DEFEAT FASCISM

 On May 26, the president of the United States of America commented on Memorial Day, the day we Americans honor those who died in the service of our country.

It is a day of remembrance. It is a day that we honor "Those few, those happy few, the band of brothers [and sisters]" who gave their lives for our country.

It is a day when we all take a moment to reflect on the blood of faraway places like Normandy and nearby places like Gettysburg. It is day we recall those portions of distant fields that will, in the style of poet Rupert Brooke, forever be America.

It is a day that calls for us to become Americans, not members of a political party or religious sect.

It is one of the most sacred days of the year for American patriots.

It is a day for somber reflection and remembrance.

It is a day that demands our noblest instincts.

Proving once more that there is no bottom to his insidiousness, here is what the president of the United States of America spewed upon us:

DEFEAT FASCISM

 Each day a meme appears on social media implying that what the MAGAs are doing is okay because Bill Clinton did something similar. The memes don't bother to say whether it is true, whether Clinton "did" it, or whether Congress "enacted" it.

At any rate, this doesn't pass my Sainted Mother's "jump off a cliff" rule. Yes, "if all your little buddies were going to …." That's the one.

Oh, and by the way, am I the only one in the country that doesn't always believe in coincidences?

DEFEAT FASCISM: READ REBUKE RESIST

 I'm not the best or most decent person, so don't take this as so-called "virtue signaling." Back during the Covid 19 crisis, though, when they sent us all money, I was afraid to go out and spend mine. Instead, I sent it to a nonprofit here that I know serves "the least of those among us."

I did profit though. I sat down and got to thinking. I decided there were a lot of people who were, in fact, gonna go out and spend theirs. I started researching retail outlets and made a list of those who were solid but whose stock was temporarily undervalued. I concluded that a little bump in America's spending habits had the potential for making money.

In short, I did some day trading. Made nearly $30,000 ere things started cooling off. We're living comfortably now, partly assisted by that windfall. Periodically I send part of it to that same nonprofit.

How come I trust it? I first saw the man who created it years ago at a festival walking around with a basket attached with a sign asking for money for the poor. Later, I decided that an organization founded by such a man could be trusted.

Now a majority of Americans place that kind of trust in people who inherited their money, not the ones who walked the streets like the Galilean asking us to remember the needy. It has brought America to an ugly place.

DEFEAT FASCISM: READ REBUKE RESIST

 America needs some heroes. These days remind one of an old western movie. You know, the one where the bad guy has no moral restraint and holds his pistol to the heroine’s head. Despite the potential consequences, the hero drops his gun and yields. Righteous heroes, the ones bound by morality, do that.

Justice comes nonetheless. Sometimes through what the ancients called a “deus ex machina,”  literally “a god from a machine,” or an unexpected solution to a problem or a contrived ending to a story.

-          The hero’s Quaker wife, who has lived a live free of violence and has never held a gun, shoots one of the bastards from afar.

-          The gun misfires.

-          A distant sidekick solves the dilemma.

-          The townsfolk converge to convince the terrorist of his doubtful future.

America stands on threshold of disaster now. The fascists who have pushed her to the edge have no moral compunction whatsoever against pushing her into oblivion. Their long-range plans lie far beyond the borders of a single country.

Those who would defend Democracy, only slightly less in number, stand paralyzed by their opponents’ lack of morality-based restraint.

There will not be a deus ex machina described in the history of our nation.

We need some good guys.

DEFEAT FASCISM: READ REBUKE RESIST

 Useful idiots abound these days, unfortunately on both sides of the political spectrum. It is a term that originated with Russians Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, mega-madmen who raised mass genocide in the pursuit of power to a level not to be matched until Pot Pol arrived on the scene in Cambodia. It refers to those who help maintain power but aren’t part of the inner circle of actors.

A more apt descriptor might be “useful idiot” for we cannot assume these folks are stupid. Rather, they are sometimes quite intelligent enablers who do not consider the harmful effects of a given cause, political or otherwise. They attribute to a given cause its positive effects. They ignore the harmful, even disastrous effects.

The tragic aspect is that they exist on both extremities of rational behavior and can join hands to place pure evil into power.

On the far right, useful fools pursue the eradication of a women’s choice for abortion to the extent of supporting laws that subject a 12-year-old to the bearing of a rapist’s child.

