Hey, Barney, are these your personal comments in response to America’s latest civilan massacre? They almost sound like the manifesto of some organization.
In any case, I’m going to have to reject the final point, as I’m well into the age of consent, and I have no intention of taking it up the ass for my whole country, especially for actions I don’t agree with. It’s like a few years back, when Tin Huey’s Harvey Gold sent me a “humorous” email containing a fantasy of surgically removing southern Ohio (the heavily right-wing part of the state where I happen to live) from northern Ohio (the more left-wing part of the state where he lives.) Huh-uh, buddy, I told him, I’m not taking the rap for politics which aren’t mine anyway, and if you want to retain my liberal vote in statewide elections, you’d better keep “us” on board.
The Republicans continue to stoke and exploit all this gun worship to further their overriding mission of gaining ever more lebensraum for their religion of greed, quaintly known as “Reaganomics.” In order to keep average Americans voting against their own economic interests and supporting the greed at the top, the GOPers use hot-button issues like abortion and guns (both heavily sexual underneath, of course) to compel voter discipline.
The Colorado shootings have naturally aroused new citizen demands for more gun control, so Romney will be able to run against that movement this fall. If you shooters don’t want your penis . . . er, assault rifles taken away, vote for Mitt and do your bit [for the New Reaganomic Millennium]!
Richard, see the thread on my Facebook page for further illumination/elucidation. There’s a bit of sparring with Mendelsohn that’s worth a glance. I make it clear I was addressing the mythological creature called “America” rather than YOU AMERICANS…
Thanks for alerting me to the Facebook thread, Barney — looks like you ignited something of a firefight (so to speak) there. I wasn’t offended by your comment, as I of course understand just how maddening the seeming intractability of the American gun problem is, but the concept of America as a whole being fucked was darkly amusing in a way and brought out my always-ready sarcasm. Keep in mind too that my pre-American ancestry is predominantly German, so I have extensive mental practice in separating my ethnic identity from what certain fascist monsters have chosen to do with it over the years.
What I was trying to say in my earlier posting is that if America’s love for guns was strictly that, we might have some opening to deal with it, but that it’s been so thoroughly adopted as part of the right-wing political power structure in recent decades that it’s become virtually unassailable. Jill Lepore’s April 23rd New Yorker article on the N.R.A., tracing its evolution from a group of sportsmen and conservationists into the don’t-mess-with-me! political death star it is by this time, is very enlightening: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/04/23/120423fa_fact_lepore?currentPage=all
As long as the Republicans can use the N.R.A.’s political muscle, they’ll see that it gets just what it wants.
The best comment I could make comes from an American long ago, one of it’s most visionary writer’s. He illuminates the real source of the problem and virtually all other problems as well today, which are simply collateral damage in some way shape or form…
Marshall McLuhan could not have even imagined life as it is now and the internet in his 1964 book, “The Medium is the Massage”. He offered fair advanced warning however:
“All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The Medium is the Massage. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments. All media are extensions of some human faculty–psychic or physical.”
4 Responses to AMERICA AND GUNS
Hey, Barney, are these your personal comments in response to America’s latest civilan massacre? They almost sound like the manifesto of some organization.
In any case, I’m going to have to reject the final point, as I’m well into the age of consent, and I have no intention of taking it up the ass for my whole country, especially for actions I don’t agree with. It’s like a few years back, when Tin Huey’s Harvey Gold sent me a “humorous” email containing a fantasy of surgically removing southern Ohio (the heavily right-wing part of the state where I happen to live) from northern Ohio (the more left-wing part of the state where he lives.) Huh-uh, buddy, I told him, I’m not taking the rap for politics which aren’t mine anyway, and if you want to retain my liberal vote in statewide elections, you’d better keep “us” on board.
The Republicans continue to stoke and exploit all this gun worship to further their overriding mission of gaining ever more lebensraum for their religion of greed, quaintly known as “Reaganomics.” In order to keep average Americans voting against their own economic interests and supporting the greed at the top, the GOPers use hot-button issues like abortion and guns (both heavily sexual underneath, of course) to compel voter discipline.
The Colorado shootings have naturally aroused new citizen demands for more gun control, so Romney will be able to run against that movement this fall. If you shooters don’t want your penis . . . er, assault rifles taken away, vote for Mitt and do your bit [for the New Reaganomic Millennium]!
Richard, see the thread on my Facebook page for further illumination/elucidation. There’s a bit of sparring with Mendelsohn that’s worth a glance. I make it clear I was addressing the mythological creature called “America” rather than YOU AMERICANS…
Thanks for alerting me to the Facebook thread, Barney — looks like you ignited something of a firefight (so to speak) there. I wasn’t offended by your comment, as I of course understand just how maddening the seeming intractability of the American gun problem is, but the concept of America as a whole being fucked was darkly amusing in a way and brought out my always-ready sarcasm. Keep in mind too that my pre-American ancestry is predominantly German, so I have extensive mental practice in separating my ethnic identity from what certain fascist monsters have chosen to do with it over the years.
What I was trying to say in my earlier posting is that if America’s love for guns was strictly that, we might have some opening to deal with it, but that it’s been so thoroughly adopted as part of the right-wing political power structure in recent decades that it’s become virtually unassailable. Jill Lepore’s April 23rd New Yorker article on the N.R.A., tracing its evolution from a group of sportsmen and conservationists into the don’t-mess-with-me! political death star it is by this time, is very enlightening: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/04/23/120423fa_fact_lepore?currentPage=all
As long as the Republicans can use the N.R.A.’s political muscle, they’ll see that it gets just what it wants.
A thought full post Barney!
The best comment I could make comes from an American long ago, one of it’s most visionary writer’s. He illuminates the real source of the problem and virtually all other problems as well today, which are simply collateral damage in some way shape or form…
Marshall McLuhan could not have even imagined life as it is now and the internet in his 1964 book, “The Medium is the Massage”. He offered fair advanced warning however:
“All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The Medium is the Massage. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments. All media are extensions of some human faculty–psychic or physical.”