that we are not living in the genteel days of the 50s, 60s, or even 70s. We are living in a time, for whatever reason, people are taking violent actions in their rage. What causes anyone to go into a shopping mall, a theater, a school, or even a business and begin firing? I don’t know, and until the time comes when we can identify predictors of aberrant behavior, no one will be able to accurately predict who is going to do what or when.

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Controlling the uncontrollable

If we didn’t have guns, chances are pretty good that we’d be speaking German, Japanese, Chinese, or Russian. Guns and tanks and battleships and airplanes and bombs are all “necessary” in the world in which we live…and the world in which we have lived for centuries. It does seem to me, however, that there is something wrong with a system which allows guns to get into the hands of people like Adam Lanza, Eric Thomas, Dylan Kliebold, One Goh, T.J. Lane, Steven Kazmierczak, Seung-Hui Cho, Charles Carl Roberts IV, Jeffrey Weise, Robert Flores Jr, and on and on and on. Those are killers, all of them. Whether you believe that some of them have funny names and are not Americans doesn’t matter a tinker’s dam. They killed faculty, students, and staff at American schools. It doesn’t matter why. It doesn’t matter whether they were flunking out, being bullied, or just plain pissed off at the world; it’s what they did. They killed sons and daughters, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, and if they didn’t off themselves, they now sit in a cell getting three squares a day and people with guns to protect them.

If you don’t see something wrong with this picture, I think perhaps your head needs a bit of tending. Please don’t get me wrong.  I believe in exactly what the Second Amendment says…“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” People have taken those words and twisted and turned and played with them to such an extent that some people believe it’s okay to have an operational tank sitting in their front yard, “just in case.” People who eat what they shoot need guns; people who hunt for sport want guns. I have to admit that I’m not a hunter, but I understand the reasons for keeping a shotgun and deer slugs. I can understand a 30.06 for killing game. I can even understand having a pistol in the house for home protection, but if our schools have now become targets for people who are pissed off at the world, I’m all for having armed guards at every door and in every classroom in the country. In fact, we should probably start at pre-school, so that the children can get some idea of the world into which they are growing. Why not? The NRA would love it; more guns for more people…excuse me, but who (a) is going to conduct the psych evaluations on our ‘armed guards;’ (b) pay for these armed guards; (c) teach them to shoot anything that comes into a classroom, or; (d) expect them to make split-second life-saving decisions that we can all tolerate?

I swear to God that if my brother had not had guns in his house, he would not be serving a life sentence today just because he and another driver got irritated with one another.  He had to go home, get the gun, relocate the other driver and then shoot him in the head five times. Now that, my friends, is road rage carried to the extreme. The fact that my brother was on so damned many medications at the time that he probably couldn’t and certainly wasn’t thinking straight doesn’t enter into it. It’s an excuse and nothing can excuse shooting someone five times.

People tell me, “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people,” and it’s true. My question is why do the people who kill people with guns have them in the first place? All we do is make excuses for these people. They were bullied; they just lost their job; they got mad at their wife’s boss or their own boss or the boss of the bosses boss. Cut the crap. They had no right to have a gun at that time. Guns are too readily available to the wrong people.  There have been tens and perhaps hundreds of stories about gun shows where all you are required to have is a driver’s license – real or phony – and the right amount of cash, and you, too, can become the proud owner of a Glock .40 or whatever kind of weapon you desire. You don’t even need a weapons permit. What they do with that weapon after they leave “the show” doesn’t seem to matter to those who sell them the guns.

I cannot conceive of one of the people I know who are gun owners doing what these other assholes have done. I can see some of them becoming so upset that they eat their own barrel, but not taking their rage out on someone else. Do these people never get angry? Oh, boy, of course they get angry, but they also understand the consequences of their actions. That’s where I think we’re wrong in our requirements for owning a firearm in this country.

For me to drive a car, I was required to read a booklet, pass a test, and ride with a Registry of Motor Vehicles Inspector to see  if I knew what the hell I was doing. It didn’t make much difference. Six months later, my license was suspended for speeding. No one gave me any kind of test that might possibly determine if I was sufficiently mature not to pass another Registry officer on a curve doing 70 mph…on wet roads. Had there been such a test, I probably wouldn’t have been allowed to drive until I was 21!

