Rumors and Propaganda

"I've told people that hunting for spies is like trying to find a ghost in the fog. You've got to believe first of all, that they're there. And you have to have enough drive to keep looking."
- Scott Carmichael, Criminal Investigator (Ret.), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA, the Intelligence arm of the Pentagon).

That is how it is with hunting spies. As confusing as it is, this is also how it is with conspiracy theories or divining political maneuvering in real time. While spy hunters are in dangerous intellectual territory by seeking a foregone conclusion, it is typically after being alerted to an actual threat based on real intelligence, analyzed by actual intelligence, and they then seek more evidence to support it.

Civilians, amateurs, in fact most Americans do not have that expertise and field experience.

So what they "find" is typically mere conjecture, pure and simple. Pattern finding of coincidences or potential for something where there really is no something there to be found. Much of that has to do with "feel good" findings, possible and sometimes not even plausible situations that support their polarized contentions and beliefs about things that simply do not exist.

And I'm not even getting into things like "confirmation bias".

Yet for some, their nice and tidy faux beliefs serve their purpose in the moment, if not in an historical context.

That is to say, it may be information that travels like wildfire across the nation. It may even keep (and has kept) political candidates from office. Only coming out much later that it was false or completely fabricated information, depending on whether it was respectively, rumor or propaganda; misinformation or disinformation submitted out onto civil society with purely partisan political objectives.

Though sometimes it is just a money generating effort, or a publicity stunt by typically right wing media if not by an opponent's political enemies.

This is a problem with much of our news media today as instant information, twenty-four hour news cycles, and for profit news overwhelms facts and reality. They move so quickly that there is little or no time for due diligence on their part, for triangulation of sources and info so that in the end we are getting information that can easily be "off", off kilter, or completely wrong.

The speed of news today can do irrevocable damage before reality hits. Too often too many never hear a retraction, or a rectification. While those who did the damage even if innocently, get completely away with what is in effect a cancer on society. Many times bad information is not later corrected or apologized for at all.

Other we get news that is simply describing what we can clearly see onscreen in a redundant report that truly serves no purpose whatsoever other than to fill air time. All this leads to a bubble, a frustration, a desire in the individual to find closure when much of the time there simply isn't any to be found, and perhaps never will be.

Especially when the information being shared is intentionally wrong.

Do try to be aware, but also try to "find" what really is going on when it truly exists. Speak as if you are offering conjecture when you are, because much of the time that is what you are sharing. Pure conjecture. Do not present it as if it is fact just because you think you have "found" something, have been told by others that it is true, or simply wish it were true out of spite.

Rumors and Propaganda.

When I was in the military one of their biggest efforts on a daily basis was rumors and propaganda running wild. At first I thought it was stupid when I heard of it in basic training. Then with our quarterly security indoctrinations and seeing these things in practice among fellow military and even their families, I came to understand what the military has long known. The sheer destructive power of those two things.

We actively worked to keep rumors and propaganda in check. Because when we didn't, bad things happened. Just as we can see today in America with at times absolute nonsense spreading like wildfire.

Today these are frequently compartmentalized on the internet in graphical memes. Memes as most of us know, can be quite entertaining, funny and useful. Especially in a sharing facts (not factoids, false or unproven facts) even in using sarcasm against lies, propaganda and foolishness. But they can also be destructive as perhaps you have already seen, as most of us have.

When I was young and in the military one of us would tell our Sgt. what we had heard, concerned about it, looking for comment about it. Much of the time he would consider it, then blow it off as just more Rumors and Propaganda. And just about all of the time he was right. It saved us a lot worrying over a lot of nonsense.

It saved us grouping together against the "other", whomever it was the traveling nonsense was about. Much of the time it would be able the higher ups. Therein you get that polarization of us against them and in a structure where there is a command line, control needs to be maintained. Even if it is merely control by truth and reality over that of incorrect information..

We had been told back then that the military was the "perfect society", a microcosm of overall America. We had to keep rumors and such in check or they would be even more devastating than they can and have been in America at large.

If only America at large showed as much attention and concern over rumors and propaganda as we did in the military, we might not be in such a morass of ignorance and even stupidity. Instead sadly, many people latch onto nonsense and share it as fact. The result of which is quite obvious.

We need to try to realize whenever we are hearing or sharing information what might be rumors or propaganda rather than as solid news and information. If we do that, we will save us all a great deal of what is currently going on all across this country. Lies and misery. Lots of confusion and frustration observing whatever information can be found. Even incorrect information, because it is up against such a strong desire for understanding and closure. We may not now or within the timeframe necessary, ever really know the truth.

Especially if we do not have the capacity to understand it in all its complexities.
Especially when at times, simply none can be found.

Let me restate my point and put it into words some will more betterer understand even more clearily....

I'm not saying I'm any kind of a genius here. Or that I'm an expert. Though I do seemingly and not infrequently have more of a handle on the extent and correlation of some of these things than do some who speak so boldly, so loudly, who do not think they can ever be incorrect. Or who admit they can be incorrect, but never really exhibit that.

Sometimes these are people who very possibly do know better, even if they can't openly admit it even to themselves. Sadly, if you are sharp, if you are the type to acknowledge these things, if you do try to curb bad information, then you may be some of those who think this is you too, a part of the masses of people sharing nonsense, when very possibly it's simply not the case.

 That, is the kind of murkiness we're dealing with here. Not all of us realize that and as I have said, some of those who have loudest voices tend to be the most ignorant of their inconsistencies and incorrectness.

All I'm saying really is this, and excuse my vulgar irritation here:

F*cking pay attention people!
Because some of you out there are just spewing total bullsh*t all over the rest of us!
It's damaging what you love most. What we all love most. Our country.

 At times it's even going against your own true desires and best interests.
Not to mention it makes you look like a complete tool to those of us who can see it.
You will lose in the end because reality and truth have to win out. Truth falls into a slot that fits with reality. Lies disintegrate over time because the bulk of history won't fit up to it. It takes time, but  eventually it happens.

 As for those of you who are not sharing all this nonsense....
Speak, the Hell, up! We need you!
Push back against ignorant bullies.
We need you but we need them too!
We need them to start seeing what they are doing
How they are going so far afield into our collective enemy's hands.

 Still there's hope. There's always a sun on the horizon.

 It's just a matter of how soon we want it to arrive. To shine on the lies and expose the truths. To warm us in its brilliance and wrap us in its protective arms of honesty and reality.

 It's really a matter of how long you may want to push back the inevitable in overtaking all the rumors and propaganda that we have been and will continue to be infected with.

 There is still hope. There is always hope.
It's just not based in lies, rumors or propaganda.

Surviving Our Decisions in Life

There is a lot going on right now. Race relations in America are strained, most notoriously between the Black community and police. There is a lot being discussed on that topic and I needed a break from it. I will just say until we fix the systemic issues involved, simply fixing racism won't fix this issue.

Black Lives Matter. Police Lives Matter. Most Blacks are good people, most police are good people. Some of what is going on has to do with guns, which is another issue. Cops are fearful as well as some of them being racist. Some of the police departments are oriented toward negative expectations about their Black community. Some Black communities are oriented toward damaging themselves.

As I said there is a lot being discussed elsewhere, and a lot that should be discussed on this.

However for this week's' blog I'm taking a different, albeit a somewhat relevant direction....

I admit it. I've made mistakes in life. We all have. Some of us just recognize it more than others. Or at all.

