The Gun Debate, You Really Want To Persuade?

In the gun issue, as in almost any sensitive one, there are two essentially radicalized positions with most people not having anything to do with either.  On one side you've got the NRA, Wayne LaPierre, and assorted loons and then on the other you've got Michael Bloomberg, Jesse Jackson, and the Bradys and taken all together about as much stupidity and over-heated rhetoric as I've seen since... well the last time anything touchy came up.

Now look here, if you think that the idea of putting armed guards in every school, church, or other gathering area makes any sense - you've gotten yourself seriously derailed.  If you think you're going to persuade anybody that isn't already all the way over in your corner of the loony bin you've missed your calling as a seller of bridges.  If you think you're going to gain any ground with somebody that knows just even a little bit about firearms by telling them that AR15s are going to shoot down airplanes and stop trains or that Mayor of a place where you can own a firearm if you're rich and/or well-connected but otherwise suck it, well you can have the other corner from Wayne.  That is straight up political calculus.

Most people in the US do not get their knickers in a twist about firearms, one way or the other.  They may look at an incident and think, "wow, that just cannot keep happening," but they don't want Bloomberg's version of reality or LaPierre's.  People who own guns don't want to be shouted at that they're evil any more than non-owners want to be shouted at and called weak-kneed pussies and the ones trying to make up their minds don't want to be called stupid.  That is straight up political calculus.

Wayne LaPierre and his loons and Michael Bloomberg and his loons are not persuadable.  I don't give a damn how many facts and statistics you provide to either group - they are not going to go along with anything other than their pet hobby horse.  You can forget them and for the sake of your sanity you should turn the sound off when either bunch starts up.  You are not going to get reality based anything from them and your thinking is not going to be improved and your decision making will only be impaired.

This is an actually serious issue.  This is not a "you didn't build that" kind of dust-up.  It isn't about semantics and it isn't about what something looks like - it is about fucking carnage and it is about something important enough to be enshrined in the Bill of Rights and stupidity is not a guarantee of anything other than just that - stupid results.  The only reason to have this discussion at all is to do something constructive in regard to a problem and that involves addressing goddam realities.  There are realities regarding who can get guns and how they can get them, there are realities involved in what a particular type of gun is and what it does and why it does that, and I could go on and on and on about just how many things bear on this issue and none of this stupidity has any bearing at all.  I'm sick of it and I'm sick of feeling as though any time I spend on this would be as well spent sitting in the corner sucking on my thumb.

You have a legislative process that is currently being driven by people who are ignorant of the function of a particular firearm proposing to deal with that particular firearm and people whose view of the Second Amendment makes it a suicide pact.  This has got to stop, it has got to be stopped in its tracks.  I agree that this needs to be addressed expeditiously or the populous will move on the the next hare-brained thing our pols get up to and it'll just hang fire and that isn't good enough, but - and this counts - rushing to do any old thing won't do the job, anyhow.

Ammunition capacity is a real thing, access to firearms purchase is a real thing, our war-like culture is a real deal, our mental health disaster is a real thing, the complete unreality around firearms offered up by media is an issue, the ignorance we inculcate in our children is an issue.  We have very real things to deal with and we can do some things short-term and mostly long-term to address these real things.  We do not need to be wasting time playing at people's fantasies.

(Yeah, I know - I'll just go piss into the wind and accomplish just as much)

Asking Questions

I had a conversation with a lady tonight who asked me a question which startled me and actually distressed me, "What should I do with my life?" It was asked of a stranger, a person not personally involved but with a certain reputation for thoughtfulness and forthrightness. I was startled and distressed because the person who asked was obviously intelligent, articulate, and well educated - a person I would ordinarily expect to have a pretty good idea of an answer. I expressed my surprise and we talked. The question was asked quite seriously and what became evident was that a couple pieces of the puzzle were missing.

When we are faced with a puzzle some things are very important to its solution. First is what is the measuring stick, who is the questioner and how do they measure things. This may seem odd, but we cannot ask meaningful questions if we do not understand the basis of the questions, which is the questioner. I cannot meaningfully ask what I should do if I do not know who I am, who is asking it. I need to have an honest assessment of who I am and that requires the work of finding that out. I cannot see the world I wish to ask about if I don't know what my perception is based on and perception creates our experience of reality and reality counts - hugely.

If we've set ourselves up to know how we're asking a question we start to get into a position to know what question to ask. What question to ask is not as simple as it seems at first blush, to exaggerate it would be entirely pointless for me to ask how I, a fiftyish smaller man, can become a professional football linebacker. Wrong question. If I ask myself what I consider to be a desired outcome in the very large measure and come up with an answer, I may have an unattainable goal, but that is only the starting point. It sets a direction. That large element is composed of smaller pieces and those of smaller pieces. At some point of reduction a point is reached where the questions yield achievable ends. The system of reducing the scale allows the asking of meaningful questions.

