~Coolio, Gangsta's Paradise.
Yesterday, I followed what was going on with the March For Our Lives on social media. Today, I've been paying very close attention to the reactions to it. A lot of people, not the least the kids themselves, have spoken far more eloquently than I could about these issues.
But...
This caught my attention, enough that it pissed me off.
I mean, this shit is pretty fucked up.
These people are saying, disown your kids if your kids think that they should have a right not to get shot.
Some people really do love their guns, or their beliefs about their guns, more than they love their kids. That's fucked up, and I say that as a gun owner and a former conservative Republican.
What they're asking here, is that people choose self, and selfishness...and their guns...over family.
According to the NRA, and various gun nuts, basically it's a dog-eat-dog world out there and all you can do is hope to do horrible things to, and kill, other human beings before they kill you. No reason for this is given, there is no Cassus Belli, no legal basis appears to be cited, that just appears to be their logic.
The absolute truth is that guns won't protect you if that is so. Again, I ask, how do these people have any hope of anything, if they really believe this crap?
According to them, all any of their believers have to look forward to is having their boot on someone else's throat before they die. I don't know about you, but I don't want to live in that kind of world and I never have.
I guess NRA-fever-dream America is kind of like Lethal Weapon, but instead of the noble, if a bit fucked in the head, very anti-racist military veteran/police detective Martin Riggs character...they just used Mel Gibson, straight up, you know, the anti-Semitic, drunken, wife-beating piece of shit far-right Catholic nut actor who avoided military service in Vietnam by moving to Australia and who makes Jesus Torture Porn movies...what happens to the character Roger Murtaugh, the African American military veteran and police detective, and his family (or for that matter, Danny Glover the actual actor and liberal activist) in this scenario is anybody's guess...
Either these people have a very skewed view of modern American life, or they're speaking from such a position of privilege that they feel they can just make shit up about the rest of us and go on with their daily lives and no one will ever call them out on it.
Bitches, ya'll just got called out by 800,000 people in this country...and enough worldwide that over a million people marched.
Those people get it.
Guns don't protect civilization, an engaged citizenry does, speech does, voting does. Yeah, there's always going to be some guns and missiles and shit pointed outward, but the truth is the minute we all start pointing guns at each other, and Americans start shooting each other, it's all over.
Nobody is trying to take guns away from law-abiding, responsible people, we just want the mass shootings to stop. If that requires new laws, or I have to get a license to have my guns and show I'm not a nut, maybe undergo some training, OK. I'm game. It's not like I haven't already been trained on how to use a rifle...
But that's not the point.
If guns and hard-core conservative religiosity and only the people with power having anything was what protected civilization, you'd think Afghanistan and Pakistan and Somalia would be the most civilized places on Earth, but they're obviously not.
These people, the NRA and the Republicans who kowtow to them, they're the death merchants, even...and I would say, far...more than the corporations or the Military-Industrial Complex.
Corporations and especially the M.I.C. require a functioning government and civilization so that somebody can afford their wares, and educate the people who use them, so that they can safely operate the fighter jets and infantry fighting vehicles and tanks and warships and shit, so that they will be there to constantly be upgraded and heavily used in various efforts worldwide, so that they will wear out (and yes, occasionally get destroyed) and then the government will buy more.
This isn't rocket science, people.
Laws change, the corporations will adapt, just like they did when the Brady Bill passed in 1993 or when the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban went into effect. Note that plenty of pre-ban assault weapons remained in circulation, legally, because the Constitution prohibits passing ex post facto (retroactive) laws. Note that that law, the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, was named after a Republican. It passed the House and Senate with bipartisan support and was signed by Bill Clinton in 1993 over the objections of the National Rifle Association. I was a gun owner at the time, it didn't bother me in 1994 when the Assault Weapons Ban was passed, and such a thing would not bother me now. I've never given serious thought to owning an assault rifle, and I don't even own a pistol anymore, not that I used it much or did anything other than shoot targets with it when I had one.
What the NRA is really against, at this point, is civilization. They seem to feel that civilization does not support their Hard-right political beliefs, so they'd rather bring it all crashing down and shoot it out with the liberals, the people of color, and what's left of the government in the ruins while screaming
As for the people who sling this bullshit? They don't care if the rest of us are shooting each other in the streets, so long as the money keeps rolling in. While their base (and at least one Republican House Rep.) whacks off to Camp of the Saints or the Turner Diaries...the millionaires who run the NRA almost certainly plan on bugging out if the shooting ever actually starts.
See, every hard-right white conservative man in America thinks he's gonna be the hero, or the local warlord.
No, that's not how this works. In that kind of post-Apocalyptic world, do you know who the most powerful people are, really? They're the people down in the sub-levels pushing the levers that make the generators turn, when the big boss, Master Blaster, gets a serious weed up his ass and calls for an embargo. Then he gets on the P.A. system and puts the local warlord in her place...and remember who played that character in Beyond Thunderdome, too. So yeah, civilization, but smaller.
So, Who run Barter-Town?
In such a scenario, you're either going to be part of whatever remains of civilization, or part of a gang of marauders or you're going to be dead or you're somebody's bitch.
...And all that money will be literally worthless.
Get it now? Or do I have to use smaller words?
Also, while I'm at it, I don't think it's an accident or a coincidence that they got a couple of African American dudes to get up there and say this shit. Some people will do anything for money, I guess. It's kind of fucked up that they're basically telling people of color to disown any members of their families who are against mass shootings. That's especially screwed up because family tends to be very important to those people. It's really fucked up that they can get people to turn on their own, to advocate breaking up families, for money.
Remember that, though, the next time some conservative is bitching about the "breakdown of the Black family" or social problems in Black communities.
All families matter, except yours, that's basically what they're saying. All Lives Matter...but some matter more than others do. It's always the same bullshit. "Get in your place, you N-Word."
I don't think it's an accident that one of these people is known by the name of "Killer Mike" either. You see it, don't you?
Just like with people like "Diamond & Silk" they're playing to white conservative stereotypes of African Americans.
So, basically, racism.
Oh, and the pull-quote up above? Gangsta's Paradise? That's the future conservatives want, that right there...but for everybody.
Choose your family, not your guns. In even the absolute worst-case constitutional legislative scenario, you're still going to keep (at bare minimum) most of your guns.
But when you have a problem, or need to borrow some tools or want to have a barbecue, you'll want to still be on good terms with your family...because the NRA sure as hell isn't gonna be there for you, and you can tell 'em I said that.
So choose your family, not your guns. Get to know your neighbors, of Color or otherwise, Immigrant or Native-Born, and yes, regardless of politics or religion, and don't fantasize about shooting them...and most especially don't be like that about kids. Why? Because we're all stronger together and that's what protects civilization.
If civilization has a "liberal bias" that's too damned bad. It's the only game in town, the only one you or the town will survive, anyway.
...And if you think guns and violence should be tied up with religion, you need a new religion.
Tell me why are we so blind to see
That the ones we hurt are you and me?
~Coolio, Gangsta's Paradise.
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