On the far left, they respond to the actions of a renegade police officer by supporting the demolition of entire commercial areas of a city by mobs screaming, “Defund the police.”

Sadly, we have reached a point in our approach to universal problems such as inadequate health care, lack of housing, crime, and poverty that we now cling to the far margins of rational thought.

Imagine the process of addressing of cognitive thought to solving a problem.  Our workspace is a long spectrum of analysis allowing for major complexities. Take the issue of immigration, for example.

On one far end the useful idiots scream “open borders.”

On the other far end the useful idiots scream “concentration camps, walls, and machine gun nests.”

Any person advocating an approach lying somewhere in between based on logical thinking and compromises encounters vicious, sometimes career-ending attacks on their personal and professional stature. Moving even beyond the strictures of Mafia doctrine, even family members and friends lie within the field of fire.

Fascists love the strife and opportunity caused by this dialectic.

It has placed America in her current condition of impending doom and will get worse as we end progressive education and replace it with indoctrination based on loyalty to the forces in power (FOP).

DEFEAT FASCISM: READ REBUKE RESIST

 Back in the day, I lived in San Francisco for a short while. Enjoyed life there. Who wouldn't? It was during the height of the so-called "hippie movement" and I was avid observer. I lived practically across the street from Panhandle Park where Ken Kessey and his "Merry Pranksters" did their act. It was, as they used to say, "A hoot."

Entertainment was plentiful and cheap. I particularly liked the shows in North Beach put on by the drag queens. It was a harmless and creative type of humor, designed to make people feel better.

The Draft Board interrupted my carefree life. Before long I wound up on a bunker at the edge of the jungle on a mountain overlooking the Da Nang harbor hoping I wouldn’t get shot. The watches were six hours long and one was from midnight until 0600. It was particularly demanding. I did exercises to stay awake. One was to make a mental list of people in my life who had done me wrong and another of those who had done me “solids.”

The drag queens never made the first list, but a lot of politicians and self-proclaimed Christians did. Funny how the people on that list never went away but are still around in the same form with different faces, most of them snarling.

You didn't become a fascist because you love Jesus. Admit it. The Sermon on the Mountain makes you nauseated.

DEFEAT FASCISM

 Read Rebuke Resist

We've demeaned them over the years. We've ridiculed them. We've made the butts of our jokes. And yes, we've even said that a hundred of them chained to the bottom of the ocean would be a "good start."

We've quoted Shakespeare out of context to suggest killing them all to solve a crisis.

Yes, I'm talking about attorneys, lawyers, counselors, ambulance chasers, Perry Masons.

Where are we today? The takeover of Germany by the Nazis in the 1930s is being replayed on the streets of America. The clowns have taken over the circus. As my late friend Gary "Doc" Toler said, "It's a different picture in a different frame." Despair settles on us like a freezing fog. Where shall we turn?

In one of those strange circumstances History plays upon us now and then, we scream for help. Who hears us? Who will man the ramparts? Who will pull us safe from the onslaught of fascism?

A band of brave lawyers, that's who. Let's resist the madness by supporting them.

DEFEAT FASCISM

 Read Rebuke Resist

Even with all the news, I have to admit that I’ve seen a worse January. That of 1968 comes to mind. I’d only been “in-country” a few weeks when what was then called “North Vietnam” decided to launch the historically infamous Tet Offensive.

In brief, all hell broke loose, and I was cast into it but certainly not to the extent that the Marines in Hue were. I was in Naval security on the Tien Sha peninsula outside of Da Nang. We pulled six-hour watches, six hours fortifying our bases, and six hours sleep for 26 days. But we made it through.

Despite what you read, it was not a surprise. Everyone knew it was coming. It’s just that those in charge, following the lead of General William C. Westmoreland, didn’t take the warnings seriously. As our modern dilemma shows only too well, things go badly when we don’t take danger seriously.

Truth is, there was one major difference between what I experienced in 1968 and what I fully expect to experience in short order.

The people wanting to destroy me in 1968 were not people whom I had once considered dear friends who loved America as much as I.

DEFEAT FASCISM

 Read Rebuke Resist

Times have been bad before for some people of America.

Consider people of color. They not only survived but came to prevail in so many areas.

Consider the one-third of the names on the Vietnam Wall who were drafted. There's was a tragedy beyond describing, but their fate ended the horror of the draft … for now.

