Jharrin4's Blog

Former pro wrestler and Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura has a book out that addresses our country’s current and worsening political dysfunction. In it, he refers to republicans as rebloodicans and democrats as democrips, a play on the names of the notorious Crips & Bloods street gangs. Clever enough.  Jesse equates the rebloodicans with the red states (blood, get it?) and the democrips with the blue states. He denigrates both parties, and feels we need to get the corrupting influence of money out of the process and attract better candidates. Jesse’s vitriol is no different from mine, or that of people like Senator Sanders from Vermont, Ralph Nader, Jim Hightower and others.  Part of the problem is also that the corporate media purposefully ignores the dissenting voices. But we’re out here, in the secondary media, blogosphere, etc. 

The public needs to get educated, regardless. It’s not Jesse or Ralph  or Jim or Bernie who can really change anything, though. They can sound the charge, but who’s listening? And we do need change, real change. Both parties seem to have lost their way; the GOP is now essentially a radical Right, elitist group that fanatically supports the now infamous “one percent” and its wealth at the expense of the other 99%.  They are inflexible and in many way, a sociopathic political force. The democrats, once an actual party of the people has become wimpy, wussy, ineffectual and worst of all, complicit in pro-corporate, anti middle-class public policies. They talk the talk but hardly ever walk the walk anymore.

And as obvious as this collusive political construct is–to anyone who wants to prick up their ears and open their eyes–the public keeps putting the power into the same hands, those being those crips and bloods, as it were. Hard to blame the voters when the choice is always an apparent evil of two lessors. Now, in the 2012 election, we’re left with the absolutely draconian prospect of turning over the White House and Congress to the Radical Right, or rewarding President Obama the “capitulator-in-cheif,” and the lap dogs of his party for failing to carry through on virtually all of that change you can believe in stuff invoked over and over in the 2008 campaign. His lack of follow-through turned off so many of his 2008 supporters that the Tea Party wack-a-doodles got elected in numbers in the 2010 mid-term voting, exacerbating our current toxic atmosphere in D.C.

Some choice for 2012. It’s about as phony as the choreographed wrestling matches that Jesse once excelled at, but not the least entertaining. The “heroes” and “villains” of the WWE got paid win or lose, and knew it was a rigged system.  Elections these days, aren’t much different.  Thus,  Jesse “The Body” Ventura and one-time breath-of-fresh-air elected official, has to hold his nose and pen a screed against the scam and sham of present-day politics. 

The public needs to wrestle its country back from a government full of bad actors who try to play off one another as “hero” and “villain” as the mainstream media laps it up without challenging anyone to support their reasoning with any sound evidence. There’s no room for reality in this programming,  just as in WWE, WWF, etc..  Jesse knows the drill. 

You’ve heard the expression, “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it”.  The fix may be in with our lame two-party patty-cake, money talks and corruption walks system. Fix, however, is exactly what need to do to it.  Jesse and those other dissenters have noticed the machinery going bonkers, but until the public see the same, the tie-and-jacket Crips and Bloods will maintain their turf and prosper.

The other day, a Chicago tribune columnist wrote a very personal piece about the death of her family’s dog. By the end of the column, Scout, the dog, had been given its due respect as a 14 year, integral part of the family that had adopted her. The writer’s words evoked   poignancy, introspection, reverence and reflective gratitude regarding Scout. Also, the writer noted how Scout’s death sounded a bell toll of larger, symbolic meaning, particularly for her two daughters, whose early childhoods and even young adulthood were shared with Scout as they all grew older. Pets typically do not outlive their keepers. One can be cold-blooded about that likelihood or mourn such passing as this columnist did, and quite eloquently at that.

