With One Sad Mistaken Mom and One Too Many SOBs...

When the GOP wrapped up its Warped Tour of the Damned in Cleveland it reminded me of an oft proved axiom--never underestimate silly people in large numbers.  As clueless to the cause as they are ill-informed of the remedy, the party faithful seem fed up with the status quo.  And they should be.  

But even with the real reasons (gerrymandering and Citizens United) staring them in the face, the Donald's minions are blinded by the same virulent contagion that infected the populace of pre-WWII Germany--ignorance playing itself off as enlightenment and hatred masquerading as love of country. 

And therein lies the rhubarb.  The Donald has taken the dirt road, plucked the low hanging fruit of collective angst, made hard cider and besotted the party of Lincoln.  To that end, the Donald would do Lenin proud.  The Donald would make Hitler swoon.  The Donald would make our forefathers steel themselves for a fight.  Hamilton would not have thrown his shot wide at the Donald.

Even Ted Cruz, a guy with plenty of chutzpah if only a teaspoon of good sense, tried appealing to the angels of our better nature.  But with the timbre of his voice reminding us of the strangling of lambs, no wonder they booed him off the stage. 

Full disclosure, I am an old-school Republican and no fan of Hillary.  But there's the devil you keep because she's the devil you know.  The Donald is a devil of another stripe.  The same stripe that runs down the back of all despots who pound their agenda with a cast iron hand.  The same stripe that dehumanized the non-Aryan.  The same stripe that holds no quarter for dissent nor even argument.  The same stripe that builds gulags and guillotines. 

Take heed, America.

Just a... 'nother brick in the wall...

I am lucky.  Lucky enough to be able to enjoy my fruits and veggies on the cheap.  Lucky enough to be the umpteenth grandchild to a family with roots planted here over one hundred fifty years ago.  Lucky enough to qualify me as native.  But how much time in-country does one have to spend to be considered a native?  Most of us were born here and that usually suffices.  Ask a real native American the same question and you might get an education. 

Suffice to say, we all hail from somewhere else.  Natural born is usually enough yet nowadays some say that’s not enough.  Think: birthers and the funny orange-haired rich guy behind that particular bowel movement who is now running for the highest office in the land.  Fun fun.  

How many of us really believe that in order to quell the touted tsunami of undesirables into our fair land that all we have to do is build a barrier between us and the more southerly regions of our shared continent?  Really? 

France tried that after World War I.  The wisdom of the French was to plant a line of big guns in the ground and point them at Germany.  Quite an imposing sight, I imagine.  If you enjoy grand examples of failure.  When the time came, a certain Bavarian corporal and company ignored the Maginot Line altogether leaving the lonely Frenchmen to buff their big guns while the Wehrmacht goose-stepped down the Champs-Élysées.  Perhaps monsieur would enjoy a little cheese with that whine?

It took me five minutes on Bing to illuminate our delusion.  The continental U.S. has over 82,835 miles of coastline guarded by satellite surveillance and the Coast Guard.  With only 41,000 active duty members, that means every uniform in the service would have to patrol two miles of coastline 24 hours per day 365 days per year with no potty breaks.  This fact alone makes the über fence along the 1,869 mile border with Mexico a colossal example of American stupidity.  

The self-righteous always flog the notion of legality but I'll wager no law ever filled an empty belly and no electrified razor wire atop a fence will ever keep a good parent from trying to feed their hungry children. The people that come here are not the bomb toting job stealing bad guys we have been lead to believe, but rather people who’ve heard of a place where they cannot only survive but thrive by the sweat of their brow if they will only risk the crossing. They don’t want state welfare, they want a chance. And who are we to deny them? 

Immigrants, that’s who.

Guns, guns, gunzzz...

http://www.politifact.com/florida/article/2016/jun/12/7-things-know-about-guns-and-gun-violence-after-or/?utm_source=TBT_email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Politifact%20Email%20June%2013%202016

The above weblink is to a Politifact article explaining some of the misinformation surrounding the latest carnage in Orlando and the anti-gun rhetoric currently bandied by all of the major news outlets. To that end, I give my take on what I would consider as an answer to gun violence in the U.S.  If you haven't surmised already, I am a gun-owner and supporter of the Constitution and its current interpolation/interpretation of the 2nd Amendment.

First off, limiting the size, caliber and/or capacity for a firearm is a fool's errand. To imagine, or think, it will save lives is tantamount to buying into that email I received yesterday guaranteeing 79,000% return on a single investment. To wit, Chicago has no gun stores within its municipal limits. However, it owns the title of Murder Capitol of the U.S.  T'is a terrible irony that the former would foment the latter but such are the best flayed plans of pundits and politicians.

Instead, what I can imagine is a system that allows for an instantaneous vetting system. One whereby the magnetic strip on the reverse side of a driver's license could be run through a simple go/no-go device installed at every store that sells guns and ammunition. If an individual with a codified history of mental illness, prescribed psychotropic medications, and/or any other proscription deemed by law enforcement, the vendor could just return the individual's license and inform them of their purchase limitations in said store.  

Being tied into such a system, that individual's presence in a gun selling establishment could immediately be flagged for followup by law enforcement. The bugaboo comes with connecting all of the pertinent databases required for such a system to work. And honestly, the establishment of such a system would most likely become problematic as Edward Snowden has so aptly proved.

In full disclosure, I am an on-again-off-again member of the NRA, a persistent gun owner and former shooting competitor. This also ain't my first rodeo. I've learned that gun laws, as with any law, only affect the law-abiding citizen and never the law-breaker. That being reality, shouldn't we use technology to better protect the law-abiding from the deranged, addled, radicalized and sad sick souls among us so that we may know them. 

Just imagine...

Trouble trouble trouble in the capitol city...

Just today I received a forwarded letter via email from a frustrated airline pilot.  It's probably another fake one but it did aptly describe a lot of folks frustration with the Muslim world. People on the right favor nuclear annihilation while the left offer platitudes and placation. Somewhere in between lies the answer, but damn, that's a spread with a lot of possibilities.

I feel the frustration. A reckoning is coming and it will take ALL of us, Jew, Gentile AND Muslim to vanquish fanaticism. ALL religions have had their zealots who willfully divorce themselves from reason fearing what they BELIEVE is threatened by non-believers. Intellectual laziness is the well-spring of our shared malaise. It is a sad fact that the Islamic religion appears hijacked by the most vociferous and violence indoctrinated adherents. Their ignorance is everyone's burden.

History is littered with the bodies of the innocent murdered at the hands of well-meaning men believing they were doing God's bidding. Dressed in robes and toting AK47s, the fearful in the faith are easily cowed into compliance. Gutenberg knew this and printed the Holy Bible so everyone could get a fair shake at salvation. Papal polity be damned! I'm thinking that Islam needs a Gutenberg to blow the lid off.  Having their own home-grown Martin Luther wouldn't hurt either.

When examined from an analytical point of view all religions are flawed. Even my own. Too few of us do the hard work of analysis or take the time to gain a proper perspective of our chosen faith with it's incongruities, inconsistencies and contradictions. We'd rather trust some cleric or priest or mullah or group or parent or favorite holy man to tell us what is what, and once thoroughly indoctrinated, we hardly ever question again out of fear of ostracization, stoning or worse--a change of heart.

Our forefathers understood this and shied away from codifying religion into our new civilization. They would 'make no laws' with regards to the establishment thereof. Ancient Rome understood this too and kept them distinct and separate. What we are witnessing now in the Islamic world is one where the lines are not just blurred but obliterated. If they do not reform, and soon, the world at large will turn against them and a whole lot more innocent blood will be needlessly spilled.  Allahu Akbar indeed.

Someone to blame...

It's happened again.  This time in San Bernardino.  Why are we so surprised?  A free society is always a messy business.  Is it any wonder that the anti-gun crowd is foaming at their collective pie holes again?  They peruse the same flawed logic table that blames the sun for a sunburn, water for drowning and gravity for broken hips.  They are an ambulance chasers wet-dream.  I get it.  Really, I do.  We gotta blame somebody.  Blame the inanimate object.  Blame the jihadist.  Oh, and the NRA.

