Politics Plus

How many heart-wrenching mass shootings have there been in the United States over the past few decades? How many times has the public risen up and screamed for a sensible gun policy? How many times have we marched, filling the streets for blocks? How many petitions have we signed demanding that our government representatives heed the will of the people instead of cravenly kowtowing to the gun lobby? How many times have we come close to getting Congress’s ear, only to have our voices drowned out by the jingle-jingle of the filthy lucre from the powerful, vicious NRA?

Enough is enough! We The People are sick of gun violence. We are sick of our cowardly Representatives and Senators catering to gun manufacturers and their astroturf gun lobbies. We are sick of turning on the news only to learn of another bloodbath. We are sick of living in fear that our children may not come home from school, or that we may not be safe in our work places, our churches, our venues of entertainment. We are sick of going through the cycle of mass shooting, public outcry, sensible gun bills, opposition by the well-heeled firearms lobby, Congress refusing to act, and then waiting for the next slaughter.

After the mass shooting at the Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, thousands of students across the country staged walkouts and the March For Our Lives. Survivors of the Douglas High slaughter formed the Never Again MSD PAC. How did conservatives react? With baloney about paid “crisis actors” and the same old tired pro-gun propaganda. This incident should have turned the tide on the gun control debate. Indeed, numerous incidents should have been that watershed. Yet here we are mourning yet more senseless massacres, while yellow-bellied politicians belch their insincere codswallop about “thoughts and prayers.” They can take their empty thoughts and prayers and shove them where the sun shineth not.

This past year we had two horrific mass shootings in March, one in Atlanta that took 8 lives and shortly after that one in Boulder one that took 10. The FedEx shooting in Indianapolis in April claimed 9 more. A shooting in San Jose during May left 10 more dead. And those are just a few of the mass shootings that took place in the “great” US of A.

Gun nuts pound on the 2nd Amendment to our Constitution, forgetting two important things. First, they pay attention to only the second clause, conveniently forgetting the first one about a “well-regulated militia.” Originally, the Founding Fathers didn’t want a standing army; they wanted a citizen’s militia that could be ready at any moment to take up arms against this nation’s foes. Second, in the late 18th century most guns were muskets, with a firing rate of once per minute, maybe twice if one was exceptionally quick (and lucky). Science fiction was not a thing back then, so they could never have anticipated repeat-action rifles, let alone assault rifles and machine guns.

The firearms manufacturers’ stooges love to spew such bromides as “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Sure, guns don’t act on their own – but when they are easily available, they make it a lot easier for bugnuts to take more lives. Can you imagine the Virginia Tech shooter going after students and teachers with a butcher knife? Can you imagine the Las Vegas shooter firing arrows into the crowd? Can you imagine the Pulse Nightclub killer going after patrons with an axe?

Excuses about violent video games, TV and movies don’t fly, either – nor about mental illness. Every country on this planet harbors people who have mental issues, and just about everybody has access to violent entertainment. Many of them have access to guns, albeit strictly limited. When was the last time you heard about some wacko causing a bloodbath in London, or Toronto, or Tokyo, or some country that has a sensible gun policy? Mass shootings do happen outside of the United States, but they are rare; and at least other governments do something constructive when they happen. After the 1996 massacre, Australia banned private ownership of assault rifles. They haven’t had a mass shooting since. Nudge-nudge-wink-wink!

There is nothing wrong with owning a gun for personal protection or sport. (If you object to hunting, that is another story, which will be told another time.) However, there is no reason why a regular citizen should own a military-grade weapon. As for the idea that a citizen’s militia could take on a modern army, don’t make me laugh! Can’t you just see a bunch of poorly-organized yahoos armed with AR-15s and shotguns going up against well-trained, well-organized soldiers who have not just assault rifles but also bazookas, grenade launchers, tanks, cannons, flame throwers, drones, etc. at their disposal – to say nothing of practice and maybe actual experience in urban warfare? A lot of them have probably watched Red Dawn a few times too many.

We The People are sick and tired of this! We are NOT going to be silenced, we are NOT going to be drowned out by the gun industry’s dark money, we are NOT going to be ignored anymore! We are going to fight, and keep fighting, until Congress listens to us and stands up to the gun industry’s goons. It is only a matter of time before the mighty oak of the NRA finally meets the windstorm that will topple it over.

Right-wingers bellow and scream constantly about the “evils” of socialism. They declare that they will do all they can to keep the U.S. from becoming socialist. Yet they benefit every single day from the “evils” of socialism.

So, all you righties, you don’t want socialism? Good. Let’s take away everything that can be regarded as socialist. No more public schools, public libraries, public transit, public parks, public works, municipal or county fire and police departments. Don’t like government intrusion? Good – no more workplace health and safety regulations. No more minimum wage, no more overtime pay. No more laws making sure that the water you drink is potable, or the food you eat is reasonably uncontaminated, or the drugs you take are reasonably pure. No more environmental statutes to keep harmful pollution out of the air you breathe.

