After the atrocity of Sandy Hook i really thought there was a chance for things to change but fuckin hell did i underestimate the love that white American males have for their shiny pieces of steel, and yes do not delude yourself that this is all about white American males because take a fucking gander at any NRA rally and that's pretty much all you'll see, the far right mouth pieces financed by the gun lobby did their usual grandstanding about "now is not the time to talk about gun laws, it's time for thoughts and prayers" and it was in that moment that any sentient, empathetic, compassionate human being said to themselves that this place is done, for all the talk of the children and protecting the unborn and all the other bullshit the Conservatives like to trot out there was one thing that was crystal clear... a large, moneyed and influential part of our society valued firearms over the lives of children... and anybody else for that matter...
Of course what i really found interesting yesterday was that even the "fake news" (per the Orange Shitgibbon) outlets i get my info from seemed to keep leaving out that shithead shooter was a WHITE MALE, make no mistake, had this fucking crackpot been anything other than Caucasian you'd have been told at every turn the color of his skin and the title of his holy book but i actually had to go and dig up what the asshole looked like cuz i wanted to know, because by and large the assholes who commit these atrocities are overwhelmingly white males...
There is no debate on gun control in this country, in the simplest terms we have none. In the civilized world no place is more violent than this one and the main reason for that is ease and access to firearms, i know, i used to run with guys who often told me if i needed one that a few hundred bucks could get me a freshly stolen Glock with no serial numbers. For the record i never have or will carry a gun. Never. My lovely mother and her husband have conceal/carry permits... they're both over 70. I've made the argument that if you want to own one than you should read that 2nd Amendment and understand the part about the well regulated militia. See when you're a young country with no standing army (cuz you can't pay one) you sort of need an armed citizenry in case some other country shows up and decides to invade, that said anyone who wants to own a gun in the modern age should understand that when duty calls they will be called up and given a few weeks training and then shipped to exotic lands in the name of freedom and democracy and yes i don't give two shits if you're a 70-something year old man, bon fucking voyage... of course that will never happen, like most things in this place it's all about the money...
The simple fact is no amount of gun laws will stop this shit when any idiot can legally get one so easily. You see Ex -Accountant Gambling Real Estate dickhead was the most normal sane guy in the world according to his family and various gun store owners, even as he stock-piled an arsenal, of course he could have been nuts all along or maybe one day he snapped or watched Falling Down one to many times and then it doesn't matter if he wasn't mentally ill when he bought them or not the fact is he is mentally ill now and has the fucking things. We all know the result. So when the right to bear arms infringes upon the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness one of them has to go, i'm lobbying to keep the latter and scrap the former, i don't think that's a real hard thing to figure out but here in the land of milk and honey and all the bullets you can carry it seems that it is...
Then Tom Petty died.
If you were a kid growing up in the Rust Belt in the late 70's and 80's Tom was always around, on the radio, on your older brother or sister's stereo, he was on the MTV back when they played videos and shit instead of running 24 hours of programs on teen moms and moron muscle heads, the video for Don't Come Around Here No More might still be one of the top two or three videos ever made, fuck Thriller at the end when Alice is a cake and they're all eating her freaked me the fuck out, besides the song is fucking great as well, so while i'm not some huge fan of Tom Petty i'm well versed in his music cuz it was part of the background noise of my youth, if you're a (wait for it ) white kid from the Rust Belt you know the words to Free Fallin and You Got Lucky and Don't Do Me Like That for reasons you don't even know, you just know 'em, Honeybee might be one of the best songs ever written, (don't tell your mama/ don't tell your sister/ don't tell your boyfriend- sounds like something straight out of the young Kono's mouth)...
and so to compound the tragedy we lost one of our great rock and roll artists, while under the neon of the Vegas strip a bunch of kids lost their mothers or fathers, parents lost kids, husbands lost wives and wives lost husbands, just another shit day in America... but the 24 hour news cycle rolls on (remember the 3 million people on that island surrounded by "big big water") and by next week we'll be talking about something else, except for the ones who are burying their loved ones, they'll still by asking why? and quite frankly so will i... (so this one here goes out to all those hurting and devastated and wondering if there is any beauty or light left in this place... I'm not big on hope, but i'm hoping there is...)
6 comments:
Tom Friedman wrote a great Op-Ed piece in the Times about how it's a shame the massacre wasn't committed by a muslim because if it had been, something would be done about the GUNS. But since it's one of US we'll all take a step back to pray and use Old Glory to wipe the tears from our eyes. Mitch McConnell, that basset hound, said this is no time for politics. Well, he couldn't be more wrong.
Tom Petty could only sing one note but, boy, it was a good one. He has a cheesy song called 'The Waiting is the Hardest Part' that got me through a lot of waiting.
i've been trying to hold my tongue - well, my fast-typing fingers - on social media. Those who have been saying "can we not politicize this? at least wait until the bodies are cold and in the ground?" i finally blew my nut and went off on an old high school friend who posted that. ALL tragedies are political when they can be mitigated by better policy and legislation! AND THE BODIES WILL NEVER ALL BE COLD BECAUSE THESE MOTHERFUCKING WHITEBOYZ WILL JUST SHOOT UP SOME MORE NEXT WEEK! By that rationale, there will NEVER be a good time to discuss gun control because there will be another, and another...