Consider those who did come back from that war but came back scarred and despised with years of their life torn out. Many are now retired from highly successful professions.

Consider the Dust Bowl refugees. They found new lives and moved on.

Consider half the population who once couldn't obtain a credit card on their own or vote but who now sit as judges and corporate president.

Not all have come to well-being.

We still have the homeless.

We still have the immigrant refugees.

And many others.

We seem to be head backwards, but with a caveat.

It's gonna include ya'll this time. Karma is a great grinning bitch when she wants to be.

DEFEAT FASCISM

 Read Rebuke Resist

I promised myself I would remain calm and disconnected. But as I waited for the microwave to heat a cup of coffee this morning, I thought about something.

If they get through with the librarians and come for me, what will I, like Fyodor Dostoevsky once narrated, think about the moments before execution? What time-wasting actions will I regret?

Sadly, today it would be the four years I served in the uniform of my country. The ruling political party said yesterday that it was at best a joke. 

It would have been better had I joined a mob, stormed the U.S. Capitol, killed a police officer, crapped on its floors, and threatened the lawmakers. Those are the present-day heroes of America. Isn't this true? (Ist es nicht wahr? for my MAGA acquaintances.)

Of course, had I done that at the time, I would probably still be in prison and wouldn’t have been included in the travesty of yesterday.

The New Normal is making me nauseated.

DEFEAT FACISM

READ RESIST REBUKE

My mind is flittering today. One little messenger said, "They won't come for you."

Another said, "They will come for you, but it will take time. Think of all the teachers and librarians they'll have to get first."

Then one popped up with, "The German veteran of WWI, Jewish, but with an Iron Cross hanging on his wall, probably felt safe in 1936."

They won't be satisfied until the only people allowed to exist outside the ruling oligarchy are the equivalent of what Orwell labelled "proles."

Clausewitz wrote that friction can detract from and army's effectiveness. One person resisting the Trusk administration may encourage another who may encourage another until a fast web of resistance stands in the way of fascism. I'll not be a prole today.

DEFEAT FASCISM

 The Three Rs to defeat fascism: READ REBUKE RESIST

Today: Read. Delve into the facts of modern times, how 77,303,573 Americans renounce the life of a man, himself an honored and distinguished veteran, because he once offered forgiveness to those who made a heart-wrenching decision to avoid service in a questionable war now laud the man who called those who served and died in the effort “suckers and losers.” Only by understanding the depth of America’s descent into fascism can we fight it.

DEFEAT FASCISM

 The Three Rs to defeat fascism: READ REBUKE RESIST

Today: Read. Last time we read the Sermon on the Mount. Next suggestion. Stay in the Gospel of Matthew. This time go to the 25^th Chapter, verses 32 through 46. This spells out exactly what the Galilean thought about righteousness and it is pretty much the opposite of the new rulers of America preach. Stay on the path. You will block the fascists and annoy the hell out of MAGA evangelicals.

DEFEAT FASCISM

The Three Rs to defeat fascism: READ REBUKE RESIST

Today: Resist the influence of the weak. Donald Trump and Elon Musk, the two men who seek to rule America, have little physical strength or power, actually less that many of their sex and age.

Yet they stand on the quarterdeck of a ship called America, one that is heading into the dark waters of fascism. How did two fat and flaccid men accomplish this?

 As Leo Tolstoy once said, “Power is the collective will of the people transferred, by expressed or tacit consent to their chosen rulers.”

Obsession with evil, obliviousness to evil, and obedience to evil, all transfer power. Millions of individual actions fuel the coming catastrophe.

Today I will not feed fascism. Thereby, I will reduce its power by a force of one. Join me?

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 CHANGE

Events of this week have touched me to and amazing extent. First of all, they demonstrated once again how wrong I could be.

Yes wrong.

I had avowed that the drag on one political party was the thought that a mixed-race Californian as a vice-presidential candidate would be come president sometime before 2029. America wasn’t ready.

Seems I was wrong.

So what happened?

I’m thinking the events caused some sort of cosmic shift in our national psyche. That happens, often negatively. Look at what happened in my part of the country when America elected an African American president. Bigotry didn’t simply emerge as valid political weapon. It exploded like a dormant volcano.

No, this enervated something good and decent in our genetic banks. Maybe America was tired of the sight of two grumpy old men dominating the media and our national psyche.