I've thought I was doing the right thing in the past, or that I was doing what seemed reasonable, only to find much later that I had over time gained the wisdom to see reality more clearly with the distance I had gained from those times and events. I always reflect on things.

I reflect on them even in the moment, as they are happening, considering them through various layers of meanings, and perspectives in real time. What some friends and family have called, "overthinking". At times it is a great benefit, at times a great detriment.

Yet, no one can see everything. And we all have our filters. We all are defective. We all are capable of great harm, as well as great good. Those who do not recognize that are called foolish, if not stupid. Those who see it and revel in their great good, who seek it out at all costs are called saints. While those enraptured by their capacity for great harm, who seek it and pleasure in it are called evil.

I've been married, let's say, three and a half times. I count that one as half as we hadn't actually gotten legally married but were together longer than what common law marriage is usually considered to be, though we do not have that in Washington state. But I felt she deserved that acknowledgement for our time together, for any burden I placed on her, for the great times we shared. To be fair to myself, she was at time a burden too, she had her own demons.

I don't know how she feels about all that. Because she appears to not want to talk to me anymore. Not since our last phone call in about 1988 and in some ways, I don't blame her. Sometimes it's best to move on, to leave the past in the past. Still as I pointed out, I like to reflect and part of that is to reconnect, review and put my understanding of myself, who I have been, in proper perspective.

I want to think I'm a good or even great person, but I've fallen down on that after reflecting with others on their shared memories with me. The flip side of that coin however is that I have also discovered after years of feeling bad about something in the past, that others saw my now ancient actions as having been far above expected behavior, and greatly appreciated. You just never know.

I prefer reality, both for myself and others. I want people to have a realistic view of what actually happened in the past. I want to be seen for my actions, either good or bad, accurately. Yet, sometimes, you cannot achieve that closure. And that, can be painful. So I've learned to let it go when that happens.

Sometimes it's just not worth the damage you get in seeking closure. Sometimes it is, and yet you will never find it for any variety of reasons. Sometimes that reason is another person's misperception of what happened. Sometimes, there is nothing you can do about that and you know, they will, you will, both die one day with that having never been rectified.

So when I think poorly of someone's actions in my past I try to keep that in mind. Maybe things weren't as I had perceived them, or how I remember them. Perhaps if we talked now I would discover what damage they did to me, was damage I had done to myself. Were things as I believed them to be, as I remember them? Certainly not always as I discovered in researching for a film I have written. It's now been at one production company, oddly enough, out of London. A very American mob film being reviewed by a very British film studio.

In 1974 I was eighteen. The screenplay about it is called Teenage Bodyguard. I came up with a more poetic title with, Slipping The Enterprise. The executive producer of the film studio said it reminded him of Ryan Gosling's film, A Place Beyond the Pine. I see it in two formats, as a biopic, what actually happened, enhanced to be more entertaining but sticking mostly to the truth of what happened, or a based on type of film where we could cut loose and just shoot for entertainment.

The story goes that I had spent a week with a strip club waitress back in 1974. A friend asked me to give a woman a ride who had been staying with him. When I got her to her new residence, she asked me to stay with her until she could leave town at the end of the week. IF I had a gun. Oddly enough, I did. And she could have made a worse choice in asking me. The local Tacoma mob back then called themselves, The Enterprise. They thought she had witnessed a murder. A murder that she believed they had committed but public records, even today seem to indicate it was a random killing by an anonymous killer.

During my research I came to discover that the "friend" I helped out in giving her a ride, was actually setting me up in a way. He was eliminating a threat to his safety by getting rid of the woman, and putting that threat squarely on my shoulders, probably rationalizing that wasn't the case and that I would drop her off somewhere (he didn't want to know, what was odd and the first warning sign), and that would be the end of it.

I had gone through decades of my life thinking we were friends and finally, over thirty years later came to discover he may have been putting my head on a chopping block. Life, isn't always how we think it is. Obviously.

I'm single now, unmarried since 2002. Single again since 2010 after a few girlfriends. Single to spend my spare time on writing and building a new career in order to leave an old one.

I had originally married the first time at twenty. Proud that I hadn't gotten married in my teens like some of my friends. After that marriage failed, I avoided marriage for some years. I was devastated that I had broken a vow. "My word is my bond", was a favorite saying of mine. In divorcing, I had broken my most powerful bond to date. I was proud many years later, of not having quickly jumped back into another potential mistake as so many do. See, I never wanted to break another vow.

After some years I did marry again. It was kind of against my better desires and I was pretty much pushed into it. Or pulled into it, depending on how you view it. Partially because I thought I owned who became my son's mother, for making me smile again. Partially because the woman from the half of a marriage had told me one day, long after we split up:

"Do something for me. The next girl who wants to marry you? If she wants to get married, just marry her. OK?" That kept resonating in my head for years. I had made her life miserable in not wanting to marry again. I told her we could end up together for the rest of our lives, I just don't want to marry again. But she never understood. We were both raised Catholic, but I was further down that road of casting off that desert religion for a more sane way of viewing life.

So I married again. I married out of obligation. Even though I knew it wasn't a good match for me. However in considering those who I had thought were a good match, they hadn't been either. So I thought if I tried someone I didn't think would be right for me, maybe I could get around making yet another mistake.

Of course, that one didn't work out either. Obviously. As a friend later said, "So you went from making decisions, to making no decision, or worse. Choosing what you thought was wrong. And you thought that was a good idea?"

Dumb and dumberer.

The final time I married (so far anyway, as I guess I'm always looking for my next ex-wife....), I thought I had I had found the sweetest young lady I could ever have imagined. It was 1995. My son was five and rife with ADHD. He was difficult to parent and I desperately needed a partner in raising him.

Life was good for a few years. Then things changed as they so often do. Life as usual got in the way of romance, killing it.

In the end, or even long before that, she wasn't any longer so sweet. In fact she got rather nasty, and then downright angry. I had thought just in keeping her happy, I'd have a handle on things. But some people don't want to be happy. Their expectations are too high and no one can live up to their expectations. I used to be like that in my twenties. I probably still have some of that lurking within me in a cancerous state, waiting to leap out at all the wrong moments. But I sincerely hope not.

For years I looked back over these past relationships, consoling myself in believing that those women did better after having known me. Now with many years distance from those relationships, with having gained more wisdom, with the clarity that comes from being single for a long time, and with actually seeing how their lives have worked out for them, I can see things perhaps more as they are in reality.

Were their lives all the better, or the worse, in having known me? Or were they just as they are for people in life? We experience, triumph or fail, heal our wounds, hopefully become the stronger for it and move on knowing our lives are richer for it all. For the pain, for the love, for the confusion and the frustration.

I made some decisions correctly to be sure, with the information I had available to me at the time. With my limited wisdom. I had the intent to do good, to be a good person. But there were things I simply hadn't known at the time. Things I couldn't (yet) see, no matter how hard I tried.

It all added up in the end to who I was at the time. Had I meant well? Yes. But I was also protecting myself. I was living the life but simply hadn't known everything. Or enough of everything, anyway. But that is how life is for all of us. Isn't it?

I didn't know what charisma was about, how it worked, or that with at least some people, I had it for them and in dealing with them. I should have known it though. I should have seen it. My siblings have it. Yet my own damaged self-esteem wouldn't let me see that I too, must have it.