This country gave up any semblance of genuine concern for the impact of gun violence after Sandy Hook. We accepted that dead children would be a price we could afford for freedom to own whatever god damned weaponry we choose... Fuck. This. Shit.
Exile- i disagree with that Op-ed, if it was done by someone of color or Muslim it would just give the Orange Shitgibbon and his base more fuel for their fire, more walls and more bans and a need to make guns even more readily available. Pulse Nightclub could have been that, the shooter claimed allegiance to isis (when really he was just a repressed gay man) and still nothing was done. Jimmy Kimmell said it best, the NRA owns these bitches in congress.
Daisy- What you said. ;)
I never comment at this length but this is a big one and if I have to apologize for length may it be in the form of clarity.
while other traits such as race, class, gender, sexual orientation and the usual insipid litany of descriptors like "normal guy", "terrorist", "unhinged", "lone wolf type" get trotted out, rode and hung up wet, the one sad feature that shows up in the profile of contemporary American mass shooters - more than any, kept suppressed more than any - is a history of mental illness (so told) and a tandem history of alteration (so autopsied) of the shooter's brain ... the latter c/o products from corporate entities protected and promoted by the ghouls of 1) big pharma lobby and 2) big insurance lobby, you know, 3) big gun lobby's kid twin sisters whom no one, absolutely no one, is to regard askance at their grotesque aptitude for destroying human life. together they create a catastrophic triumvirate of common factors, but only one gets the attention and the subsequent decontextualized (useless) debate: big gun lobby mostly takes the (pardon) heat, which it can, for now at least, while gruesome twosome continue their shenanigans unscrutinized. why? I don't know. people are distracted by things that go Bang, perhaps.
it could be and has been waffled on about that the organism America, as dominant creature, is in its death throes as such. and as an organism begotten of violence, risen to prominence by rapine, massacre, a psychosis (see manifest destiny) it is now in its late agony swallowing a fist-full of personal reality-altering pills - reality as it stands is too painful - and blowing it's own head off as it takes a selfie. in this line of thinking, abject violence is the terminal expression of the organism's existence, one shooter's mass killing, and the next one, and the one after that, can be viewed long as a pattern of social - even cultural - suicide and decay, and hey, capitalism will always solve the labor problem in ingeniously perverse ways, like say, the labor problem of genocide, right? ...
then it could also be argued that this brave new fearful psychic highway we're strapped onto, where mass shootings with high-capacity weapons become a burning commodity of spectacle, via the nattering mutants on 24/7 S&M news, is but a crass and high speed re-pave on the overwhelmingly brutal roadtrip of western history. it was always the same highway. McCarthy's Road comes - ragged and bleakly - to mind. I take the latter argument and it's one I take pain and frustration to articulate. more legislation? a fucking dream. America runs on killing, and so do its legal mechanisms, its media, its galactic bankroll, especially killing of its own. it is the nature of imperium, not of Americans (whatever those are) per se, that does this.
I was in a small artsy enclave in the desert of southwest Texas during both the massacre in Las Vegas and the two deaths of Tom Petty. much displayed cheeky remembrances of Petty, though I heard not a whisper of the concert-going murder victims a few states over, though one music festival had just happened in the place where I was and another was to follow. and just as you said brother, it is not at all surprising. here in this weirdo outpost where pacifist gem hunter and combat-ready SHTF gun fanatic, undocumented immigrant roadbuilder and un-local border cop, apathetic lumpen and ultra-conscious cosmopolitan all converge and share civil space. ... you could read all the prophetic fiction there is or watch every dystopian film yet to be made and nothing in any imaginer's canon could could sum up the phantasmagoria upon which tenuous society walks, upright, grazing and saluting itself.
Seems like you were in a bad place when you wrote this. It was a rough week for me too. 50 dead and then Petty. Brutal.
Something has to be done about the guns. And it certainly isn't happening with the shit-bird we have as president right now.
It's God damn tough to hear the news each day. Sometimes I need a break to just put on music (mostly metal) and ignore all the bad and fucked up news that keeps coming my way every day.
Kid- comment of the year is now over, you win hands down... and if i ever print up those special edition Asshat Lounge t-shirts you my brother will get the first one, take care of yourself and the lady out there in the badlands..
Dr. Noisewater- believe it or not i was not in a bad place at all, the universe cares not a bit about us bi-peds with opposable thumbs, we are a violent and stupid lot who are ever more ready to plumb the depths of idiocy until we eradicate ourselves from the planet, that is unless us peace-loving artist thinker types somehow convince the masses otherwise... of course the "powers that be" won't let that happen, Kid lays that out pretty well up above, if we ever got close they'd most likely shoot us...
Post a Comment