Quibbles and Bits, The Kids Shall Lead Them Edition...

Thoughts about the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting on February 14th... 

>> As I saw the story on my Facebook feed, I recalled the Columbine Massacre of nineteen years ago (April 20th, 1999).   I remembered the TV images, as well as the 911 calls and footage from Michael Moore's Bowling For Columbine, and wondering then why the hell it is that kids have to now worry about if one day, they go to school in the morning and end their school day in a box.   I remember the father of one of the victims, speaking to a crowd of mourners and supporters at a rally, detailing how his son faced his death (a gunshot to the face), and how a Tech-9 semi-automatic is not used to kill deer.   I felt for him – in that state, it took a lot of courage for him to publicly speak on this issue, especially in light of how the NRA and their members, for decades, have intimated most critics into silence.   I wonder what he's thinking now, nineteen years later, knowing that his son would have been 37 had he survived.    

>> Emma Gonzales's speech needs no adornment or explanation from yours truly.   Here's the transcript – I encourage you to read it.  

>> This episode, like all of the school shootings since before and after Columbine (Virginia Tech, Santee, Red Lake, Sandy Hook, etc.), is yet another lesson, as yet unlearned, about the sheer power of political influence and money when wielded by an entity with absolutely no interest in the public interest.  The National Rifle Association virtually owns the Republican Party, with several key lawmakers (including Senators Jodi Ernst and Mitch McConnell) taking millions of dollars from the NRA during their senatorial careers.   This is why they offer only "thoughts and prayers" during these times – because their silence has been bought at a premium.     

>> Don't underestimate the kids taking the leadership on this issue – now that the adults have proved themselves incapable.   We may actually see some real change happen within the next election cycle,  such as effective gun regulations and registration (at a minimum), and the outright banning of weapons of war such as the Tech-9 and the AR-15.     

>> About the weapons used in these massacres: with few exceptions, they all have been carried out with military-grade automatic or semi-automatic weapons.   As stated earlier, these weapons are not used for hunting – that's not their primary purpose.   Anybody who calls himself or herself a hunter, who says that he or she needs one of these military-grade weapons to hunt, is probably a bad shot and perhaps should not be operating a firearm of any kind.   Their only purpose is to KILL PEOPLE, and should only be in the hands of highly trained individuals such as those in the military.   So yes, I say ban them from the untrained and the civilian sectors.   We can have a grace period which allows owners to turn in these weapons, with compensation, and afterwards enforce a ban with stiff fines and imprisonment as a deterrence.    

>> To any of you who may be reading this from outside the United States and are as bewildered as many of us Americans are about the alarming frequency of these shootings, I think the discussion needs to be had about just what the gun represents in this country.   I've heard many stories and many takes about the meaning and role of firearms in this country's recent and distant history, but they all point, eventually, to the same root as far as I'm concerned.   Said in its simplest terms: the gun represents power.   Specifically, the gun represents the ultimate power one human being can have over another living thing (including human) – the ability to end that living thing's life, and to do so instantly and easily.  Throughout our history, this power has manifested itself in the conquest of the continent and genocide of our Native population, the subjugation and enslavement of the Africans brought here on ships in human trafficking, the continued domination of those same people through the Jim Crow era and beyond, and on, and on, and on.    This power is seen by many, especially by a core of NRA members, as being sacrosanct and an absolute right of the people, and they point to the second part of the Second Amendment as their proof.   This convenient-for-them reading of the Second Amendment does not consider that this right is contingent on "a well-regulated militia", and also does not consider that in the 1700's, muskets were the weapons used by armies and kept by privateers.   How could the Founding Fathers have envisioned the kinds of firepower and technology in use today?   

>>To those who may argue that an armed populace is a defense against a "tyrannical government", I say this:  your great and wonderful firearms are POPGUNS when compared to what the American military uses (and trains their people to use).   Try again.    

I'm sure that there will be more to say on this subject as time passes and developments...develop.    I wish not.   

Quibbles and Bits, Catching Up Without Catching Hell Edition

More nuggets for your mental mastication.... 

>>T-Rumps's Parade:  I'm trying to discern just what T-Rump's "logic" is behind his request.   He sees France,  North Korea, and other countries parading their weapons packages, equipment, and other phallic-looking devices down the main drags of their respective capital cities, so why not here?  Other than stroking his ego to his satisfaction, the other net effects are all negative:  unnecessary expense, torn-up roads and other infrastructure, personnel diverted to provide security and operations for the industrial-sized stroking of T-Rump's ego, etc.   We don't need to parade anything about our military at this point – we already have enough nukes to reduce the Earth's crust to radioactive toast  many times over, and boy, does the rest of the world know THIS.    

>>Izvini Pajalusta: I'm not sure that anybody could have predicted two years ago, that we would see a return of McCarthyism – but this time, with the Democratic Party being the perpetrators of said political illness.   I still find the case against Russia incomplete at best, and suspect at worst.   Recall that in the book Shattered (pertaining to the 2016 presidential campaign), that less than 24 hours after Clinton's ignominious defeat, that plans were already afoot to roll out the anti-Russia narrative.   That, combined with all of the hearsay being repeated by Big Media about how this agency said this, and this person with a big-sounding title said that, leads me to the conclusion that nobody is right on this.   I don't know, honestly, who to believe.  

>>Internet Censorship: I have been a denizen of Facebook for the last couple of years, using it as my primary outlet for my political activism and commentary.   My newsfeed used be chock-a-block of postings from alternative news sites and lefty opinion groups, but now I'm seeing the number of posts drop considerably over the last several months.  I've also heard about sites like my personal favorites Truthdig and Truthout lose a considerable number of Google page hits (and thus, revenue) because of Google's change in search algorithm.  In seeing the countless other examples of "adjustments" in search algorithms, Ajit Pai's recent demolition of Obama's Net Neutrality regulations, and other factors, it's easy to draw a conclusion – however conspiracy-based it may be – that there is a concerted effort by the elites to re-gain control of the messaging that goes through the internet.   There would certainly be a vested interest in doing so:  Trump's election has been attributed, in part, to the political establishment losing control over the messaging.  Let's face it – Trump treated the entire campaign, at least initially, as a publicity campaign designed to further his brand and fill his coffers.   I doubt that he or any of his inner circle expected to get anywhere near the White House, let alone win it outright.   If the "machine" worked properly, Hillary Clinton would be our president – she had the entire media machine behind her, she had Hollywood, she even had noted Republicans behind her.   But she was up against a master of media manipulation: Trump plays the media and the press like a Stradivarius.    

More later, including the recent Florida school shooting.