I don’t have a pet, and not since my increasingly distant childhood have I had one around me. My reaction to the column was empathic, nonetheless, as life is inherently inclusive of loss, of family members, friends or even a pet. But my emotional response was triggered, I’m pretty sure, not from any specific remembrance of personal loss, but rather because the piece was so well written and concisely expressed. I admired the style as well as its elegiac content. At the same time, I couldn’t help think that the writer’s skillful rendering of how a pet’s dying could so effect a family likely would not tug at too many heart-strings in certain other parts of the Chicago area. For instance, the South and West Sides and their mini war zones where random shootings have racked up dozens of deaths–mostly of young people–at a rate that is alarming and absurd. Grade school kids are picked off just standing innocently on a front porch, or by a bullet zinging through a window, carrying cruel fate with it as it finds a baby’s crib. It’s hard to imagine how families in these neighborhoods could feel that a dog’s death could  symbolize a portentous passage from one phase of life to another, whether or not they had a dog. If they did own a dog, it too would exist in a not-so-safe and secure world, and if the family pooch gets picked off while peeing in the back yard, the parents are likely to thank the fickle finger of fate for sparing their offspring, who will live to see at least another day. In the mean streets of gun-infested neighborhoods, it’s all dog-eat-dog in world where life is cheap and often very short. In these violence-prone areas, a dog’s death is just a another cold-blooded fact of life. Tough luck, Rover. Life sucks, you know? then you take a .32 in the chest.

Not to diminish Scout’s demise, but her page two tale of passing seems such a luxury in comparison to the plight of the families whose lives are shattered in senseless, random gun play week after week after week. One family gets to live the American Dream–a nuclear family, as the columnist put it–in apparent peace and security, so much so that when its dog dies (of old age) its “obituary” gets a prominent place in a major daily newspaper. It had a wholesome existence, from the sound of things, along with the rest of the solid middle-class clan.

The folks in the urban kill zones, on the other hand, are “when it bleeds it leads” fodder for the local newscasts (before moving on to weather and sports) and an implied, if never overtly stated, indictment against law enforcement, public policy and the apparent institutionalized marginalization of the underclass, all of which contribute to the mindless violence. Scout’s keepers, far removed from such socio-economic cause/effects, fussed and fawned over her for longer than many of the dead minority children were even alive! The reality gap between Scout’s life and the quality of it up to its death and those of the inner-city kids who can’t count on making it through junior high alive is about as wide as the Grand Canyon. Depending on one’s perspective, that Canyon gap can be seen as an awe-inspiring wonder of nature, or simply a large opening on the earth’s surface filling with despair.

A few more things: First, a post-script on the modern military combat veteran. In the age of endless deployments & re-deployments, statistics document the highest suicide rate among them than ever before. Post dramatic stress disorder. Well, done, Pentagon, Bush, Obama.

Who’s your personal hero? Most admired, whatever…Mine is Ralph Nader. He posts his commentaries, analysis on his website, and I wish I were half as insightful, articulate and spot-on as he is. He’s the person I most wish I could meet some day. Ralph can deploy a laser beam of logically irrefutable barbs and broadsides that scares the mainstream politicos and media mavens shitless.  I know this because he gets systematically marginalized, if not completely ignored, when he attempts formal foray into the modus operandi of modern American socio-economic policies of all ilk, including a recent posting where he excoriates the New York Yankees for polluting their broadcasts with commercial “sponsorships” of every aspect of the game’s action as it unfolds. Maybe the Yankees will bar him from attending their games now.  It wouldn’t the first time Ralph will be persona non grata if they did, though. I think it was the 2004 presidential election debate when organizers had him not only excluded from being a participant (he was on the ballot in most states) but wouldn’t even allow him to be in the audience! Mr.Nader is in his late 70s and I hope he stays healthy and engaged for many, many more years. He’s a neglected national hero (a legendary consumer safety advocate) whose character dwarfs that of those who fear him. Ralph knows it, and so do they. He’s got a sense of humor, too, having hosted Saturday Night Live once, maybe twice.

Random: why do urban-area squirrels attempt to cross busy roads when the side they depart from appears as woodsy and safe as the one to which they are headed? Are these squirrels having an affair across the road? The road kill seems inevitable if they attempt it more than a couple of times. But if it’s in the name of squirrel love then they, like humans, are creatures of folly.