It wasn't until I was about thirty that I experienced someone leaving me in a serious long term romantic relationship. I always thought that was a good thing. Until it happened. Then reality rushed up and kicked me in the face. I thought, I must be worth staying with if women didn't leave me. Sure I'd had short relationships, one night stands even, but I was always the one to break it off or leave (or so I viewed it up until that time).

Finally one day, as an adult in a long term, live-in relationship, I was left. I found that in never having had the experience of being dumped, I didn't have the tools I needed to deal with it. And in this case I was dumped hard (I discovered she was having an affair). I lacked the experience to know how to handle it. How to handle it in a non self-destructive way, that is.

I spent the next year and a half trying to literally party myself to death. To numb the pain, to kill the bad feelings, the destroyed self-esteem, to just end things. It wasn't an outward expression I could recognize so much as it was an inward desire, striving to get out. I was partying hard like a pro, not partying destructively like a fool.

And yet it nearly did kill me. Multiple times I almost succeeded though I never made it to a hospital. It truly was the lowest period in my life.

And yet, I'm still here.

I've learned a few things along the way. My second legal marriage ended in a similar way. A woman leaving me for another, just as the previous time. Even though she knew my story. Even though I had asked her to just leave me if she wanted out, not to abuse me by having an affair. Because the last time that happened, it almost killed me. But she used that information as a tool to hurt me. I had inadvertently given her ammunition, and she used it.

That speaks to who she was at that time as a person, more than what it says about me. We had a child together, I was working hard, trying to make it in life, trying to support a family and love them. I tried to be a good father and husband. But the women I've been with this last half of my life, wanted a good husband and father, in that order. And that too says much more about them, than me.

In having gone through that once already, and in not really wanting to have had a second marriage anyway, the second time around I found that I much more easily survived it. I realized at some point that I had actually lucked out of that marriage. I finally had a child but not the family I had always wanted. I had made poor choices, yet again. Or perhaps, good choices but for the wrong reasons.

Either way, life tosses you curve balls. Things come out of left field that you never expect. Things you may not have the ability or the life experience to properly ascertain and react to.

Here's the thing.....

If we try hard, if we pay attention, if we consider what is important, not always just about ourselves as the primary factor, we can survive and then later reflect on it all, knowing that we did our best.

Even if we failed.

It is much like it is in parenting. We all make mistakes. None of us knows what is right to do all the time. Each child, each person is different. There really are no cut and dried answers for all situations. But especially with children. If you protect them and most importantly if you simply love them, they will forgive many of your mistakes in their life and they will love you back. They will grow up to be good people. You will have succeeded in doing your job. Just help them to be the best person they can be, and not just what you want them to be. It's about them after all, not you.

They have to find their way too. It is your job to help them in that pursuit. It is that way with those in a romantic relationship with you too, or for that matter with any person in your life. Especially with those you most love and cherish.

So it is with so much of life.

If you are the good person others know you as, if others know you as a good person and you know you try to be the best person you can be, then life, people, children, will forgive your mistakes. Even your shallow actions. Still, they will love you back and you can go on knowing that you mean well, that you do well, that you have a way of viewing life that is productive. Not just for you or yours or just for your community, or only for your beliefs or your God however you define that concept.

But for Life in general. For all of us. And so in the end and most importantly, for you. And then, you can feel good about it, without regret.

Live. Love. Learn. Repeat.

On Slamming Hillary: Letter to a Close Friend

I can understand your confusion in wondering why I would support Hillary.

But first of all, I supported Bernie and still do. But he's no longer in the running. She's up next, that's just how it works. Even Bernie's now supporting her. Does that make him bad? No. It's just the system. The system he was working to change, at least somewhat.

What I don't understand is your (anyone's) vitriol against her. Be against her, I get that. To take it so personally though. That is what I don't quite understand.

See...here's just a few things to consider about all this:

The only thing I can find that explains someone feeling about Hillary as they do when they literally come off a hating her, is being submerged in the conservative environment or at least their propaganda that goes beyond what she has earned either for or against her.

How is that? Because, that's where we see that, where it's born, where it has originated.

You say you have found your own data against her?
Where'd you find it? InfoWars is for the most part, garbage and nonsense. How'd you even get there?

Where are all the good things she has actually done and yes, those do exist.
You don't know about them? Why is that? WHY?
Is that the filter showing only the bad?

Her actions have killed people?
Whose hasn't in government at that level? They all have that burden.

Maybe not Jimmy Carter. Maybe.

I fully agree, we have to stop killing, stop drones, etc, so on and so forth, I"m on board there. We have made our killing fields and now we're lying in them so we have to kill for now. That's just a matter of fact in our being attacked. I don't think we need to create more than necessary as we are however.

Trump will do better? Bush did better? Or his dad?

What republican has done better? Reagan? History showed us what he did.

We have two parties in this system. We have to pick one or the other wins. It needs to be changed? Okay. Railing against it doesn't fix it when it breaks it more in railing against the wrong person at the wrong time.

Conservatives have spent literally millions upon millions of dollars over the years against her and her husband going all the way back into the 90s and pretty much originating with Newt Gingrich who we can trace all this Republican obstructionism to all these years since, and who has poisoned the well in American politics so to speak.

But some of what they claim is true you say?

Okay, but much of what they say isn't also, and much of their generalized claims is also true about others and yet, I'm not seeing the same vitriol against them. It's just her. Why is that one has to ask? I get being against her. But the visceral response against her comes from something other than merely her actions in her job and much of what is perceived to be her actions, were just her doing her job to begin with.

And yet, we do not see this reaction against others who have done the same things, even on the right, even by republicans. They have deftly turned a righteous hatred against George Bush and Dick Cheney into hatred against Obama and Hillary. Just think about that for a moment. Bush is far more deserving of hatred for his actions but do the conservatives feel that for him? No. Just Hillary. Odd, don't you think? She wasn't even president. They burden actually lays upon Obama anyway. So why Hillary?

Conservatives don't even feel about Obama (anymore, if ever) like they do her.
It's just...odd.
Well to be fair, it was against Obama first.

But now the black guy ain't running and the woman is.
You do have to consider that. Racism and sexism.

Elizabeth Warren wouldn't be treated this way by the right you say?
Only because they have not had the time to build and grow a grassroots hatred toward her.

But give it time, they would, they will, when they can, if they feel they need to.

Are you feeling like we're cats being herded into an election? We lost Bernie, as I said we would, though I supported him and hope his input will change things (it has already), and Trump (one time friend of the Clintons), is he just a shill to get people to vote for Hillary (not to mention all the bigots and ugliness his running has shown us all across America (not to mention the ignorance and stupidity).

That's our system. Possibly how it really is. Most possibly how it just appears to be. Which is so endemic of life today, what appears to be, people try to turn into fact, when it's not. Things just happen. So typically when it really is a conspiracy, no one notices, the desired effect of a conspiracy. On the other hand, time seems to show all conspiracies.

So. Why do we even bother? Well, because....

Look. In the end, it's just politics. Seriously. It's kind of detached from our actual reality. It's just fun to make it real and it can have real live consequences, sure.

But people first.

It's really not life and death, not for the voter. Though it can be. But typically casting the wrong vote, doesn't kill you. That's the thing about voting and democracy.

A single vote really doesn't kill people, it's everyone voting the same. Kind of like a firing squad where one guy gets a blank and no one knows who it is so you have that buffer to reality, "Maybe I wasn't the one to kill him."