Sometimes we just want to see the image of what we think America needs. I think it happened to some extent with the emergence of Ronald Reagan as a presidential candidate. After the nightmare of the Nixon debacles, America longed for a kindly old uncle, or at least an actor who could play one.

Too late we discovered that our kindly old uncle wasn’t averse to taxing Social Security payments so the rich could pay less taxes.

But now.

Now I think we want to see a fresh face of decency. We remember civility. We remember love of country. We remember respect for our military personnel. The so-called “suckers and losers,” along with their friends and families, longed for some sense of decorum.

At any rate, the news has shaken things up. One can tell by the reaction of the opposing party. I longed for an apt description. I searched and researched my memory.

Finally it came, attributable I think to Henry Miller in his Tropic of Cancer:

They are sh*****g arpeggios.

Yep.

COVER-UPS

Why I fear they will get away with it. If we follow the Woodward and Bernstein theme from the 1970s, what will get mendacious politicians in the long run is the cover-up or attempt thereof. It is, as Ernest Hemingway said, “pretty to think so.” With this bunch, however, there is no attempt at a cover-up, no attempt at all.

If anything, they are proud to have what they did reported.

They know that their base will stick no matter what and that enough centrists will fly to any shining lie or misrepresentation they posit.

Cover-ups are for sissies.

If they released the Unabomber from prison, Donald Trump could put him on the ticket as his vice-presidential candidate and carry my home state by 60%.

Cover-ups are a waste of time and resources.

This bunch follows the advice of Lennie Bruce, the comedian who said to men caught cheating on their wives, “Lie, lie even if they have you on film.”

Cover-ups fail.

Lies win.

Besides, they can just have SCOTUS rule that a lie is the truth.

Perfection

If we follow the Galilean long enough in our reading of the Sermon on the Mount, he will throw us a curve ball. He does it several times. He never does it more bluntly and devastatingly, though, as in Chapter 5, Verse 48, when he tells us to

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Wow. Now modern revisionists love to monkey with translations, particularly when they concern the love of money. The various translations of this “moral imperative,” however, vary barely a diphthong. They all translate, almost verbatim, as

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Wow. We thought only the heavenly Father was perfect. What does he mean telling us to be perfect?

I can just hear Franklin Graham now, if he were ever to read the Sermon On The Mount. “Why he’s kidding of course, having us on for one of his little inside jokes. That must mean some of the other tripe about loving your neighbor and attending ‘the least of those among us’ must be jokes as well.”

“I wasn’t joking at all,” the Galilean told me not long ago. It seems that he intended “The Sermon” have some low-breaking curves mixed in with the straight fast balls. Amy Butler of Baptist News Global expressed it well:

“Most of us really like certain parts of the Sermon on the Mount — the parts about the lilies of the field and where your treasure is there will your heart be also. But there are lots of other parts of the sermon, and frankly, many of them are quite onerous. There’s the love your enemies part, direction about not being a hypocrite, hard words about divorce, and a warning against religious leaders who smile too much. If you listen to the whole thing instead of picking and choosing the passages you like, I will guarantee you’ll feel uncomfortable …”

So, what about “being perfect?”

I think it’s something that guitar players would know about. They know that when you try to emulate, or get to play along with, someone better than you, you will get better. You’ll never be a Chet Atkins, Hank Garland, Merle Travis, or Robert Johnson, but you’ll get better. It’s a heck of a lot more effective than trying to emulate me, or listening to a rock and roll “shredder” tell us how BB King did what he did.

That would be like me explaining exactly how Muhammad Ali followed up a left jab with a right uppercut, or how William Faulkner could describe, “… a Southern boy, fourteen years old … .”

But maybe the Galilean was talking about striving, not achieving. In seeking righteousness, wouldn’t it be a lot better to emulate a truly righteous person rather than a tv evangelist who simply wants a new jet?

I know what my anti-theist friends are thinking. “Are we to emulate a spirit figure who, we are told, once destroyed every baby on the planet because he got mad at their parents?

I think baseball players would understand this one. I think they would tell you that we have to figure out, in this short life, how to handle the curve balls as well as the straight fast balls.

Let’s close this morn with a “wee bit o’perfection.”

The guitar as a path
to righteousness?
I report. You decide.

Pure of heart ... ?

