D.B.Tarpley's Amazing Ass Blog 4/3/18

Greetings and salutations people and peoplettes,

I have something very important which has been weighing heavy on my mind.

I should perhaps preface this by saying that I do my best to not get drug into political conversations on Facebook. Not because there are not issues I care about deeply, but the introduction of social media into any conversation automatically spoils the fruit. A posted discussion often turns into a long waiting line of people trying to insert their 2 cents. No one wants to sit back and accept 2 cents. In short, we are a nation of talkers who have lost the fine art of listening. No opinion will be accepted with the same grace it was given. So it is often pointless to enter the fray. It is like yelling in a wind tunnel, no one can hear you, not even yourself.

Despite my best efforts to steer clear of the melee, one issue seems to drag me in time after time… gun control. This post is not about my opinion on gun control even though I am about to share a summation of such momentarily. Rather, this post is about the sense of self-importance social media platforms like Facebook provide their users and how this could possibly be damaging the thought processes of today’s ever-ensconced youth.

But, as promised and to better set the stage – here are my thoughts on gun control… A gun, by design, has one purpose and one purpose only. That purpose is to hurl a projectile, bullet, down its barrel and out toward a target at a lethal velocity. This is a design intent on killing. The more expensive/ more desirous the gun, the higher its capacity for dealing death. Murder is illegal. How we as a society can justify selling a device whose sole purpose is illegal is beyond me. Now there is a very real argument to be made for hunting rifles as hunting helps species specific conservation by keeping certain wildlife populations at bay. And perhaps a special hunting gun lease system could be regulated where licensed hunters could check out guns for their hunt and return them upon the hunt’s completion.

Guns for home defense though is largely a myth perpetuated by years of an American cinematic landscape which uses overly simplified definitions of good and evil through the exposition of a revenge fantasy which offers a justification for the thrill people feel when watching the resultant violence. A ‘good guy with a gun’ is a situation which rarely occurs and which is even less effective when actually practiced in real life.

My feeling is that the second amendment should be repealed, (the reasons for its inception are largely non-existent when put next to the parameters of the world we live in today. And the few instances where owning a gun might be beneficial are outweighed by the multitude of instances where owning a gun causes nothing but heartache and pain.) Guns should be made illegal, and should also be taken away from civil servants such as police. There would be no more innocent shootings when you remove what has become a very real license to kill from the police force.

This new world would take a long time to get used to, perhaps a generation, but it would ultimately benefit us as a people. The same model has done wonders for crime and murders in The UK and Australia to name but 2 of scores of countries with similar policies in place.

But people want what’s theirs whether they deserve it or not. I know this so I don’t preach this. It is just what I believe to be true. I wanted to present the fact that I am anti-gun before I move on.

Let’s talk Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School/ Parkland, Florida. First off… what a fucked up name for a high school. I had to look it up… she was a suffrage advocate as well as a supporter of reclaiming the everglades, so I guess it makes sense. Just sounds clunky. As if that weren’t enough one of their students recently pulled out an AR-15 and murdered 17 of his fellow classmates. I know, double whammy right?

The incident put a national spotlight on this and an ever growing number of such incidents in this country every year. What made this different was the fact that the students almost immediately organized themselves into a political phalanx which then attempted to perforate Washington’s rectal cavity with great force. There were marches and tears and shouting and T-shirts and the media sopped it up with a buttermilk biscuit and a smile.

In an age of ever-growing social activism spurned and even solely manipulated by social media: Black Lives Matter/ Me Too/ It’s Time/ Yeah, They Finally Killed Karl… the major media outlets apparently had finally found something which was pure and unsullied and even cute to a certain extent; and they proceeded to immediately run it into the ground, sell it out, and present it to the nation as the second coming of Christ.

There were celebrity endorsements and admonitions of how brave these and other high school kids across the nation were. And the children, no matter how pure their intentions, fell right into the trap. Their egos inflated and it was almost instantaneously about ‘Look at what I am doing’ and not ‘Look at what needs to be done.’ There was a huge televised day of Washington marches and speeches with young Americans shouting bad coffee shop poetry into a camera which believed that anything shouted out a young mouth was solid gold. And celebrity after celebrity came out in hats and jeans making every effort to look as ‘normal’ as possible with visions of sugar plumbs and photo ops running through their heads.

At this point I urge you to remember that I completely support gun control – the stated cause of this movement.

There was bad performance art as a bald girl took the stage and silently stood there for over six minutes to represent the amount of time the killer took to complete the massacre. She then, was almost immediately marketed and put on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine as a symbol of these impassioned youth – oh how they were going to change the world – oh how they were going to stay out of class for another couple of days.

I heard an interview with one of the major leaders of the movement, who was only 17. He said that he didn’t want anyone over the age of 20 to be speaking on the big march day because he didn’t want their message to be ‘bastardized’. That is the actual word he used… ‘bastardized.’ He claimed adults messed the world up and they were going to change it. He then in almost the same breath dismissed the view of another teenager the reporter played who was against gun control. His retort basically amounted to, ‘Well that’s just stupid.’ Power to the children, so long as they stay on script.

Heaven forbid someone with a little wisdom, life experience, or perspective step up to speak. These kids want to be seen and heard but they want more importantly than that to be on the right side of things with a view point that is unmuddied and plain as day in site of recent events. They want an easy win. They want to be told how brave they are in the face of such adversity. But rest assured dear reader, this is not the activism of the sixties. These kids do not have to be worried about being hosed down with fire hoses, or being spit on at lunch counters, or having German Shepherds sic’d on them for standing in the street with their brothers. No, these kids are being flown into Washington in private jets by celebrities, put up in fancy hotels and meeting with the President and any other politician on the Hill who wants a free postcard printed. “Brave… brave bravity brave brave… Courage.”

And who will they grow up to be, these kids who revile their parents for being such fucked individuals… their parents of course. They will go the way of the hippies in the sixties who by way of a disco train morphed into the Reaganites of the eighties.

“Give them some credit Dave, they are doing a good thing.” Yes, the cause is just but so many involved didn’t know a soul at Marjory Stoneman Douglas. They more than likely knew a classmate who died behind the wheel of a car though. In the 2016-2017 season of the 51 million children enrolled in (K-12) 7 died in school shootings. By contrast, in 2016 – 2,820 teenagers died in car crashes, many with younger drivers behind the wheel. Wouldn’t it make more sense to be marching to move the age teenagers get a license up to 18? What? That might require some sacrifice on the part of the teenagers? That issue puts the blame on them and not adults? That issue isn’t as sexy and is not as clean cut when it comes to making you look like a hero? Oh, Ok then, I understand.

Social media has turned this country’s denizens into digital sheep. They can’t think outside the four walls of their phone.

What do I support… wait, let me see what’s popular first. OK, that must be what I think.

I do not blame any idealist for standing up for what they believe in,, but the entire country acting like a crowd at the bottom of a building shouting ‘Jump’, ‘Jump’, ‘Jump’, ‘Jump’ is more than I can take. At the end of the day the NRA will still control the spin and old money will always own the votes.

Anyway, that’s my two cents. Go buy yourself a cup of coffee and pocket the change.

And as always, have an amazing ass day… lest you bastardize this message.