In less than two weeks, daylight starts getting shorter. After the 21st of June the sun will start setting earlier, on a relentless decline until six months later when the days again start getting longer. It always comes as a sort of head-scratcher, knowing that, even on a 93 degree day in late June, that it’s unavoidably all downhill til late December. Then again, on some frigid day in late December, when a Chicagoan’s lips are turning blue, he or she can take cold comfort in knowing that, inexorably, it’s all back uphill heading to the third week of the following June. It’s just a state of mind…and a matter of layers of clothing.

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 There’s so much digital information to sift through our senses these days: bits and bytes of self-indulgent bombast, frivolity, foolishness, not to mention banality. iPhones, iPads, androids, tablets, kindles. We have the whole world in our hands. Movies, TV, streaming video, podcasts, twitters, text, and social media offer a lot of instant gratification choices; and like fast-food, most of it is empty calorie consumption, in this case, of commercial pop culture trash.  It’s an extensive menu of digitally digestible distractions! More and more information, data, content, programming every day, and there’s no shortage of consumers. Who cares if it’s a short attention span form of gratification? Life is a roller coaster of ups and downs, or even some corkscrew turns and a few inverted loops, a bump & grind, a journey that requires endurance, faith, and some luck that, we hope more often than not, is of the fortunate kind. We try to make our personal slice of life as pleasurable as  possible, or at least palatable and manageable.  It’s a full-time job, this mortal coil, this veil of tears. Lots of stress. Praise the lord and pass the Xanex, or the Wild Turkey 101. Or immerse yourself in the phantasmagoria of digitalia.  Like the boob tube, it has a hypnotic effect on its users. And, somewhere in its endless inventory of opinions, attitudes, beliefs and behavior may lie what we’re looking for. Which is?  Well? We’re looking for, uh, maybe the next cat video or singing sensation. We’re drawn to an electronic screen of one size or another like moths to a flame. But, as we sit in front of computer screens, flat-screens, laptops, or handhelds, and do so quite extensively at times, are we learning anything of real value? Does mass/social media, and all its content offer us any penetrating insights, piercing observations, or maybe an immortal truth or two? Does it reveal the different drummer that can lead the way to such revelations, to whatever the hell motivates such addictive consumption? Is there any actual substance to all that style?  Highly subjective, I suppose. One man’s ceiling is another lady’s floor…

Regardless, based on my student’s seeming attention deficits due to the digital moth-glow, lots of folk need to unplug. Decompress. Sit in the park and contemplate nature.  In doing so, we can connect with ourselves and the tangible, physical world of reality. We can clear our heads from the grip of pervasive electronic messaging, advertising, distractions. What a notion! Connect with reality. Get real, baby!  Stop and smell a real rose,in the very real world,  listen and think about what is happening behind the surface glitter and flash of all the digital razzle dazzle. Well, to do so requires reading, listening, thinking, prompted by one source or another, print or electronic. You can still have your indulgences, but it would be worth your while to forego the digital fast empty calories for some real nutritious food-for-thought. You’ve been distracted for long enough, and may be in peril. Whether you realize it or not, the future is at stake, and you need to be fully awake. Do some heavy lifting long enough to become an informed consumer.  Oh, I know you don’t have that kind of gumption, but you’ll wish you did if the worst-case-scenario becomes business-as-usual. There’s an important election in November. Do you plan to vote? Plan on making your voice heard?  The voting booth holds enormous power. The fewer people who vote means that a smaller and smaller share of the electorate get to decide your political fate.

What kind of future do you prefer? Well in previous blogs I have written (ranted?) about things such as the Koch Brothers, the Tea Party, the neo-con types in congress, or occupying governor’s mansions, and certainly the corporate media that serves all these nefarious entities quite well. Too much to process? Just me rabble-rousing? Exaggeration? Agitation? Sour grapes? Whatever, but don’t you want to check it out for yourself?  I do pay close attention and this is what I see: a public that has become lazy and stupid when it comes to making important choices, especially ones that emanate from a voting booth. One man, one vote. We the People. Constitutional protections. With liberty and justice for all, blah blah. Yeah, right? In theory anyway; but I’ve lived long enough to witness journalistic principles abandoned to the dictates of military adventure in two needless Persian Gulf invasions, a post 911 national policy of fear mongering & intrusiveness, and two documented, corrupted presidential elections.  Money, power,  divide and conquer politics are destroying our democracy. Thanks to the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling, money is free speech and corporations are “people”! Super Pacs can assert monetary power to literally buy an election.  Airways get flooded with ad hominem vitriol disguised as discourse.  The radical Right has gotten a foothold in government and their agenda is disingenuous and vile in its objectives. We’re becoming a plutocracy. Since the 2010 mid-term elections, the middle and lower classes have been exploited and scapecoated, even teachers,police and firefighters!   

However, the Occupy movement and it’s 99-1 mantra is trying to fight back.  Maybe it’s 98-2, or at best 97-3, but the vast majority of Americans are working class mopes, not financially independent. And in spite of the recent Wall St. malfeasance that cost many families their future, many of the working class appear to be asleep at the wheel, and headed for a cliff: recent polls (scientific number crunching, mind you) indicate how clueless many people are about what’s going on in the political arena. 

What’s your idea of a rosy future?  Want all unions dissolved? Want your job shipped overseas? Want your public school system to be privatized? Want Social Security and Medicare privatized? Want environmental regulations gutted? Want corporations to set policy on just about every aspect of life? Want your taxes to go up while the mega-rich have theirs go down? Want the government to control a woman’s reproductive right? Want social programs eliminated? No safety nets?

Well, then vote republican!

But if republican economic power politics serves, at best, only about 2-3% of the electorate, what is there to worry about? Well, “lazy & stupid” is alive and well. If not, then how can the polls show Romney in a virtual tie with Obama? Not that Obama has lived up to his “change” mantra. But he isn’t going to rubber-stamp the blatant corporatocracy agenda of the neo-cons. Who are these “average” folk who, though average income types, support a slash and burn monetary policy that wants to provide for the wealthy at the expense of everyone else? It must be that lazy & stupid clan. That gullible, short-sighted, easily manipulated clan.: Is the fact that a woman can get a legal abortion driving them nuts? Vote republican. Is the possibility of two men or two women marrying one another drive them bat-shit? Vote republican. Do those signs in the stores written in Spanish make them resentful? Vote republican.  Does medical science’s desire to use embryonic stem cells for disease-curing research equal abortion and make them want to man their NRA approved assault weapons? Well, they can support the republicans, and when they die of liver cancer, feel satisfied that they protected that embryonic cell with their own lives. Lazy & stupid. They can support policies that will almost certainly make their quality of life worse in the years to come.  But they vote their  conscience, and their financial and physical health be damned, and that goes for the environment, too!  And when the plutocrats have control of it all, we’ll all really going to need an escape from reality when that different drummer leads us in a race to the bottom of a deep, dark hole. Your ever-more monopolistic telecommunications company will have you paying non-negotiable, exorbitant rates that’ll make you nostolgic for what you’re being gouged for today; but given the depths to which you’ll have descended, the reception figures to be really bad as you surf the Net for an explanation…for some truth….

Cinco de Mayo. May 5th. No, it’s not Mexican independence day. The 5th of May marks the Mexican defeat of French troops at the Battle of Puebla in 1862. Let’s celebrate, amigos.  What were the French doing in Mexico then? Well, they were there to collect a debt. Does it make any difference why they were there, really?  Did the French learn anything by their defeat? Seems not, since theywere defeated by Vietnamese forces in the 1950s. Call it history’s business-as-usual. There’s plenty of misadventures in the history books.  War and peace. Heaven and hell.  A fight to the finish. Love and hate. To the victor goes the spoils, blah blah.   Can’t we all just bloody well get along? Don’t hold your breath.  Racial, ethnic and religious factors spark a lot of conflict. You don’t need a history book, just turn on a newscast. It’s a wounded madhouse!  It’s enough to drive one to drink…

…and disturb one’s sleep.