Knowing why and who is asking the question and then moving the questions into more manageable scales results in the asking of the correct question because both the reason for the question and the goal of the question have moved into a definable arena. If we want answers that are meaningful we must have a scale we can deal with to give us directions.

Much of the failure of policy over the past couple decades has not been a failure of morality, it has been a failure to know what coloring the questioner was laying on reality and then asking questions that did not reflect reality or ends of attainable goals. This is a matter of ignoring too many pieces of reality. It matters if a person of extreme wealth is asking a question of tax policy that is aimed at the GDP thinking it will have something to do with American's quality of life, that question completely ignores any other aspect of tax policy.

Not understanding the questioner's lens and asking the wrong questions has left us in Iraq with no WMDs, and a very large laundry list of other failings. It doesn't work in personal life and it doesn't work in business and it doesn't work in politics. We keep getting examples and I keep wondering why we keep doing it. It is understandable to start to wonder at age 30+ what the heck is my direction, it is not understandable to run a country this way.

A Serial Rapist Next Door

David Prollitt was convicted of and imprisoned for the rapes of five women in five towns in the late '70s and early '80s in Connecticut. Now he has been released after 24 years and is moving into his sister's house in Southbury, Conn. He will be on Probation for five years with 24 conditions of probation including wearing a monitoring device and face an additional 15 yrs for violations.

His neighbors are very unhappy, police advised residents not to panic, to lock their doors, buy alarm systems, and look out for their neighbors. Calls to Gov. Rell lead him to ask Atty Gen Blumenthal to ask for a delay of Prollitt's release, Superior Court Judge Susan Handy refused stating that Prollitt had completed his sentence and was "entitled to release." Friday afternoon prior to Prollitt's arrival about 2 dozen neighborhood residents gathered across from his sister's house with signs and explained their points to reporters. Prollitt arrived in a caravan of cars with reporters and cameras trying for any view of him. What seems to have been lost is the presence of five sex offenders in the town of 19K and in Waterbury, pop 107K ten miles north east, 250 more. Some are advocating the type of indefinite civil commitment allowed in 20 other states, including NY & NJ.

I do not have an answer for the problem of released criminals, most criminals will be released short of the draconian solution of life or death sentences for a vastly expanded list of crimes. California has tried expanded sentences and the result is a prison system that is broken, broke, and eating an unconscionable portion of the state's budget, shortly it will take a larger percentage than all education. We need to face the fact that people who have committed crimes are going to be released back into the community and pose whatever threat they still pose.

The threat that they pose depends on what their psychology at release is and their opportunities on release, both to re-offend and to create a legal life. It seems that fear of jail time does not do the job, so another alternative is required. This is not some "soft on crime" issue, it is about the safety of the citizenry and the economic costs of crime and imprisonment. We need to address this, we have a huge prison population which means we have a huge number of releases coming. Harsh sentences for re-offending do are an after the fact solution, someone has been victimized at that point. Emotional baggage will not deal with this, it will require pragmatism and real research and an investment.

Trade Deal, Democrats, Bush

May 10th a handful of Democrats announced approval of a trade deal with BushCo, the details of which are secret, except evidently from the Lobbyist's - you know, the official political party in power. The nations apparently involved are Panama, Peru, Korea, and Columbia which supposedly was to be excluded for its human rights violations and its government's linkage to right wing death squads, targeting among others, union organizers. Some of the happy noise comes from National Association of Manufacturers, the Financial Services Forum, Microsoft and the Emergency Committee on Trade and BushCo. Every time labor and actual small business has taken a hit from trade deals these have been amongst the cheerleaders.

There certainly are questions that can be asked, first and foremost, why the secrecy? There is exactly one reason to do things in secret - you don't want people to know what you're up to. Just exactly who is most affected by trade deals? The people who don't get to know what is going on. How is it that the BUSINESS lobby is so happy about secrets? Evidently because it's not secret if you're one of those who gets to profit and gets to 'do' the public. How is it the Democratic leadership is happy and unions and environmental groups don't know what's going on?

There are warning signs all over this "deal," first and most emphatic is that BushCo likes it, this says something clearly, the average American is going to get screwed and the wealthy elite and mega-corps will get a gift on the back of the average American. If the Lobbyist Party likes it real well, rather than tolerates it, the average Americans take it in the neck. Secrecy should scream "sell-out," there is no other good reason for it. The exclusion of those with an agenda other than the well-fare of the mega-corp and wealthy elite states clearly the agenda in operation.

There certainly are Democratic reps who won't sit still for this, but there is still in operation the pukes who'd sleep with the Republicans on something like this. The political sell-out of the ordinary citizen still goes on and this time the Dems are a part of it, like the bad old days before you had only Republicans to blame for it. Will the Left lay down on this? Why not, they've turned into the working person's worst enemy in the issue of amnesty and illegal hiring and the plutocrat's tool.