But if you have a friend or a family member who is on the other side of reason in your understanding, even if it's the crazy side they're on, it's still just politics.

Consider that shutting people off is bad. So don't do that. Let them do that, to you. But don't you be a part to the closing off of possibly their only access to rational thinking, possibly to a sane way of viewing the world.

Sure, you can block them on FB if they are obnoxious.

Just don't block them in life. If you get along with them just fine, historically speaking, aside from politics, do not let politics then kill that in the both of you.

Not from your end anyway.

Keeping open the path to discussion is all important, it's imperative. Especially in politics. We need to keep the path to discourse open.

Otherwise, you're an irrational conservative and\or Republican.

Or a liberal nutcase.

Don't be either.

Be, an adult.

Be, an American citizen.

Be, a Citizen.

Winston S. Churchill (House of Commons 11 November 1947) — "Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…"

About that....

In, Churchill by Himself, what else Churchill did say about democracy?

"If I had to sum up the immediate future of democratic politics in a single word I should say “insurance.” That is the future—insurance against dangers from abroad, insurance against dangers scarcely less grave and much more near and constant which threaten us here at home in our own island.: —Free Trade Hall, Manchester, 23 May 1909

"At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper—no amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of that point." —House of Commons, 31 October 1944

"How is that word “democracy” to be interpreted? My idea of it is that the plain, humble, common man, just the ordinary man who keeps a wife and family, who goes off to fight for his country when it is in trouble, goes to the poll at the appropriate time, and puts his cross on the ballot paper showing the candidate he wishes to be elected to Parliament—that he is the foundation of democracy. And it is also essential to this foundation that this man or woman should do this without fear, and without any form of intimidation or victimization. He marks his ballot paper in strict secrecy, and then elected representatives and together decide what government, or even in times of stress, what form of government they wish to have in their country. If that is democracy, I salute it. I espouse it. I would work for it.” —House of Commons, 8 December 1944

Let's end with this:

How American Politics Went Insane
A pretty decent insightful exploration of American politics by Jonathan Raunch from The Atlantic magazine.

Trump vs SuperHeroes vs Gods vs The Fool

People say our fictional entertainment "superheroes" are replacements for what the concepts and beliefs in Gods once gave us in ancient times. Superheroes today are placeholders they say, for what used to be paramount and all important in our lives.

Well. Times have changed. Though many are trying to end or retard that inevitable change.

In reality Gods were our first fictional entertainment superheroes. We just made the mistake of believing our own fictions and it came back to bite us. All through history. All through today.

Republicans, the Conservative right, religious proponents especially extremist ones, even those who voted for BrExit this past week, all seem to be members of the WTP, the Wishful Thinking Party. They think things are not that good, and they aren't as complicated as they really are, so we will just stop thinking, do something drastically opposed to the status quo and obviously that will just fix everything.

Uh, no. It's not that easy. That not thinking, severely altering the status quo, will simply not just fix everything. It can and may in fact wreck the economy and people's lives. However some people, especially those with money can and will make massive amounts of money from this. Which will come from many people with little or no money where their money can be gleaned off of them, easily acquired, then piped up to the rich and money managers of various types.

Those Gods have been mostly whittled down into a single God. Though some religions have warned us against false idols, it is in our nature to raise some of those up among us to that stature if not of Gods, of saviors. There is always someone ready to fulfill that role. Someone who usually claims to hold long established beliefs while cloaking them in new cloth, dazzling us, deluding us, deceiving us.

Like the Idiot Trump who you could call iTrump for short, where people here are voting for that same type of quick fix that will fix nothing and only make matters worse..

Why?

Desperation, of course, with a healthy does of frustration. What else should one expect when one keeps supporting the abuses, who keep taking all the money, twisting things around to where people think it's those they oppose who are really only trying to protect the abused masses against those, once again, whom the abused continue to support.

In order to fix what they have allowed to be broken over so many years they cannot even see it, cannot fathom it. They are selecting the tiger to kill the same tiger who is eating the flock.

Idiocy? Pure and simple. There is where your simplicity lay.

Or are people merely ignorant and desperate?

You decide. Decide not on wishful thinking however, but on reality.

Only then may we fix what was never broken but designed to fulfill a specific function in taking from some who have little and giving to others who have much. Taking from those many who have little, to give to the few who have so much already.

Camus said the meaning of life was whatever you tell yourself in order to stop yourself from killing yourself. Is that what religion is all about, avoiding suicide? And if whatever that is doesn't get its way, it will take the rest of us with it too?

BTW, speaking of stupidity, did you know that some students at private schools in Louisiana have been taught that Scotland’s fabled Loch Ness monster is real. A claim that is then held as evidence disproving Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, as was once reported in The Scotsman?

Or this (there are unending examples, really:

Texas Court Says Citizens Can Skip Education If They Believe The Rapture Is Coming

Robert Reich said yesterday (June 26, 2016):

"Donald Trump is the least-qualified person ever to run for the presidency of the United States; Hillary Clinton is among the most qualified. But, unfortunately, this election isn't about qualifications. It's about whether the populist wave that's gripped America turns authoritarian or reformist.
"I worry Hillary doesn’t see the anti-establishment rage here (and in other advanced nations -- see article, below). I fear she doesn't understand how different 2016 is from 1992, when Bill Clinton ran as a moderate Democrat, or 1996, when he moved to the center and “triangulated” between Democrats and Republicans. So she'll continue to run a cautious campaign based mainly on her competence and experience, and won't stand up to the privileged and powerful – the big corporations, Wall Street, and billionaires – who have rigged the economy against the rest of America."

I was for Hilary, until Bernie entered the 2016 race for President, then I was for Bernie, until he was no longer in the race (though he's in the run for helping America to get back on track again). Now I'm back to Hilary, because...Trump and because...Republicans and conservative in general. And stupidity. I'm personally anti-stupid. Which I see as ignorance plus. Ignorance is noble, when properly earned and eventually updated. However remaining ignorant in the face of information is planned and sustained ignorance, selected ignorance, or just plain... stupidity.

Want one about guns and stupidity (come on, it's a natural): Gun Advocate Mother shoots and kills her two daughters letting her husband get away. Honestly this is about mental illness in this country too, but it's something that is tightly interwoven in all this. I've said for years this psychological need for guns has more to do with mental health of America than anything else. The claims of gun rights don't hold up in reading the 2nd Amendment and this overbearing need for protection just isn't what the claims are proven by the stats.

Brexit is another issue that came to the world courtesy of the uneducated, the not so well educated elders, and commoners, much as we're seeing in America along with the foolish Trumpettes (or divisive capitalist). It would appear then if the young and educated are voting more sanely, we are now seeing the beginning of the end of racism and nationalism, even perhaps isolationism, in many ways in these two countries.

Are we also seeing in these difficult times the death throes of many things that have long been inculcated within us and in which we should be welcoming their demise?

There is some hope, albeit not from America, but Canada where in Alberta they have banned money from corporations and unions, a step in the right direction to protect people and not just money.

There is however this just in, from the Supreme Court on the ridiculousness of at least one of the ludicrous Texas Abortion Laws from one of our southern and rather brain damaged states..

It may take another generation still but we're starting to have a younger populace who is more used to diversity, change and making rational decisions against what has long been believed, even without evidence or with evidence we now have to the contrary. Information technologies and news for profit have polarized us. But also have shined a bright light on long unspoken feelings of tribalism and the many problems with ancient beliefs which do not evolve along with changing realities.

These are surely disturbing and in some ways horrible times. But they also signal to us a reason and a hope. A hope finally for a return of reason, something we can now almost see on the distant horizon. Though you may still have to look very carefully to see it, also notice the obstacles that will be in the way before it arrives fully upon us.

Do know however, that it is on that horizon.

Oh and just who is, The Fool? I'll let you decide. And our future levels of Prosperity.

3+ Points Against the Anti-Gun Control Argument

Stupid.

That's what all this discussion, arguing, disagreement, lies, twisted logic and outright logical fallacies are about gun control. Stupid.

Speaking of Stupid with a capital "S", we have to mention the NRA and either their tactics (brilliant as they work, or stupid as they are in the worst interests of the citizenry). Here's an interesting article on how blatant they are about their tactics.

Just circle back around later and check these links out; I've supplied you with a few to gather further info from. Just be sure to also read this, FROM a self-professed "gun nut":
Why Gun Nuts Lie – I Know From Experience.

Let's set the tone with this:

Now real quick on the NRA being stupid...regarding their comment that, "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy"...there's so many ways that concept immediately goes wrong:

First sign you have a problem? For most people? If you're always carrying a gun.

Not to mention firing into usually the dark in a theater or a club missing and hitting an innocent, or hitting the bad guy even killing him and your bullet goes on to kill an innocent, or ricochet and wounding someone. Shooting another "good" guy with a gun who was trying to stop the bad guy with gun. The list goes on.

The honest truth about guns in this country is that this need just doesn't happen often enough for the mentality of all people claiming to need guns for protection. Besides, it abdicates the responsibility from law makers, police and gun manufacturers for them to do something more useful and widespread. It's a child's solution to a problem, really.

The problem as I see it is that we think that a right abdicates control. In having the right to guns, even if that were true from what the 2nd Amendment indicates, we have abdicated the culture and then we just throw people into ownership. These people have not grown up with guns as those did in the past, where a gun was life. It's not LIFE now.

We have supermarkets for food, we have police and fire departments for life saving. And yet we pretend life is still like it is back in the 1700s. It's not. Yes it takes time for police to arrive and they are frequently only good for clean up and reporting. But this is nothing like the 1700s with no phones, no established governmental protections in police, medical and military if and when needed. The mere existence of those things changes the situation greatly.

You have to be raised into a gun culture to have one. Not suddenly join it as an adult and expect things will be just fine overall. For the most part things are going well, but they certainly are not perfect by any means or we wouldn't be seeing mass shootings using weapons designed to kill masses of people.

So if you suddenly want to bring a gun into your life, you need proper indoctrination first!
There's a lot to get through here so I'll go through my three points, to give you an idea of what I'm talking about, and then skip through some things and offer other places you can get more and even better information about this sad topic that mostly faux conservatives and the NRA have abused America over.

Even Pres. Reagan, Pres. Bush Sr. and many others going back into the 80s thought what the NRA started to do and has done, were disgusting abuses of rational arguments about guns. We have a police and military now unlike at the founding of this country and what this nonsense does is disrespect all of them in their efforts.

First of all we're ALL into gun control. Or at least studying it for some answers. As the AMA has just pointed out, it's time to lift the ridiculous ban on the CDC studying gun violence..

To say otherwise is, well...stupid. No one wants (some do) excessive gun control. It's still America (mostly and at least until the next election in November). I just don't think we need too loose of gun control. People are dying, something needs to be done, pretty much, end of story. Only a really truly foolish individual would say we should do anything at all in any way possible about the current rash of mass shootings these past years.

People who correlate "Freedom" and guns. Stupid. I'm sick of Constitutional originalists. The Constitution is a "living document". How do you prove that? Easy. If it wasn't it would never have been amended, ever. We have the Supreme Court whose job it is to interpret the meaning of the Constitution in the climate of the times so that it IS the functional document that it has been.

Besides, freedom actually has nothing whatsoever to do with guns or gun control.

It's just that they've been linked together for so long, only the uneducated, the alleged "conservative", the faux "patriot", the greedy and the simply firearms addicted think that it does. They think it has everything to do with it in fact. The times and climate on this topic is finally changing as the Supreme Court rules states have the right to ban assault weapons.

About the 2nd 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."

Nothing whatsoever is stated about purchasing arms in that. Or what type of. People focus too much on the wrong elements, giving emphasis to the wrong things in that Amendment.

There's three points in that statement that we need to pay particular attention to, and which get very little understanding and correct attention to. 

1. A "well regulated" militia (or I'd allow, citizenry) is important. 

2. And so, a "Militia" is important. 

3. Finally to "keep and bear arms" is important. 

But not in the ways you might think. 

To understand the problems we face with this issue one has to examine what the Founding Fathers thought and said back then, and then consider the evolution of society at large, of this nation, of technology and of the world in general.

Take some of the Founding Fathers' comments. 

"A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined..."

- George Washington, First Annual Address, to both House of Congress, January 8, 1790

"Disciplined". That's important. It eliminates issues like what we're seeing today. A well disciplined soldier, or people for that matter, do not perform mass shootings such as we see today. Nor do they kill innocents. 

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms."

- Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Constitution, Draft 1, 1776

That is to say like, what? That we shall not be kept from any form of weapon whatsoever? Or that we shall not be kept entirely from any weapon to wit, in that we are not allowed to have any kind of arm at all? That is a big disparity. 

"I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery."

- Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, January 30, 1787

First consider he is thinking not necessarily as being indentured by the state, but in relation to outright slavery as he was after all, a slave owner, as were many who were considered "normal" and "decent" people back then. 

"What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms."

- Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, December 20, 1787

This is a good one. Back then taking arms to resist was not just to battle another force, but to show up in force, armed, to make a point, to be taken seriously. And also if necessary, in the consideration not of our own government being the enemy, but of the British empire.

Our government was set up as the "Great Experiment" so that we would not have to live that way, fearful of our own government since it would be and is a government of the people, for the people and by the people. 

The Founding Fathers would be horrified to hear conservatives now a days talking about needing to be armed to protect themselves from their own government. From This Government. 

Back in those days, armed resistance was not an unnatural thing. Today things have changed dramatically. WE do not need to show up armed to make a point because we have our government. We also have a standing army, in multiple branches, which is the most powerful in the world, as well as a well regulated National Guard and police force of various levels (local, state and national). 

What is so sad about conservatives who believe we need to remained armed is that they obviously do not respect our government, themselves or other Americans as they should. With all its warts and embellishments, difficulties, dissatisfactions and difficulties, this is still our, OUR... government. 

So what about those words, those phrases then?

"Well regulated" is important. "Militia" is important. "Keep and bear arms" is important. 

Well regulated does not mean we should be allowed as citizens to walk into any gun store and buy any weapon. It doesn't mean any citizen either, UNLESS they are "well regulated". Many take that to mean a militia, or an army.

Our Founding Fathers were leary of a standing national army. Because of Britain. However as we grew up as a nation we grew to need and understand the importance of having a standing army and thus the United States Military came into being. 

From Wikipedia:

"After the war, though, the Continental Army was quickly given land certificates and disbanded in a reflection of the republican distrust of standing armies. State militias became the new nation's sole ground army, with the exception of a regiment to guard the Western Frontier and one battery of artillery guarding West Point's arsenal. However, because of continuing conflict with Native Americans, it was soon realized that it was necessary to field a trained standing army. The Regular Army was at first very small, and after General St. Clair's defeat at the Battle of the Wabash, the Regular Army was reorganized as the Legion of the United States, which was established in 1791 and renamed the "United States Army" in 1796."

