Truth is, I haven't been writing a whole lot about things that have been going on, because it's gotten me too damn depressed. That, and I've been hella busy with life, because, well, life. That's also had me kind of depressed. Frankly, I can only yell "FUCK YOU!" at everyone, everything, and the Universe so many times before I grow physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually hoarse.
Anyway, this gun insanity. I wrote a small thing this morning, and I'm putting it here, too, because I'm genuinely disgusted not only with the NRA (I mean, not that I wasn't before, but this has gone too far) but with everyone who's decided that gun control = "THEY'RE A-COMIN' FER MAH GUUUUNNNNNNS!" as opposed to, you know, limiting the amount of damage that can be done by limiting access to machines that are only designed to kill human beings as opposed to, say, dinner. So here:
(If you're wondering, it has to do with this in specific: The latest from the NRA, which everyone should be really, truly, and genuinely terrified by.)
Oh, but they don't endorse violence.
This? This -is- violence. This is mental and emotional abuse. The aim is to create self-styled soldiers fighting against an imaginary foe working to undermine Americans' freedoms. This is the sort of thing that's -encouraging- the violence that we've already seen among paranoid survivalist groups and neo-Nazis. It's a desperate bid for support from a lobbyist group who's losing left, right, and center.
How is this okay? Please, enlighten me. We're at a point in social history where we're talking about the idea of arming teachers and having guns in -churches-. We're talking about allowing for the potential of bloodshed in the last bastions of innocence, rather than talking about getting to and eradicating the root causes of the problems.
The roots aren't in mental health, either, so don't even try that one.
They're in the altogether manufactured illusion that certain groups of
people have become marginalized, have had their voices taken away --
when all people who have actually been marginalized historically have
worked to do is level the playing field. And you know who's creating
that illusion? Folks like the one who made this ad.
We're supposed to be better than this. We're supposed to have evolved.
We -are- better than this, as long as we have the courage to allow ourselves to be. We don't need this divisiveness anymore. Please, please don't feed it.
We're supposed to be better than this. We're supposed to have evolved.
We -are- better than this, as long as we have the courage to allow ourselves to be. We don't need this divisiveness anymore. Please, please don't feed it.
Congress only responds while in Crisis Mode. The past week might just have propelled us into one, and by gods maybe just maybe something good will come of all this crap.
ReplyDeleteHowever (there's always one of those), looks like this divisiveness is just the iceberg's tip...
It is my fondest hope that perhaps yes, something good will come of this. We're already seeing corporate support for the NRA eroding -- but that will probably only make them more desperate. I hope the momentum of the movement that's started among our kids doesn't fade, because I have great faith that -that's- what's going to make the difference. I hear our local Republican shill on the radio in the mornings yelling that we need to "teach these kids discipline" and "make them stay in school" -- punish them for using what they've been taught is the best way to make a statement: civil disobedience.
DeleteI fear you're right: this is just the tip of the iceberg. We never learned the really important lessons from our last civil war, and we're reaching a point where once again, the nation is swiftly becoming a powderkeg. I pray we can avoid it. I'm not sure we can. I (perhaps naively) keep thinking that if enough of us fight, in ways big and small, to heal some of the scars we may keep ourselves from plunging back into that insanity. The thing is, enough people have to actually understand what's at stake, and what's happening -- and I'm not sure there are enough.