If you lose someone to a senseless act, every neuron in your brain wants to know WHY.  Just as every cell in your body cries out for revenge.  But nothing will salve the feeling of loss and bereavement.   In our anger we are pitiful creatures with clenched fists swinging wildly at the unrelenting frustration over our inability to prevent tragedy.  But we should guard against the demonizing of a segment of our society for the misdeeds of a few.  Our loss is their loss too.  When we give-in to blood-lust we are all diminished.

Hatred doesn't need facts or reason to exist, only heat.  The kind of heat created by the friction between what we know and what we do not.  We know the loss but we don't know why.  Only when we believe we know why, can we move toward catharsis.  And we all need catharsis.  Problem is, we'll kill for that too.  Just give us a target.  Just give us some THING to kill and we will all feel better in the morning.  This is the fecund soil in which tyrants sew the seeds of genocide.

Justice is a concept we hold above revenge as a forestalling of the bloodletting we crave.  A poultice for our wounded spirit.  Whenever the perpetrator of our anguish is dealt with, we rejoice or at least breathe a sigh of relief.  Only then do we realize our folly--that no one is spared from hatred.  Everybody loses.  There is little sport in the rendering of justice.  Nor should there be. Don't get me wrong, I am for justice and a righteous bloodletting when it is warranted. 

Unfortunately, the deranged, like the poor, will always be with us.  They will take many forms and they will always demand our best efforts in order to prevent tragedies both large and small whenever we can.  Stripping access to guns from the law abiding is simplistic and foolhardy at best.  We all have a part to play and it involves caring for each other.  That is where understanding and  healing awaits us all. 

After all, we are still our brother's keeper.

Bad Moon Rising...

Politics are akin to maneuvering through a maze with one eye blinded while nursing a severe head cold.  Some do it better than others.  Politics are inextricably linked to life itself.  People use politics in everything and whether they believe they do is irrelevant.

Politics is the art of affecting advantage for your particular interest and at the epicenter of effective politics lies the art of compromise.  However, what we see nowadays is a race to the former while condemning the latter as heresy.  Sure-sure, we all hate compromise--we hate feeling like we left money on the table.  That someone else in the deal may have benefited more or at all.

Politics, when wielded well, is more about getting the best for everyone instead of only for your clan.  When we leave something on the table we are trusting someone else will put it to use in ways familiar or even unfamiliar. Instead of a yacht, they might need to feed someone who can't feed themselves.

Ah, but I heard what you said just now under your breath.  You said, why don't they use their own damn money?  And there it is again.  The dirty little habit that infects us all--greed.  That is the stuff that we have all been baptized in and at the heart of the American mythos.  You know, the one about the rugged individual raising up civilization single handed while thwarting impossible foes with six shooters, bull whips and Hallelujah.

We need to stop drinking before noon.  We need to take a chance on each other counting that some will indeed take advantage.  So what?  The pendulum always swings our way at least half the time.  So let it go, the clock won't tick without it.  Time only goes in one direction for us all.

We need beneficence and magnanimity to be our cornerstones.  Charity in spirit as well as largess.  How about we start with the least of these as the Christian ethos states?  After all, we will be judged by how we treat them and not our friends, nor our families, not our possessions and certainly not our enemies.

I'm not advocating dropping the stick and handing out the carrot.  There should be a string attached.  But all stick and only the picture of a carrot means something else entirely.  Carrot and stick should always be in balance.  And always attached to one another.

To me, the American story should be an unending one.  The Grand Experiment is not over.  We are the sum of the choices we make.  We are the chances we took and lost and learned better how to take chances.  But we should never stop.  Shouldn't we all stake a claim in responsibility for one another?  And not in the Big Brother way, smartass!  If the need is there, can't we fill in?  We're a America for Christ's sake.  It's a chance we need to take.  Someone needs us to win for them.  Politics be damned.

To vaccinate or not to vaccinate...

Funny how some folks need only a little bit of info for them to go off half-cocked tilting at windmills and vaccinators.  BTW, have you ever heard the phrase, salting the mine?  Joseph Goebbels knew that a lie told well and often enough will eventually be accepted as truth.  Beware, my friends.  We all need to keep our bullshit meters turned all the way up.  The bastards are out there and they only have to set us against each other to fulfill their evil designs.  Let us stand together and deny them any room to do so.  Freedom is never free.  It might be a right but it exacts responsibility and sacrifice.  And the proper application of gray matter.