Well regulated also means that if you want a gun, you have to be, well, regulated. That means laws and certifications. Training. It also means responsibility for you bearing, storing, maintaining your arms. But in today's conservatively nauseating climate, people wish to believe it means we are all granted a right to have any mechanized weaponry. Nonsense.

We could point out here that when some today say to bear arms includes assault weapons, or if you prefer rapid fire, high capacity mechanized firearms, it can also simply mean, swords and knives, clubs and well who knows what medieval weaponry besides modern firearms. 

I would argue what it should mean is if you want a revolver or bolt action hunting rifle, you need to be trained, learn respect of a killing machine that you will have and store in your home correctly and no you do NOT get carte blanche, a blanket bill to just have a gun with no training, no reasonable storage considerations and so on. Much as it is now.

If you wish to have a semi automatic handgun or rifle, then you need more formal training and you need to own appropriate storage for those weapons and protection of those weapons when you are using them OR storing them.

NO one should ever be able to take your weapon, whether you are carrying it loaded, unloaded, or in storing it when you are either at home or away. 

A well regulated citizenry bearing arms would be a safe and sane citizenry. 

Which brings up the next term, Militia. 

What is a militia and what did the Founding Fathers intend by that term? I'm really not going to get into that morass of nonsense as it's bandied about and argued over today. Just let it be said that they were referring to the citizenry back then who were the army, who were not a standing army, but who could be called upon at a moment's notice to serve the country.

Who nowadays is ready to drop their lives and go into the Army if need be? We're not talking eighteen year olds either. Anyone of any age, granted focused more so on the young and strong enough to fight and die for their country. And sometimes foolish enough to follow orders. Which is why they don't seen old men into harm's way when they can avoid it, aside from the obvious physical issues age brings along with it.

The point there is since we've already given up on that concept as dysfunctional and problematic, raising an army from the citizenry only when needed, something we did at the birth of our nation out of necessity, then we need to understand the term militia for today to mean something entirely different, and if not unnecessary.

It doesn't mean the same anymore, we don't have the same anymore, and frankly, it points out this part of the 2nd Amendment needs to be rewritten to fit the new situation. For one thing the professionalism and complexity of militaries have gotten to a point that far outpaces that of an instant citizen army. Possibly you could do what Israel does and yet, we do not. Nor do we have an enemy on our borders such as they do. And no, we do not. We have oceans, Mexico and Canada. 

Finally the third point, to "keep and bear arms". 

Nowhere in this does it say people can buy guns. Or what type of guns. It cannot mean assault rifles because they simply didn't exist in 1791. I think the Founding Fathers would be stunned and horrified to learn of the compact and massive firepower we have today and that we allow citizens to own military grade weaponry. Certainly military grade by 1791 standards.

Consider this article on the phrase:

"Among the numerous amicus briefs submitted is the so-called "Linguists' Brief", written by Dennis E. Baron, Richard W. Bailey, and Jeffrey P. Kaplan. This brief argues that the Second Amendment protects only a public right on two grounds: the afore-mentioned interpretation of the leading clause, and the argument that the expression "bear arms" refers only to the organized military use of arms, not to individual use. They claim that the term "bear arms" is "an idiomatic expression that means 'to serve as a soldier, do military service'".

Taking the phrase as it was in general use back then, it means something different than we understand it to mean today.

And this is a final nail in the coffin on conservatives arguing for guns for all as a right:

"To oblige the great body of the yeomanry, and of the other classes of the citizens, to be under arms for the purpose of going through military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well-regulated militia, would be a real grievance to the people, and a serious public inconvenience and loss. It would form an annual deduction from the productive labor of the country, to an amount which, calculating upon the present numbers of the people, would not fall far short of the whole expense of the civil establishments of all the States. To attempt a thing which would abridge the mass of labor and industry to so considerable an extent, would be unwise: and the experiment, if made, could not succeed, because it would not long be endured. Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year."

It goes on further to state that contrary to what some ignorant conservatives think today, they were not fearful of our government against the people but of a militia against the government as well as the people. Which I would argue almost (but not quite) indicates for the nation today to disarm people out of protection rather than have them fully armed.

"This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist."

"Thus differently from the adversaries of the proposed Constitution should I reason on the same subject, deducing arguments of safety from the very sources which they represent as fraught with danger and perdition."

See?

And finally this passage as if they were viewing conservatives today in their admonitions of ridiculous contentions over and over again against our nation:

"Are suppositions of this sort the sober admonitions of discerning patriots to a discerning people? Or are they the inflammatory ravings of incendiaries or distempered enthusiasts? If we were even to suppose the national rulers actuated by the most ungovernable ambition, it is impossible to believe that they would employ such preposterous means to accomplish their designs."

You could also argue that the way the phrase was written refers to the government giving us weapons that we could keep and carry. Then that gets into when we would be given them, and when we could be carrying them. Considering back then many had their own guns they used in battle under the banner of the US flag and constitution, we can't expect the government to give us arms to keep and carry and if they did, as they do when you are in a real army, you actually need to use them to go to war. 

When you are off duty in the military you give up your arms, which are then stored in an armory, guarded by armed guards. So then you can't go get drunk and kill your sergeant or friends if you get mad at them during your off periods where you're not just killing the enemy. 

It begs the question, if they refer to citizens keeping and bearing arms at home whenever they like or, only during war, but in that our own government could remove all arms from citizens. And yet this says nothing about which arms are being referred to or how many per person.

Technically the 2nd Amendment could just be saying everyone can have a .22 long rifle or a shotgun to kill rabbits with for food and to use for protection against property or home invaders. Which is to say, burglars and criminals. But that doesn't mean using an assault rifle for home protection which any professional would point out is ludicrous. 

The degree to which people today have abused the meaning of the 2nd Amendment is pathetic. When we have a climate as we do today that includes mass shooters, snipers of public citizens, political assassinations, and terrorist attacks by foreign as well as nationalists, the 2nd Amendment needs again to be reconsidered and handled in such a way appropriate so as to fit our needs today, our current technologies and situations. 

We have to consider not only what the 2nd Amendment means, what it's original intent was, but also what we need it to mean today, how we consider what we have already agreed to do in many ways over many years and, how we have accepted the current meaning of the Constitution and its Amendments.

These are just three of the points we need to clearly understand while not allowing some group like the NRA to subvert and abuse us as a nation for their own slighted agenda and for greed and for power. In light of the disgusting travesties like the Orlando Pulse massacre we can not sit idly by doing nothing, yet again. But we need to stand up to the bullies like the NRA and actually do something useful.

Background checks are the least we can do, as is disallowing those on a Terrorist (TSA) No Fly List from buying guns. Which is not the much larger Terrorist Watch List which people keep confusing with the No Fly List.

What to do if you find you're on a No Fly List.

There is also no reason we need to access a firearm on the same day of purchase and it is wise for there to be a waiting period. I would argue a much longer one than what has been typical in being only three days. We want a gun today when we finally get the money for one. But we don't have to have it, the nation doesn't need to have us need to have it the same day.

In waiting to receive a weapon, it gives us a chance to run a proper background check, to give hot headed potential murderers a chance to calm down, those few who would benefit by a cooling off period, and it exemplifies to us all the import and respect of receiving, owning, and having the right to own, a firearm. 