Theology Time: Still stuck on the Beatitudes I am. I suppose it’s because they suffer these days from being so “bigly” ignored. I can’t turn anywhere without having the stricture from Leviticus against homosexuality thrust in my face. Pretty explicit it is. The writer called it, a man laying with another man as with a woman that is, “an abomination.”

The writer was from a group just emerging from the Stone Age, so he wrote without the scientific knowledge of biological descent through modification, or of genomic organization and the modifications possible. Still, he allowed his strictures to be quite explicit.

But so were the commands by Moses concerning the fate of the Midianite women and children captured in war—explicit that is. Seems he commanded his victorious soldiers, “Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.” - Numbers 31 (NIV)

How can we, if we are to accept every sentence in the Old Testament as coming directly from the mouth of the Almighty, supposed to reconcile all this? Last time I visited a church full of evangelicals (the ones who hate the differently genomed the most), about half those under 40 years of age had violated a direct command from Himself. In Leviticus 19:28, the Bible says, "Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am Lord."

I am sure that he didn’t mean to include faded nautical tattoos on the shoulders of aging vets, just the flowers and snakes crawling from the bodices of beautiful young women and the hateful sayings on the arms of swaggering young men. But, anyway …

Do I stand as the only confused one? I fear that many (so-called) Christians seem to have abandoned the words of Yahweh and, instead, follow the words, written by poet Paul Simon, and sung with his pal Art Garfunkel, “Still, a man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest.” How are we supposed to maintain a purity of heart in these times?

That brings us to today’s Beatitude, the sixth: “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.”

Oh dear.

Are you afraid, dear reader, as am I, that our national leaders of today would consider the act of striving to be pure of heart as a sign of weakness? If you aren’t, carry a person who is dying of a curable disease to one of our leaders and seek succor for this example of the least of those among us. You’ll find out real fast (dare I say “bigly”) who shall see God and who won’t, at least according to the Galilean. (Someday, we’ll get back to what he had to say about divorce. That’s a real hoot).

The Sermon on the Mount is a marvelous account of purity in thought and heart. I only wish someone could get the haters to read it. Maybe some have. That possibility makes me think of Exodus 9-12, (NIV) “But the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart and he would not listen … .” The Lord? Surely not. That makes me think of a college experience. A nationally-known sociologist, Dr. Grant Bogue, assigned me a reading back in the 1960s called Our Schizophrenic Society. It as all about how the disparity between the teachings of adults and their actions must have been adversely affecting the minds of the young.

If that was true in the 1960s, what would we make of it today? Pure of heart? Give me a break.

Have mercy ...

Theology Time for the week. Oh dear. I’m still stuck on the Beatitudes, primarily as recorded by the Gospel writer Matthew as being a part of the Sermon on the Mount. This is a little-known segment of the Christian New Testament, largely redacted by the fundamentalist segment of our country—the so-called Evangelicals. To many “hard-shells,” the ten “blessings” seem more of an embarrassment than a directive or mandate. We’re stuck with them, though, at least until the new Bibles come out.

Certainly, our target this week would be an insult to the likes of Franklin Graham, the latest self-appointed prophet of propriety. It does appear that the fifth of the Beatitudes represents a case in which the Galilean stops preaching and starts meddling. Without any apparent embarrassment, he announces, “Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.” Can’t one just hear the “Out of Context Crowd” clamoring for the microphone?

Merciful? Oh my goodness. What in the world was he talking about? It doesn’t appear to be a typo, for it agrees with another directive later in the same document, "Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful" (Luke 6:36).

Merciful? Who needs it in a world moved to such a degree by raw hatred of others? Who needs it in a country led by person who begins each day with digitally transmitted scorn and vitriol published against those who disagree with him in the slightest?

Merciful? Who needs it in a world where so many condone murderous executions because of the physiological makeup of a specific persons, amidst the tacit approval of so many in our own country?

Merciful? I struggle with the concept when I hear people around me promote the persecution and demeaning of those the Galilean called his beloved.

Merciful? How does one explain the concept to young children in a country that builds aircraft carrier after aircraft carrier while healthcare clinics in its rural areas go broke for lack of funding? (We might come back to this one later.)

Merciful? How do you explain mercy to a young child of five who has just been told, and implanted with a primal fear, that a loving old man in the sky will send their precious bodies to an everlasting pit of fire for the slightest mishap?