Reality can be hard to swallow. So, how do we cope?  You need to change the mental scenery, and one strategy or another can help. Maybe a few brews cut it for some, but for others…the booze or even a hit of MaryJane can’t cut through the muck that seemingly darkens the human soul and triggers so much external and internal conflict.  Need a distraction? Need something that’ll really knock you into a new state of mind? Not alcohol, not cigarettes, not your teenage son’s pot, or even those prescription drugs you’ve been abusing. You need to blot it all out! Well, there’s a market for such a need…

…cue the drug cartels, especially those Mexican cartels. They supply the real mind-benders that’ll alter whatever reality is causing one some angst. Angst? These illicit business honchos really have a lot of people jittery. Cue the cops. Authorities on both sides of the Mexican border are busy trying to win another battle of historic proportions, the War on Drugs;  the news continues to report (and show)  corpses, many headless or otherwise dismembered. The dead are usually members of a rival cartel. Turf wars. To better serve their customers, and control the market, a few heads have to roll, ok?  Hey, it’s a business model.  Remember the immortal words of Gordon Gecko: greed is good. Why share the market when you can dominate it? Ask Apple or Wal-Mart about that concept. So, what do the cartels supply their consumers with?:  blow, snow, skag, flake, nose candy, blue heaven, poppers, snappers, ludes, horse or shrooms, among street names for heroin, cocaine, meth and beyond, each of a potential lethal endgame.

And the obvious dangers of such consumption never seem to hurt the cartel operation’s bottom line. Business never seems to slack off.   There’s always someone needing that fix, from the people of privilege to the the denizens of Desolation Row.  Angst is a pervasive part of having a heartbeat, apparently, for many of all income and class designations.

In pursuit of happiness… 

… so give me a valium, a vicodin or two, a line to snort, a needle and a spoon, that’ll be my retort, a reply to my disappointment, a soothing psychic ointment, relief that can’t come too soon.  Give me librium or give me meth!  Give me a new vision, a glittering temple of the mind, a psychedelic shrine, a serene scene for the soul. Beam me up, send me along, make me whole, make me strong; our nada who art in nada…nada be thy name…

Or suck it up, you weak kneed wusses and just have a Corona with a lime, and recall Puebla, back in time…and nevermind…nevermind.

May 1, 2012. May Day. A celebration of labor, workers, unions, brotherhood. If the old Soviet Union were still chugging along on its creaky ideological tracks, there’d be a  May Day parade in Moscow, and then on May 9th, a “victory day” procession, with lots of imposing weaponry rolling down a street fronting a balcony from which fossilized Soviet leadership would gaze down and nod (barely) in approval.  This display of supposed Soviet military might was essentially an in your face jab at its Cold War rival, the U.S. of A.  But alas, no more Soviet Union. Back to being Mother Russia–for better or worse, and that’s depending on who one talks to who occupies the present Russia but clearly remembers its past as well. The Cold War is over. R.I.P. The U.S. has now replaced communism with terrorism for a new boogeyman, with 911 setting the table for some creepy, fear-mongering extremist views of how to make the USA safe from the likes of Osama bin Laden. I say “the likes” of OBL, since a year ago on May 1, 2011, American military forces found him and killed him (a tip of the hat to Navy Seal Team Six). However, we’re still, apparently, terribly afraid of his “organization” since we continue to spend billions of dollars and lose many military and civilian lives in Afghanistan in order to…uh…in order to…well fuck if I can figure why U.S. troops are still over there. At least the Cold War made sense in terms of the then Superpower status of the USA & the Soviet Union & the nuclear arms race that fueled foreign, military & diplomatic policy for the two countries. The USSR was a real threat,( as was the U.S. to the Kremlin) and the 1962 Cuban missile Crisis proved it. Khrushchev blinked first, and the rest of the world wiped the sweat off its brow. Our recent and ongoing military actions, on the other hand, lack clarity and distinct purpose. The U.S. is fighting a “war” against terrorism, but that amorphous enemy wears no uniform and is hard to locate.  Afghanistan now, and the absurd waste of life & money incurred by George Bush’s Iraq invasion (based on prevarication, deception & cynicism)  seem to serve little rational purpose in our post-911 world. Not that Iraq or Afghanistan were/are actual wars but military occupations. Regardless, the lies, deception & cynical motives remain even now with President Obama in charge. He won’t simply bring the troops home, although the majority of Americans want him to do just that. Obama may be a Harvard grad but he displays an inept knowledge of 20th century military history. The Red Army tried to muscle its will  & wrath on the Afghans through most of the 1980s, and finally bailed out after realizing its no-win reality.  Obama could even recall our own military failure in Vietnam as a history lesson, but noooo!  The more things change….the more they stay insane.

