Today its one day later. The usual suspects have come out of hiding, to trot out the same old lame excuses as to why nothing can be done.
But never, did I think the purveyors of them would try to lay them on the S.O.’s doorstep. Yet, in yet one more tribute to how low the American experience has sunk, they did.
It all started when the S.O. made a heartfelt post. It was an unusual one for her because she never posts ANYTHING about politics and current events. Ever. If you want to relax, go to her FB timeline. Its full of pottery, flowers, scenery, and destinations visited. She doesn’t even comment on Japanese events that much. ( But trust me, she still follows events in the home country quite closely).
But after the carnage of last night, she felt compelled to speak out, albeit mildly, asking the same question the rest of the world asks every day about the US.
I’m Japanese who is living in Germany now.
Gun is {are} illegal in those countries, only licensed or registered people can own guns, they’re very few people.I want America to change their law for guns ASAP. I know it’s been long discussion and not easy issue, but it should be changed in order not to repeat same tragedy by guns again and again.
何度も繰り返される銃による悲劇、アメリカよ、もういい加減に目覚めて欲しい、同じ様な悲劇を繰り返さない様に！
Mild by American political standards, don’t you think?
Out of the woodwork on her friends’ list came all the demons of hell. In a way, it was an exposure to all the tired old arguments that we hear every time this happens. But for her, she was not ready for the ferocity of the reaction.
Nor did she understand why supposed “friends” went after her with such vigor. She is not like me. She does not like conflict, and she doesn’t like to seek out a political fight. Welcome to the party sweetheart!
Believe it or not, I don’t comment on her timeline very much. Primarily because there is little to comment on, and politics is my game- as I think you have figured out.
But one reply, in particular, flipped the switch and got me really spun up.
…..please stick to the art and travelogue. Given the tendency of governments to become tyrannies, the Second Amendment guarantees our personal freedom. Absent such guarantees, the way was paved for the corruption of Germany’
Besides the fact that it trots out the tired old arguments for the 2nd amendment, which would set me off on a normal day, what really got my dander up was the first sentence. Translated from weasel speak to English: ” Please don’t comment on things you don’t understand. I don’t want to talk about what you believe and therefore you should just be quiet”.
Really? REALLY?
Who the hell are you to tell the S.O. that she has no right to her own opinion? “They can’t do that to our pledges. Only we can do that to our pledges.”
You just crossed a big line pal. The S.O. can say what she wants, and I’ll not have you trying to act as a content editor, thank you very much.
So into the pool, I jumped.
All evidence to the contrary. if the 2nd Amendment were really a guarantee against tyranny, Trump would be back in New York bankrupting casinos. I have not seen a “well-regulated militia” rise up against that disaster. “The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either. There is danger that, if the court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.”-Justice Robert Jackson writing in the dissent in Terminiello v. City of Chicago.
It’s nothing you haven’t heard here before-and I know I am not going to convince anyone. But it still frosts my hide that someone would have the gall, the unmitigated gall, to tell her what she can and can’t feel as an intelligent human being.
A tiny drama, on a really bad day for the world and for the country I am a citizen of and she is a permanent resident of. But nobody, tells her she can’t have honest heartfelt feelings on an issue. Nobody. She was way to nice-instead of booting your ass all across the schoolyard.
Why do I tell this story? Because I see it as endemic of why Americans won’t do something, anything, to find some consensus on an issue most Americans agree needs to change. We Americans are this way on just about every issue, but when 59 people are dead, 527 injured, and literally, a 1000 more have had their lives changed forever. It would be incomprehensible if it were not actually happening.
59 dead. 527 wounded.
One man did that. One man.
This — this right here — is the future the NRA wanted.
— Stonekettle (@Stonekettle) October 3, 2017
This is who we Americans are. The S.O., as a representative of a world that fails to understand our “exceptionalism” shouldn’t have to be a victim of it. Neither should anyone else.
Stephen Colbert sums it up well:
