Month: March 2018

What Changed?

by MyBaconPress

As the gun debate once again rages across this once-great nation I saw a question pop up in social media that I thought deserved some attention: ‘What changed?’  The premise of the question is that guns have been in our society…literally longer than we’ve BEEN a society.  One can go back through the years and NOT find mass shootings.  If you represent a certain age group you know that people used to drive around with rifles in their gun racks and really, nobody cared.  Students could have fights at school and nobody ever went out to their car or truck, grabbed a gun, and came back shooting.  So?  What changed?  Here are two possible answers, both of which are correct, neither of which is intended to be all-inclusive.

One thing that changed, quite frankly, is the National Rifle Association.  The NRA used to be a gun safety group.  They sponsored clubs and taught safety and responsible firearm practices.  Once upon a time, the NRA was on the side of the good guys.  These days, though, the NRA has morphed from the gun safety club they started as into a lobbyist group for gun manufacturers.  They’ve taken a “no compromise” position on the 2nd Amendment supported by an intentional misreading of it’s one sentence.

The other thing I point to that has changed is the media.  Information flow in the United States used to be (mostly) limited to newspapers and evening news reports on the three networks.  The people involved used to practice a thing called “Journalism.”  The media would provide the facts; who, what, when, where, why, and how.  People would come to their conclusions.  Opinions were limited to the Editorial pages.  On TV, if someone offered and opinion, they had to provide equal time for dissenting opinions.  (Imagine if FOX “News” was required to provide free equal time for dissenting opinions…)  It was MUCH more difficult for self-interested parties to inject disinformation into the discussion in support of profits.

With deregulation of broadcasting and the advent of the internet, though, all of that changed.  We started to see various outlets feeding certain types of information to certain groups of people.  We witnessed the rise of conservative media, then the conservative bubble.  Eventually, a liberal media branch was born, as well, but it has never been so fully developed as the conservative media.

And the conservative media is ANGRY.  They make their money stoking fear and anger.  At the risk of being accused of over-simplifying the message, conservative media maintains certain subtexts: the government is bad and only bad.  Business is good and only good.  “They” (defined as nearly as I can tell as anybody not conservative enough) are coming to enslave the population.  Conservative media hammers constantly on an “us-vs-them” mentality which they frame with existential overtones.  Over time, the weakest thinkers in the crowd begin to act on their anger and fears…

I have to take a moment, here, to talk about that term, “weak thinkers.”  I know it sounds like a slam but I don’t mean it that way.  It has nothing to do with “stupid.”  I actually mean people who were never taught to think properly or, perhaps as the result of some medical condition, for example, can no longer think as effectively as they once did.  The Austin bomber is an excellent example.  This white male conservative Christo-terrorist was raised in a super-conservative, super (pseudo) Christian household.  He was home-schooled with a goal of keeping him from having contact with “outsiders” – non-believers.  He participated in a group that taught shooting and the Bible.  He was specifically, intentionally isolated from “the secular world” ostensibly for his own protection.  (Truthfully, I’ve never been able to figure out why it doesn’t qualify as child abuse…)

Christian households are not teaching their children critical thinking.  The moment one answers “The Lord works in mysterious ways” to an honest question, one has planted the seed that critical thinking has limited application.   Conservative households specifically denounce critical thinking as some sort of conspiracy of the “intellectual elite.”  Now toss in a bit of Alex Jones or Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh.  Essentially, that kid didn’t stand a chance.  But by every account, he seemed intelligent enough.  His problem was not stupidity, it was weak thinking.  So…conservative media radicalizes weak thinkers – and a shooter (or bomber) is begotten.

I’ll tell you this: I’m going to go out on a limb, here, and predict that my conservative brethren will take issue with my positions, particularly regarding conservative media.  But there’s a reason the shooters keep coming up white, male, conservative, and pseudo-Christian and I think these are honest responses to the question; ‘What changed?’

Thoughts, March 19, 2018

by MyBaconPress

I suppose, by now, you’ve had a chance to look up some of Stormy Daniels’ work.  That girl can act!  I mean, I really believed her anguish at not having the money to pay for that pizza…

I hear Trump gets his parade.  Bully for him.  I’m glad the United States has finally found a way to project her military strength to the rest of the globe…

FINALLY, we know who’s going to lead Russia for the next six years.  I guess he’ll be leading the US, as well.  At least until we can get rid of Trump…

The United States Supreme Court.
That’s it.  That’s the whole joke…

Republican leaders are warning Trump not to interfere with Mueller’s investigation.  They want him to let it play out.  I think they know that, politically, it’s the best way to get rid of him…

California lawmakers seem to be catching on to the idea that taxing cannabis at 50% just sends buyers back to the black market.  Apparently, the “fix” they’re considering is to lower the tax by 9% for three years.   I don’t know if Gavin Newsom intended to be so supportive of California’s black market in cannabis but he couldn’t have done a better job if he had tried…

On Sanctuary Cities…

by MyBaconPress

I got lost, recently, on the topic of Sanctuary Cities.  With so much misinformation going around, I suppose it’s not such a difficult thing to do – get lost in the stream.  It started when I heard that a city in the bay area was considering declaring itself a sanctuary city for marijuana.  So far, the sanctuary tag has been used in ways I support.  But I began to wonder what happens if another state uses the ‘Sanctuary’ moniker to do something I don’t believe in.  What if, as an extreme example, Alabama decided to declare itself a ‘Sanctuary State’ for slavery or Texas declared itself a ‘Sanctuary State’ against Roe vs Wade?  Then Jeff Sessions, the impish Attorney General of the US, saved me by filing suit against California.  His suit insists that California has no legal right to make laws contrary to the Federal government.  It brought me back.  If you, too, might be feeling a bit lost regarding what the state is doing, allow me, please, to share my insights…

My mistake was seeing the ‘Sanctuary’ identifier as a thumb in the eye to the Federal government and that’s exactly what Sessions is arguing.  The thing is, that’s NOT what the sanctuary moniker is about.  The reason California is going to win this legal fight is because nobody is telling the Feds they can’t do their jobs.  The Sanctuary Cities are simply declaring that the Fed doesn’t get to use local (city or state) resources.  Everyone agrees; immigration is a Federal responsibility.  Nobody is trying to stop the Federal Government from using Federal resources to carry out a Federal job.  Because the state doesn’t agree with the tactics of the Feds, we’ve simply declared we’re not going to help.  In short, California’s sanctuary laws are not contrary to Federal law.

It’s the same with Berkeley’s marijuana sanctuary city designation.  Berkeley is merely stating that they won’t use local resources on cannabis cases.  But while writing this, I began to wonder about the anti-marijuana bent of the Federal government.  The Feds classify cannabis as a Schedule 1 drug, meaning, by definition, there’s no known medical benefit.  Yet, the Federal government grows and provides same to Glaucoma patients, clearly indicating a known medical benefit.  I wonder if one of my legal friends would enlighten me as to how the Feds ever got a conviction if their own actions demonstrate lack of belief in the basis for one of it’s laws.

I’ll tell you this: It’s a confusing world we live in but I’m feeling better about sanctuary cities…

Activating Empathy…

by MyBaconPress

Every time this gun debate happens, sooner or later, some frustrated soul says, “Well, I hope one of THEIR kids ends up on the wrong end of a gun!”  The speaker invariably looks horrified by what they’ve just suggested, retracts the statement, and begins apologizing profusely to whatever higher power they claim.  They don’t REALLY mean it.  After all, what kind of blithering, blind fool would wish harm on children because of the sins of the father?  But they ARE reacting to something many people know: there’s a large swath of people on this planet who lack empathy and the only way to get them to understand a thing is for them to experience it.

My American Heritage Dictionary defines empathy as “Identification with and understanding of another’s situation, feelings, and motives.”  Basically, empathy is the capacity to accurately place oneself in another person’s shoes.  Because people who lack empathy cannot properly relate to another person’s position, they often come to erroneous conclusions about things – but only while those things remain abstract.  Once the “empathy-challenged” gain personal experience in a given subject, they often have a more…applicable attitude…

Gabby Giffords is one of the more obvious examples today.  She was a Congresswoman from Arizona.  She didn’t get a high grade from the NRA because she supported an assault weapons ban but, according to Foxnews.com, she has been “vocal about her support for gun owners’ rights.”  She supported and signed an amicus brief in support of gun owners’ rights in DC vs Heller.  These days, however, she fronts a gun-control group she founded with her husband.  What changed?  A bullet to the head.  Apparently, getting shot in the head is a very convincing argument for gun control.  For her, the entire gun debate left the world of “philosophical positions” and became very real, indeed.  It got me to thinking…