The Soviet Union, for numerous reasons, collapsed after 70 years of  “communist utopia” that was, of course utopian of, for & by the privileged few at the expense of everyone else living in a dystopia. But it did collapse without the U.S. having to set foot on Russian soil or put U.S. troops at risk. Now, we invade other countries that cannot possibly pose a serious threat to our way of life (just as we did with Viet Nam) while making U.S.citizens adhere to the fear-mongering precepts laid out by the Homeland Security Act & other draconian, constitution-bashing policies (who needs the 1st & 4th Amendments? we suspect everyone of being a possible terrorist equally). This post-911 strategy suggests, strongly, the late Osama bin Laden is still way ahead on points in this new “us vs.them” paradigm of the new millennium. He may be as dead as the Soviet Union, but every time a 5 year-old or a 85 year-old gets body searched at the airport, and more security cameras keep watch on average, unsuspecting  citizens, and warrantless wiretaps and over-reaching police powers are granted, his visage haunts and taunts Americans who are constantly being told to stay afraid, stay very afraid.

George Orwell & bin Laden might be somewhere in the next realm, each snickering sardonically over what has come to pass. Orwell’s Big Brother concerned a frightful future for England, not the United States, but his writings resonate bitterly with so much surveillance legislation having been passed by congress, the latest, pending a vote is called  CISPA . This nefarious piece of congressional tinkering would let the government snoop us via our cyberspace data. What right to privacy? Not in the War on Terror! Bin Laden sought to punish the U.S. for its perceived hypocritical arrogance toward foreign governments that it supports when convenient, then exploits as needed, such as bin Laden himself when he was fighting against the Soviet army in Afghanistan and getting subsidized financially in his effort, and Saddam Hussein in Iraq when he was fighting againt Iran and also supported in that effort by U.S. aid. George and Osama may not be friendos in the cosmos, but they do have a rather bitterly ironic common ground between themselves in light of what recent history has documented on this 2012 May Day.  Come another dozen May Days, I shutter to see where our current path may take the U.S. There’s a lot to be afraid of, for certain, but as far as I’m concerned, it has nothing to do with Islamic extremists anymore. I’d take the Cold War over this insidious fascism infesting American politics any day. Those who are willing to give up some freedom for security, deserve neither, as that saying goes.  The USA/USSR tensions ended well…for the US.  Now, there seems to never be an end in sight as far as current American military and domestic anti-terrorist actions go. Next stop, North Korea or Iran. May Day. Brotherhood. Labor. Let’s have a parade…