Firearms purchases should force us to require much planning and thought and most of all respect for their purpose and reason for existing, attaining and retaining. For their purpose is, to kill. Even if you only ever use one for target practice. If you buy cars with the intent purposes of driving them off cliffs so they fly for a moment or two, they were still constructed to be driven.

NOTE on the term "assault rifle":

Don't call them assault rifles! Conservatives don't respond properly to that just as with much of reality and rationality. I'm so sick of their twisting everything just to get their own way.

Many of them believe assault rifles were named as such by the left wing media in the 90s for the assault weapons ban. When really it came about by weapons manufacturer Brunswick Corporation (yes the bowling ball people, among their many other products) way back in 1977 for their RAW (Rifleman's Assault Weapon) rifle, later used by the US Marines in the 1990s.

One could even argue that Hitler's storm rifle translates as the 1943 "assault rifle". From German Sturmgewehr ("assault rifle", literally "storm rifle"). The Maschinenpistole 44 was called the Sturmgewehr by Adolf Hitler, whence it was renamed to represent the separate class of firearm it represented. From assault + rifle.

Wikipedia:
"Others say the firearms industry itself introduced the term "assault weapon" to build interest in new product lines.[8] Phillip Peterson, the author of Gun Digest Buyer’s Guide to Assault Weapons (2008) wrote:

"The popularly held idea that the term 'assault weapon' originated with anti-gun activists is wrong. The term was first adopted by manufacturers, wholesalers, importers and dealers in the American firearms industry to stimulate sales of certain firearms that did not have an appearance that was familiar to many firearms owners. The manufacturers and gun writers of the day needed a catchy name to identify this new type of gun.[24]"

So for all our sake and that of conservatives so they stop looking even dumber than normal, consider possibly calling them:

FBBGs (for Fast Bang Bang Guns).

Not enough? Want more? The tide may be changing.

SCOTUS on domestic violence.

How about this:

Family of AR-15 Inventor Eugene Stoner: He Didn't Intend It for Civilians

Let's face it, civilians do not need military style weapons. Join the military if you want to play soldier and guess what? If you do you don't get to keep your automatic or semi auto weapon in your barracks room while off duty. Unless perhaps if you're actually soldiering, in a war environment. Then it's only reasonable. Because your soldiering, in a war theatre.

Here's a good one....

Breaking Down Gun Nuts: 10 Ways to Determine if Someone is Too Mentally Ill to Own Guns

And now this....

The 2nd Amendment Wasn’t Written To Mean ‘Let Any Damn Idiot Have A Gun’

And if that wasn't the nail in the coffin, this surely is....

From MarketWatch:
"Opinion: What America’s gun fanatics won’t tell you" by Brett Arends

Just a touch from that article....

"The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution doesn’t just say Congress shall not infringe the right to “keep and bear arms.” It specifically says that right exists in order to maintain “a well-regulated militia.” Even the late conservative Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia admitted those words weren’t in there by accident. Oh, and the Constitution doesn’t just say a “militia.” It says a “well-regulated” militia.

"What did the Founding Fathers mean by that? We don’t have to guess because they told us. In Federalist No. 29 of the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton explained at great length precisely what a “well-regulated militia” was, why the Founding Fathers thought we needed one, and why they wanted to protect it from being disarmed by the federal government."

I wish you all the best. I wish us all the best....

And now, from Amy Schumer, this.

Orlando's Pulse Massacre - Just Whose Thoughts Led to the Killings? Slabbies?

CNN news headline June 12, 2016: "A gay nightclub here was the scene early Sunday of the worst terror attack in U.S. history since 9/11." Omar Mateen of Ft. Pierce, Florida in a hate crime, murdered many people he didn't even know, all out of stupidity, of foolish beliefs, of disgust at what was unfamiliar to him and undesirable. As if he had any right to act on another's life. Washington Post reported on what the killer's wife had to say about him and her experiences with him.

My heart goes out to those killed or damaged in the massacre this morning at the Orlando night club, Pulse. However my mind and an intense sense of justice reaches out to all those who would wish to, or to do harm to others all because of their own delusional belief system. Be they themselves delusional or insane, or a miscreant jihadi following their misguided path. A path never laid down by their belief in their sense of a small, destructive prophet (little "p"), rather than a great Prophet professing a sense of positive worth and community among all people of the world.

Or be they one of our own nationalist bigots or their leaders, including their semi knowledgeable fool led by his jesters and running for office as yet another, albeit even worse example of a Republican president, all while we are seeing what that can lead to if allowed to propagate unchecked.

These death throes of stupid belief systems are always painful for those foolishly continuing to believe well beyond their usefulness. As well as for all those others of us who have to suffer their extended continuance and eventual demise along with them and theirs until they have once and for all been cauterized and sloughed off from the flesh of all humanity.

If all the weapons used in the Pulse killings were illegal, would this still have happened? Surely it could still happen at times and in places but far fewer I'm sure. Which really proves that case. But it's beside the point.

We might see more bombs being used then (and more bombers blowing themselves up accidentally at home). Or as in recent Asian cases in past years, knives or hatchets could be used instead. Some people originally thought seat belts were a government plot, but they saved lives. Maybe we shouldn't have more than bolt action rifles if we have to have guns. Whatever the solution, it is not in doing nothing. It is in doing something. Many somethings.

This is not about just Islam. This is not about just religion. This is not about bigotry. This is not just about mental health issues. It is about us, in general, people in general. It is about our culpability in allowing people to continue to think deffectively, to follow old, outdated beliefs, to act on ancient rights when they affect others especially in a negative fashion.

We have not taken up the call to see that everyone has healthcare as a right and mental healthcare even more so. Rather than demand these as our most important rights, we have allowed the issue to be subverted to where the concern about our most important right, the right of freedom, has become concern over the right to own and bear arms.

We have continued to give a wink and a nod to religion in general for far too long. We have allowed people questioning science over religion and people in power or in wont of power to lie in public and get away with it. We have allowed too many to push negative agendas on our country and others. We, have allowed.

All any of this means is that this is more about an attitude we need to change. Attitudes about people, about weapons, about fellow citizens, about fellow humans. Attitudes about the real, and not the unreal, or the unreal that appears as real to some.

There is no reason women cannot wear what they like or even walk around naked for that matter and not have to fear rape or abuse. There is no reason we cannot all have guns and yet not experience mass shootings. Though some common sense controls are reasonable and conscionable.

It is our national as well as overall international attitudes about certain things that needs to be changed. Not just possession or potential possession of implements of destruction. We need to grow up, we need to force those others to grow up, to stop acting like their ancients all now long dead along with their beliefs, which should in many cases have died along with them. Some of us need to stop thinking that destruction is good, that nihilism is God, that self is all important.

Any belief system that is found to be anti human needs to be dealt with. Bringing in beliefs from otherworldly issues into the physical realm that lead to negative actions against others, needs to be dealt with. I don't really have a problem with religion, other than I find it sad people cannot find a more up to date way to see the universe and live their lives. However we need to monitor and address religion or any belief system that starts to skew in a way that is against humanity.

If we cannot eradicate religious type belief from the world, we can at least try to control them. It could itself at least try to control itself enough to allow it to be a productive and beneficial force in the world, rather than ever have the opposite effects, ever again. If it were a true and proper thing.