There are those who say, “Oh, we’re fulfilling the ‘merciful’ stricture when we point out to sinners their shortcomings and admonish them for their evil ways.” They add, “Oh, it is also quite merciful to instruct the uninformed. What better example of mercy than to interrupt their sinful, albeit peaceful, ignorance and let them know about the everlasting pit of fire? Now that’s what you call real mercy.”

The Galilean tells me that he’s not sure about all of this. People seem to be putting themselves in the position of determining what constitutes a sin. He thinks they are limiting themselves to the whole concept of mercy as he sees it, which is to provide succor to those the world deems “the least,” not the “most.”

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I don’t really talk to the Galilean. Nor does Franklin Graham. I just read the words he is reported as having said.

I don’t think many others do. Shall we be merciful to them by pointing out the errors of their ways?

Heck, I guess we’ll have to.

I need to talk to that man.

In a strange sort of way, some who may suffer most over America’s “gun thing,” may be the harmless hobbyists, hunters, and enthusiasts.

Although I am not one, I have no great bone to pick with these folks. Some probably don’t collect banjos. To each his own I say, as I down my morning glass of buttermilk and listen to Schubert.

I view it this way. There will come a time when mothers get fed up with seeing the cold corpses of their children spread across the schoolyard. Then they will act. It won’t be because of the killing that happened this week. It won’t be the one after, nor the next one, perhaps not even the one after. The NRA won’t allow it as long as its coffers overflow and some politicians have deep hands.

But it will happen someday. Just wait and see. There will come a day when the “butcher’s bill” gets too great. And those who read history, in states where it is still revered and taught, will remember what happens when mothers get mad enough against something.

Then what will happen? There won’t be a discussion then. It will be too late for one, not too soon as the “auto-response” button puts it. Grab a history book and look up the Volstead Act of 1919, then tell me Americans won’t go to extremes when it suits them.

When that happens, as the scriptures tell us, the rain will fall on the just and the unjust. Good, decent people, of whom I am blessed to know many, will suffer along with the thugs who run the National Rifle Association, the manufacturers who own them, and the once-majority of politicians. It won’t be pretty.

What happened? How did we get into this mess? I believe good people were sold a bad bill of goods. Moreover, they failed to sense the betrayal from what once was a benign organization that taught young kids—I was one—the value of safe and sane firearms usage. Too many stayed in its ranks until it has become the tool of the purveyors of death.  Good people make bad decisions. Why?

Things change, sometimes so gradually that we don’t notice. Who can pinpoint the exact date when that benign organization became the evil, blood-soaked empire that it is today? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that innocent owners of firearms, who simply wanted to collect, hunt, compete, or protect their homes, stayed latched onto the NRA like it was the Pied Piper. And, as in that cautionary tale, blind followers may ultimately face the same end.

It will be a shame, for many going over that cliff will be, as I say, kind, generous, good-hearted people, but last seen holding hands with the imbeciles that carry loaded assault rifles into Walmart, our schools, churches, or other gatherings of the innocent.

I have said it before, and I’ll say it again. I don’t want your firearms. I already have some that I have inherited and don’t know what to do with. I don’t want to take any away from you, and I don’t recall right off hearing anyone else with half a brain proposing to. I simply don’t care what you do inside your home, the deep woods, or in a spot designated for discharging weapons of destruction.

If you simply can’t abide the thought, yeah there may be some, of not using your firearm to kill another human, be aware that the military is scraping the bottom of the barrel in its recruitment efforts. Your enlistment might postpone the ultimate return of the draft one more day. (Full disclosure: the animals hunted by the military do shoot back).

I just want to talk to you about not elevating your gun to the status of a religious icon. Religious icons have wreaked havoc on our planet for eons, from the fate of the Midianites to the destruction of the Twin Towers. It’s time we put those aside.

I just want reasonable people with different points of view to sit and discuss ways to prevent the carnage, and don’t say it won’t work. It works in other countries. Don’t say our “founding fathers” were infallible when they wrote the Constitution. If they were, many of my friends would still be counted as three-fifths of a human and my wife couldn’t vote at all. And let us all bear in mind that if it had been the “founding mothers” we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Imagine reasonable people sitting down to discuss a solution to a festering sore that is slaughtering our innocents. I think it could happen. Call me a dreamer if you wish, but “I’m not the only one.”

And it’s not to soon. Just a few more slaughterings, however, and it will be too late.

Grandmothers get mad too.
Best not risk it.