Good riddance, 2011. Sack the coach! Throw the bums out! If I never see another…  Just once I’d like to see…  You fill in the rest. I, for one, have little faith that the world-at-large or the local village quite small, are going to see much improvement in the level of civility of fellow man. The more things change the more they seem to change for the worse. Lead stories: suicide bombers, remote-control drones inadvertently targeting civilians in the course of endless wars; yellow police tape marking off  various urban kill zones, including headless corpses left lying around Mexican landscapes compliments of drug cartels to act as sensational scarecrows for all to see; and generally all the flotsom and jetsom of modern living: skin heads, dickheads, dipshits, dumbasses, dingdongs, nitwits, halfwits, numbskulls, digitally dazed zombies, the impolite, the oblivious, the petty, the haughty, the cheats, backstabbers, double-dealers, two-timers, con artists, scammers, schemers, cheaters and chumps. Oh, there’s much more, but you KNOW what I’m talking about. And it’s been dangerous out there for a long time. None of these bits of anecdotal evidence are really “news”.  History, to paraphrase a famous quote, is a nightmare from which I need to awake. After the rubble and ruin has been academically analyzed, there’s always new chapters for the coming year’s tomes on the times in which we live, or have lived. There are always feel good stories, too, tho more often than not, they derive from some initial  outrage: Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords making a miraculous recovery from a lunatic gun shot to her head; countless war vets overcoming loss of limbs with the help of prosthetics and perseverance; 911 survivors; those rehabbing from an encounter with a drunk driver, or a drive-by shooter; someone finally being cleared on all charges via DNA testing–20 years after being sent to prison, and similar tales of straightening out one’s life following a vicious twist of fate. Then there’s Mother Nature adding to the angst via tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes.  More subtlely we have the politics of greed and corruption, the haves and the have-nots, the pampered, the persecuted, the passed-over.  But maybe, just maybe, in some barely perceptible way, 2012 will be more civil, more sedate. Next year is going to be different! Under new management. A new game plan. A fresh infusion of comradery and compassion! This year is going to be the year! Hope! Change we can really believe in and confirm! Reforms, new regulations, fairness and balance. Dare we dream?  Certainly. Dream on. Turn over, go back to sleep and drift off again. All will be made well…or all may be Orwell. Which way trends the tilt? I want to be more positive, and see the world become a quieter, more cooperative place, but history won’t let me wake up to such a  brave new world.

As a college instructor who teaches  speech and media classes, I hear a lot of arguments formally advanced during persuasive speaking rounds. Recently, there’s been a repetition of one “hot button” issue, the controversial “conceal & carry” laws that are in effect in some states, but not all. The majority of speakers who sound off  on this gun control issue are in favor of conceal & carry laws. They’re entitled to their opinions, and the better speakers arm themselves with indispensable argumentative “ammo” known as credible research, typically statistics that seemingly indicate crime rates go down where citizens are allowed to pack heat. Well, statistics are always subject to close scrutiny, but if the source is credible (a study produced by an entity that has no financial or political conflict of interest on the issue) then points can be scored for “cherry picking” the data and putting a particular supporting “spin” on their interpretation. I, personally, however, can’t fathom how more guns equates with greater safety. Unless, of course, we have passed some disturbing point-of-no-return when it comes to the massive amount of firearms already on the streets, legal or illegal. Guns are meant  to inflict serious injury at the least, and fatal wounds at worst (or best, depending on the situation, I suppose). Sportsmen know this, and use their weapons accordingly. Why, however, a mature adult wants to put on camouflage, creep around wooded areas and cap a deer or duck is a matter for clinical psychiatry, I suppose. One could moralize on sport hunting, but conceal & carry laws are supposedly about safety and security. Okay. But still, how does an even greater proliferation of weapons meant to maim and kill make society safer and more secure? I can’t ignore the tortured logic that resides in such a calculus. The USA is rather gun crazy. I know I can find credible evidence that supports that assertion. But this is a blog, not an academic article demanding a bibliography. My instincts and my ability to flag news stories both local and national attest that we are already awash with weaponry of various calibers and heft. Gangs, guns, crime. Freelancers looking for a quick score. Reach for the sky! Put everything in the pouch and don’t move for 5 minutes… Right. Police? Well, they apparently are not large enough in number or competent enough to offset the badasses, otherwise why the call for conceal & carry? Okay, but what about the mindset of some folks? Hot-tempered. Brash. Impetuous. Impulsive. They’re out there. There’s likely one not too far away at any moment. Hell, you or I may be that very angry, frustrated, bitter, alienated soul. (Okay, not YOU, but that guy over there, looking a bit fidgety and snaked-eyed?). I prefer not to have to contemplate hidden heat on all comers. The odds are there’s going to be a showdown sooner than later, folks.  That’s in the abstract, though. When I said I flag the news stories that really give me pause, I refer to recent events such as the 30 year-old mother that gunned down her children and live-in boyfriend, then turned the gun on herself. Then, not a week or so later, on Christmas day, a Santa Claus- costume-clad member of a family shows up, pulls out his concealed gun and kills his family, then himself. VAriations like these unfortunately abound. The high-profile cases, such as Columbine, of course, or more recently Gabrielle Giffords shine a glaring light on what guns can do in the wrong hands of the wrong people at the very worst time. But this is the country  that, in spite of having John and Bobby Kennedy shot dead, along with M.L.King, Malcolm X and president Reagan wounded in 1981, still has a love affair with guns. Did I say love? Well, love is inherently irrational, is it not? So, let’s all lock and load, and carry our hearts on our sleeves, and our Glock 9s in a holster.