We need to cry out openly against idiocies such as how we don't need to worry about the human or even non human elements of climate change merely because some believe that God will fix it all. Or how we should kill now for belief in issues of an afterlife later. We need to stop giving an open card to those who believe in nonsense.

Believe in your religion, just keep it to yourself, or at very least, do not use it to affect other's who do not see life as you do. Give them the good grace they give you in allowing you the freedom to practice your religion, as long as you keep it in your own garden. Just keep it out of ours, unless we invite you in.

But as I said, this isn't so much about religion as someone who was mentally unbalanced. Did religion lead him there so he could step out of its bounds into what it doesn't teach. Or does? It doesn't matter, really.

When conservatism or fundamentalism becomes reductionistic to a point that it goes backwards, it leads only and ever to the negative and destructive. If we are to have prejudice, it should be against those thoughts that lead people to their negative prejudices and destructive actions. We need to act over all in a way more productive than those who do so against us. Those on the sidelines too need to see and act.

Until that happens, we will continue to see life exemplified in this fashion, with guns, with bombs, with knives and with killings for the stupidest of reasons, with bigotry, ignorance and disgust, with the salaciousness of one's mind seen as a positive thing, rather than with a spirit of humanity and community, as it should be.

Freedom.

I keep hearing this from conservatives. It's all about freedom. Cuz we're 'Merikans! Obviously they do not understand freedom and how government is involved with protecting that and us.

What is freedom and how do we judge when to pull back from it? Total security is no freedom, total freedom is no security. It's a balance.

It is when human lives are too valuable to throw away on the pile of lives given to "freedom".

Did we lose the "right" to freedom in having no seat belts in our cars in order to save our lives? Anyone who has been in even a minor accident and whose life or limbs were saved by a seat belt has no qualms about the seat belt laws.

When we finally find that a "freedom" is too costly for us, that is when we pull back and therein find our level of freedom and balance with protection by our government. Government who really is in the end, us.

It is time we pull back here and now, too. Yes we also need to pay better attention and funding to mental health and inter agency communication to catch people like the Orlando shooter, but also have the laws to keep guns out of the hands of people like him. This evisceration of funding by so called conservatives for our mental health facilities is criminal, too.

The argument that we have a need for firearms to protect citizens from our government is really past. And quite foolish. Childish even in it's understanding of reality.

It's time for the adults we have put in place to govern and protect us to do their job and not just be shills of the NRA and corporations in their pursuits of the filthy lucre over that of human lives.

This is where all lives matter. Black, white, or all others; be they Gay, straight, Muslim or Christian, or all others. Here and in the final justification...Americans, and Human Beings.

Americans, over that of failed conservative ideologies toward money and killing machines.

Addendum, June 15, 2016:

I got up this morning considering the word, "Terrorist" and wondering, is this what we're seeing today? Now that I think about it, I've mentioned this before, in fact I think I've written entire blogs about this. I just looked and since I started this blog in 2010 I have, out of over 1,200+ blog articles, 83 on terrorism with more than a few mentioning this.

Should we use the word terrorist?
I mean, are YOU terrorized? I'm not.
i'm pissed off at how every cowardly little reprobate nobody loser can achieve fame and go out in their own perceived blaze of glory rushing toward their 72 grapes in a kind of Twilight Zone Muslim heaven (small "h" like in my book, Death of heaven, which frankly, fits their stupid childish beliefs in all this and is kind of the point of my book in the first place).

"Pissorist" maybe would be a more appropriate term as I'm only pissed off at cowards who indiscriminately kill people who have no bearing on anything related to any cause that might be claims as a reason for murder, and other than hatred.

But these aren't really Haterists. They conflate themselves and their cause and so want us to use terrorist.

That was when, in looking up the etymology of the word terrorist today, I found this article from after Charlie Hebdo...the author doesn't give us a proper alternative but nearly anything would be better than what we are in my view, incorrectly using now and to the murderer's benefit, to our detriment and to the benefit of the media in drawing our attention and making a buck on it (as always).

They are learning too, but all too slowly. Like the dumb person in the room. slowly coming to realize there are better ways to interact in social situations (like these cowardly murderers), Better ways to be a servant of the people, as they are and need to recognize they should be, rather than merely a subject of their masters in the board room and their own unrecognized ignoble lust for notoriety.

How about just, Snarky Little Bitches with Weapons?
SLBwWs,
SLaBwuhs.
Or just for short, SLaBs, for where they belong, dead, on a slab.
Of course I'd prefer to get them the mental health help they need before they decide to join that bitchy little Daesh organization. (and no offense meant to actual bitches here, sorry ya'll).
But I think I'm onto something. Stop labeling them as what they are going to or are doing and start labeling them for where they'll end up.
On a slab, so, slabbies. Something really uncool sounding, yes?

"Terrorist" as someone pointed out to me, is a term from the government. I'll be needing to talk to President Obama about this. Still, the media can call them whatever they want and they have even mentioned this before themselves. But they use what affects us the most and that is, terrorism.
Still, I say we call them "slabbies" from here on....

Anti-Intellectualism in America

There is a trend of anti-intellectualism in America that has been growing these past decades. Anti-intellectualism is pro-fascism and even pro capitalism. It is also pro religion.

Intellectualism on  the other hand is pro democracy. It is for all intents and purposes, pro human.

There is a scene in 2003s, The Last Samurai where the Samurai says about Tom Cruise's character, "There must be a reason why he is here." A very interesting statement. One that holds great sense, although it is patently misunderstood the world over and throughout most of time.

"There must be a reason why he is here."

This must refer to fate, to predestination, to God's plan. Right?

But is that what it is really being said?

Or is it saying:

"We must find the best possible reason for his existence here" in order for it to make sense, for us to make sense, of it.

That is to say, we need to find the most positive and productive way to explain his being here in this situation and how his being here makes things better and in what way, or how we can utilize his existing in this situation to enhance that situation for those who it should enhance their situation (and is that us?).

Or to put a good and positive message that can be used for others to make their life better or to offer them a useful allegory they can use in their own life.

It isn't however saying, "God put him here, we must find why in order to assuage God's desires."

And yet, so many people take it as meaning just that.

In The Untold History of Modern U.S. Education, it says:

"Education must also train one for quick, resolute and effective thinking. To think incisively and to think for one's self is very difficult. We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half-truths, prejudices, and propaganda. At this point, I often wonder whether education is fulfilling its purpose.

"A great majority of the so called educated people do not think logically or scientifically. Even the press, the classroom, the platform, and the pulpit in many instances do not give us the objective and unbiased truths. To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education."

This is the road we have been on for a very long time. Where we do not respect and venerate the old, wisdom, and history. Where we do not give credence to knowledge over our own perceived exceptionalism.

There was an article from 2014 that discusses how there is in America, as they titled it, The cult of ignorance in the United States: Anti-intellectualism and the "dumbing down" of America.

When and why is that happening? Where is it leading us? Where has it led us?

Seeking the highest possible understanding of anything cannot harm us, it can only harm some people's sensibilities. We have become more concerned about our feelings than reality.

What in the hell were we thinking?

Another article by Professor Patrick Deneen explains how kids have become a generation of know-nothings.

If we don't turn this about soon, and with extreme prejudice, I'm unsure how we will sustain an America as we've known it, or as it should be. At this rate Americanism will become a slang term for stupid, for wasting a good thing, rather than all the many other great things we have and should have stood for, for so very long.