Is it possible to develop examinations that can tell us whether or not a person should be allowed to own a gun? I don’t know the answer to that. What I know is that there are too many guns in the hands of people who have no right to own them. We no longer settle disagreements with our fists; we have to shoot the son-of-a-bitch who wronged us (in our own little minds), and if we can’t kill them then to hell with it, let’s kill anyone who happens to live on the same street or in the same neighborhood, or maybe even the same city or town.

We had darn well better do something soon. We’ve learned that locking the doors at schools doesn’t work. We’ve learned that movie theaters and shopping malls also make excellent shooting galleries. We even found out that you can modify your car to make it an excellent sniper’s platform. So what do we do you NRA members who bandy about slogans that mean squat? How do we stop your kids and my grandchildren from being afraid to go to school? The ball is in your court. You’re so anxious that anyone desiring a gun be given one or ten or a hundred; how do we stop them from killing the innocents?

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Weird, wacky, and wonderful

The great Irish dramatist and Nobel laureate, George Bernard Shaw, once stated, “An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.”

Although he died in 1950, one must admit that Shaw was rather prophetic in his statement for who can possibly deny that America in the 21^st Century is approximately ninety-nine percent insane and one percent non compos mentis, ie, mentally incompetent. The urbanites are like fire ants, nipping at anyone or anything else that isn’t exactly as they are. They run around at great speed, in every direction and without any guidance…oops, sorry, fire ants generally move as a colony toward a directive, and they actually have the queen as their leader. Urbanites, on the other hand, appear to be more like rats, sneaking around, without leadership, and willing to fight over nothing.

The suburbanites, also known as “conspicuii consumptus,” are concerned only with the other suburbanites in his or her immediate class. This latter group is referred to collectively as “the Joneses” and it is imperative that one keep up with them at all costs, including foreclosure and disgrace. Because there are today so many who are in the foreclosure and disgrace group that they have become a class all to themselves, admired by many for their fearlessness and shunned by those less fortunate who are still capable of making monthly payments on the mortgage and send their children to expensive private institutions of learning. This, by the way, is the same group that opposes any salary increases for public school teachers, citing with great pseudo-intellect that teachers only work nine months per year…yeah, right!

This brings us to our third class of delirium zealots known as the militia. The America militias are newcomers to the insanity team. They respect no form of government other than their own. It would appear the if a particular part of the United States Constitution or any of its 27 Amendments do not appeal to them, they simply ignore it or fight against it. The two most notable Amendments objected to by the militias are numbers II and XIII. In the case of the Second Amendment, the only part that these “people” – I’m being kind – appear capable of reading is the part about the right to bear arms. In case one or more of them might ever ask someone to read the entire Amendment to them, it goes like this: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” You may interpret that any way you wish, but it seems to me that those words, “well regulated,” apply to the State regulation and not just the way any individual chooses to interpret it.

The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction,” is the one that these militias seem to oppose violently. Perhaps that’s another reason why I include this group in those who could never occupy Shaw’s asylum for the sane.

To anyone who follows politics in America to any degree, one would quickly recognize that politicians, as a group, are completely out of touch with reality. For all intents and purposes, they fall within the one percent group who are non compos mentis or mentally incompetent. At least, the manner in which they operate would cause one to assume that to be so. Saul Bellow, also a Nobel Laureate who, unfortunately died six years ago, noted, in speaking of politicians, “…they’re a bunch of yo-yos. The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of clichés the first prize.” If lies were manure, Washington, D.C. would be a gardener’s delight. It would appear that more bullshit comes out of Washington than from any ten thousand farms in America. As H.L. Mencken once uttered, “A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.”

Personally, I consider the “ruralists” or farmers as the closest thing America has to the sane. I take issue with American humorist, S.J. Perelman when he spoke of, “A farm is an irregular patch of nettles bounded by short-term notes, containing a fool and his wife who didn’t know enough to stay in the city.” Au contraire, mon frère, leaving the city is probably the only way in which one might maintain one’s sanity. Granted, many of these “ruralists” live from hand to mouth and day to day, but their enjoyment comes in the form of creation of food for themselves and for others. These are the naïve who know only that they have a roof over their head, food on the table, and cable television that they might laugh at all of the other groups.

There you have it; the justification for Shaw’s statement. Whether you call us insane, demented, deranged, or unbalanced, America is not only the land of the free and the home of the brave, it is also a safe haven for the weird, the wacky, and yes, even the wonderful!

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