No, I’m not thinking we should shoot anybody who supports gun rights.  Listen, I support gun rights, though I acknowledge it might be a little difficult to tell from this particular piece.  But that’s because I’m tired of mass shootings and I’m tired of people standing in the way of common sense gun controls that might prevent them.  Yes, I know, they might not.  But suggesting that something shouldn’t be tried because it might not work perfectly in every possible situation just sounds stupid.  Because it is…

I know that more than 99% of gun owners are “responsible.”  But in fighting every suggestion – many proven by application in other countries – that comes down the line as an attempt to take away all guns, the 99+% aren’t doing anything to help society deal with the less than one percent.  It seems to me, the very best way to ensure that eventually, society will demand confiscation is to continue to protect and defend the people who misuse their weapons and the (lack of) process that makes it so easy.  It remains true: the few always ruin it for the many.

Yes, it’s a “mental health problem.”  But our society has decided to destroy itself through endless war so there’s no money to deal with mental health problems.  If we’re not going to treat those with mental health problems, we’re going to be left with no alternative but to take away the devices they use to express their mental health problems.  You feel free to cite all the pseudo-facts and “massaged” statistics you want.  No matter what you say, the other side of the ledger shows children cut to pieces by lead.  You want to deride that as an “emotional response?”  Have at it.  It won’t change a thing.  When a loved one is cut to pieces in a way that could have been prevented, statistics have no meaning…

But I digress.  This is about empathy.  To that end, I’d like to pass a law called ‘Giving The Finger To Shooters Act.’  It provides that every time there’s a shooting with six or more deaths, society gets to take one of Evil Wayne’s fingers.  (“Evil Wayne” is Wayne LaPierre, the current bastar…uh…CEO of the NRA.)  Look, I know it sounds harsh.  I’m not trying to be cruel.  I mean, we wouldn’t use garden shears.  We’d have a doctor do the work.  We wouldn’t start with “important” fingers, either.  We would start with the pinky of his non-dominant hand and work in from there, one at a time, as the qualified shootings occur.  Real-life practice currently identifies a mass shooting as four or more victims.  The ‘Giving The Finger To Shooters Act’ calls for six or more deaths, so there’s some grace there, too.

When you think about it, the proposal provides Evil Wayne greater opportunity to protect his fingers (and toes, eventually) than his rhetoric provides for children.  Besides, said law isn’t really aimed at Evil Wayne.  It would apply to whoever the CEO of the NRA is a the time of the shooting.  But I’ll tell you this; I’ve got to believe that if Evil Wayne had to give up a digit every time someone killed six or more people in one shooting, the NRA would have an entirely different attitude about gun control.  You see, Evil Wayne would have something tangible on the line.  His empathy would be activated.  These shootings are not abstract to the victims’ families and they wouldn’t be abstract for the currently carefully protected Wayne anymore, either.

I know.  I’m not going to get such a law – and I shouldn’t – because of civilization.  Evil Wayne is protected by (and gets to profit from) the reality that I don’t get to BE a barbarian in an attempt to stop barbarianism.  So let me, instead, try to activate some empathy by using a metaphor that a certain segment of our society once found oh-so-convincing.  Imagine you have a bowl of Skittles…

To the best of my knowledge, Skittles are nothing more than an enjoyable snack manufactured by conscientious people in a clean and safe environment.  (That’s my disclaimer for the people at Wrigley…)  In our bowl of Skittles, though, through some unknown anomaly of the manufacturing process, two of the Skittles contain pure poison with no known antidote.  They’re slightly misshapen, so if you could examine them closely enough, they COULD be routed out before anyone consumed them.  But you’re not allowed to look.  And those are the two we might have caught.  There’s also one Skittle that started out just fine but, again, through some unknown group of pressures, that Skittle has “broken” and morphed from being a “responsible” Skittle, to being pure poison, with no known antidote.  No one will find out about that Skittle until someone dies.  That’s just the risk we take for enjoying Skittles…

Now…and you don’t get to choose zero…how many Skittles are you going to put in your child’s lunch today?