June 6, 1944. The Allied invasion of the northern coast of France. The push-back of the German army, and their ultimate defeat, along with Italy and Japan in the last real war. I say real, because WWII had distinct consequences for all countries involved. As an American, and the son of a WWII veteran (I myself served during the Vietnam conflict) I deeply appreciate and admire how the Allied armies literally SAVED THE WORLD from the demented likes of Hitler and Hirohito. Sadly, on this 67th anniversary of D-Day, a current young generation seems to know so little about the enormity of what was at stake in the fight against fascism. In the ensuing years since the end of WWII, we Americans have seen what appears to be a series of questionable military “adventures”: Korea, Vietnam, Gulf I & Gulf II, along with our presence in Afghanistan. The military and the media call these actions “war,” but really, why are they fought? What freedoms of ours in the U.S. did we seriously risk losing? My generation arguably lost the Vietnam conflict, since the North eventually took over South Vietnam after we bailed out in 1975. What was the consequence for life in America? Nothing, other than our prestige. Those who died fighting in Vietnam (or Korea, considered a “draw,” as if it were a chess game or a boxing match) certainly suffered a consequence, but did our government surrender to an enemy? Hell no! We just said, “we’re splitting” and sent the troops home. Imagine if we had done the same in WWII!! Absurd, of course, because we were actually, honestly fighting for the American way of life then. Now we fight for slogans (and Big Lies). We fight for the military-industrial complex. For oil. Oh, we responded to 911 by going into Afghanistan, which is now a ridiculous quagmire for our troops. Iraq? Please! That was Bush II propagandizing and bullying his way to an illegal invasion of a sovereign country–that had nothing to do with 911. Anyway, these post-Second World War incursions have never been declared a “war” by any Congress (as is supposed to be required to commit troops to combat). The Soviet Union is history, so we no longer have the commie boogeyman.  Now we have terrorism; but other than finally killing Osama Bin Laden, I’m not sure what the hell we’ve accomplished other than getting thousands more of our troops killed with vague and vain military planning. This bit of a rant may seem anti-military, but it’s not. We need to defend ourselves, of course, but from whom, and why? Bin Laden is dead. Why are we still in Iraq and Afghanistan? Why did we invade Vietnam? Korea? Grenada? Because we could? Until there’s tangible,  perceptible, consequences for the public-at-large regarding how we fare in fighting perceived enemies, the only people who pay attention to what’s happening in these conflicts are the soldiers actually fighting them and their family and loved ones. I guarantee that was not the case when we fought in WWII. The entire country knew what was on the line. We came together as a country. Rosie the Riveter! That we prevailed was all that mattered, and thank goodness we did. We knew that there would have been great–and supremely negative–consequences for the USA if we failed to crush Hitler’s army and Japan’s as well. Maybe I’d still be part of this world, but what kind of world would a victorious Hitler/Hirohito be like? For those ever dwindling numbers of WWII vets, thanks for really, truly, fighting a fight that had to be fought.