It is a truly strange time when an advocate of the worker gets lumped in with the Right wingnuts and the tools of the elite claim the badge "progressive." Ever hear of "Co-option?" It is the tool of the political elite which involves using non-germain issues to bring ordinary opponents into the fold in defiance of their own interests. If you have some idea that Ted K and Hillary are so worried about being nice to "illegals" you ignore the interests they serve and who donate large amounts to them. Crushing the economic interests of the American worker benefits just exactly whom? My liberal friends, you've become hopeless, "the man" has sucked you in and purchased your allegiance with cheap lying rhetoric and emotional propaganda. You've pretty much abrogated any legitimacy in this trade deal issue, so just keep quiet while you watch the sell-out. I won't.

The Maggots Gather On The Rotting Corpses

...of the dead at VT. The Brady Bunch and their followers couldn't let the bodies cool before they started in with their faked up statistics and fear mongering. BushCo immediately rushed to the scene and got his photo op. The Libertarian nuts started banging away on a gun in every house to cure social ills. Goddam what a sick bunch of bastards.

Look here, a nut did something nuts and people who should not have, died. It's not about guns, it's not about having them or not having them, it's about a nut. I'll bet you'd like a softer more "correct" description of this person. Fine - loon. There is an entire world of difference between moody, eccentric, quiet loner and a psychotic murderer and some people were making warning noises but our polite nice society let him cook in his own juices. Then a whole raft of people want to take advantage of that failure to make their own agendas look good.

Gun control freaks - do you have any idea what carnage a sword wielded by a maniac in close quarters would wreak? Things do not commit mayhem, but a lot of them are darned useful for it.

Gun nuts - just how many people do you think could exceed the abysmal hit rate of police in combat situations?

George W Bush - NOTHING you can say is going to make you look better or more concerned for our citizenry.

I can not begin to tell you how offended I am for the parents and participants in that tragedy by this piling on of people with agendas - including the commercial interests of the media. There is only one lesson here, pay attention to your fellows, care about them, care about how they're doing, care about what they might do. Just plain humanity would do for a start.

George W Bush is not an idiot ???

Rep Issen R-CA on Bill Mahr's "Real Time" said that "this President is not an idiot" ... paraphrase - 'he listens to the wrong people.' Ok, Rep Issen is running for Congress as a Republican so saying GWB is an idiot might not be politic.

Now I say the guy (ok, the President) is of moderate intelligence, but that he is seriously challenged in the intellect department. Look, he didn't quite fail at an Ivy League College and he didn't manage to fly a fighter jet into the dirt, so he's not retarded. Apparently he can manage the words in books I read in 9th Grade so the neurons are connected and every once in awhile full sentences don't challenge him, especially if they hearken to an old western. So we can quit calling him a moron.

Seriously challenged in the intellect is a different matter, this involves critical thinking and synergizing information into decisions. A critical thinker will look at information and ideas and take them apart into their relevant pieces and look at the pieces. Information and ideas are a great deal like jigsaw puzzles, they come to you as a pretty picture on the box but they're made up of many odd shapes and colors that have meaning. It is your job to make sense of those pieces, even though somebody has already given you the picture. I don't care if people have been paid to analyze something, you still need to pay enough attention to it to be sure you understand how the analysis was arrived at and that you've considered opposing analysis. This does mean that you need outside sources of information if you're inside an organization or "point of view."

Synergy is hugely important, nothing that is given as an argument for an idea contains the elements of other points of view and those view points may contain important information and ideas whether you are in agreement with their conclusions or not. No serious argument undertaken by an opposing view point can come from "thin air." It must be founded on something and that something could easily be of import to your decision. Consideration of those elements and their inclusion or modification for inclusion into a decision can be a make or break proposition for successful implementation of a decision process.

GWB is a failure as a President not because he's a moron, he's a failure because he's ignorant, and what's worse, proud of it. The man has surrounded himself with ideologues and pays no attention to anything else, while they pay no attention to anything except their inflated egos. Any particular piece of stupidity can have backers for it, there are plenty of people who will state quite seriously that the moon landings were faked, no evidence will convince them otherwise, they listen to each other and that's it. The President was surrounded by people who quite seriously believed that you could impose democracy at the point of a gun on people with no experience of it. Yes, we did that to Japan. We did it after we showed them in very simple terms that extermination was their alternative. Now this is important, the one time it has been accomplished was under the umbrella of two mushroom clouds, fire bombings and the near total destruction of infrastructure didn't do it, battlefield slaughter didn't do it, none of the usual accoutrements of warfare accomplished that end. The clear prospect of annihilation did.

Who wasn't paying attention?

You can run the list of Bush failures and find a commonality in every one, closed mindedness. No, this is not a sign of retardation, but idiotic...hmmm.

Fellow lefties, there's something here to pay attention to in regard to ourselves.