You hear about socialism, and trot out Venezuela and the poop-show it has become – while conveniently ignoring countries where socialism works. No mention of Canada, or Norway, or France, or Sweden, or numerous other countries that practice the “evils” you fear. Not a peep about the fact that 500,000 to 600,000 U.S. residents declare bankruptcy every year due to medical bills, and certainly not that 75% of them had health insurance.

You say that the Left want everybody to get everything for free without contributing. Utter hogwash. They aren’t seeking free health care and college, just affordable health care and college. They’re calling for everybody to have the opportunity to work, and for everyone to be paid a living wage. The Left is not anti-business; they are for making sure that the working class – the very lifeblood of this country and its economy – can make ends meet. They are not about regulating everything to death, just passing reasonable regulations to keep our air and water and land clean and making sure that workers are paid fair wages so they can pay their bills and feed their families without government aid.

You tout the so-called virtues of deregulation. In reality, this is the hoary cliché of putting a fox in charge of the henhouse. Did you really think that Big Business would govern itself fairly? Corporations will do what is good for their bottom lines, and their rank-and-file workers and the environment and human rights be damned.

For a few years I supported the Libertarians. Then I realized they were really just GOP Lite. They parrot the line “Government is best when it governs least” without thinking about the consequences. Minimal government means minimal protection for working people from exploitation, minimal protection for the environment, minimal protection for civil and human rights. It means a return to the Gilded Age, when a handful of ultra-rich snobs control nearly all of the money and the 99+% struggle for scraps.

Time and again, the countries that top the list of the happiest nations are among the most socialist. Nor are those people getting all that stuff for free – they pay taxes, but the rich and big corporations pay their fair share. Also, those countries don’t have obscenely bloated military budgets, paying for weapons and systems of questionable value and reliability. People in properly socialist countries don’t worry about being bankrupted by medical bills, or saddled with ballooning student debt. Children get nutritious lunches in school for free. Parents get months of family leave. Meanwhile, the “great” United States forces women to return to work shortly after giving birth, refuses to raise the minimum wage a nickel, refuses to make daycare affordable so mothers can work, subsidies mega-corporations that are already profitable, gives the ultra-rich huge tax breaks and lets them invest in overseas tax havens, etc., etc., etc.

Too many people have been brainwashed into thinking that socialism is communism. Far from it. Communism is just socialism that has caught rabies, and it is undesirable. Democratic socialism, on the other hand, seeks to strike the right balance between the private and public sectors, maintaining individual freedom while protecting people and the environment. You can still have your own car and house and cow, but you share other commodities and services. Your taxes pay for someone else’s health care, and his or hers provide your children with schooling. Government is not best when it governs least – it is best when it governs where it should, and does not govern where it should not.

Besides, many of these minimum-government advocates are hypocrites. They want gub-mint out of everything except for our private parts. They howl about “cancel culture” while practicing the same. Many of them want to pervert the US of A into an autocracy, and furthermore, one in which only people of the “correct” color, gender, creed and sexual identity have power and rights. That is NOT a government “governing the least.”

The right is “I, me, mine” while the left is ‘we, us, ours.” Right-wingers emphasize individual rights and liberties while ignoring the fact that we all depend on each other. They harp on the myth of the rugged individual – which is the subject of a future essay. We cannot survive as a society, and not even as individuals, without the support of our fellow human beings.

Mahatma Gandhi said, “The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.” According to his observation, the United States of America measures up very poorly.

Who are the most vulnerable members of U.S. society? The people who have hit rock bottom – the homeless. A lot of you have seen clusters of tents and makeshift shelters where the homeless have set up encampments, often under bridges or overpasses. Many of them live out of their vehicles. Some have children, or pets, or both. Not all of them are junkies or winos, contrary to the beliefs of many people. Some just plain made bad decisions, such as investing too much in a doomed enterprise, or marrying the wrong person. Some had a run of rotten luck, some were bankrupted by mounting bills, some lost their homes to disaster, some foolishly frittered away their money, some got swindled out of their hard-earned savings. The homeless come in as many human flavors as those of us who have residences. People have on occasion gone from multi-millionaires to undomiciled vagrants, and not because they were stupid or got addicted to drugs or booze or gambling.

A long-time friend of mine wound up homeless even though he was intelligent and hard-working; fortunately, at the time I lived in a townhouse that had an extra bedroom and was able to provide him with a roof over his head for the last 2 1/2 years of his life. He was one of the lucky ones who had friends willing to look after him. Not everybody has such a safety net in case of a nosedive. Not everyone has friends or family who can provide a place to stay in case the worst happens.

The way this country treats the homeless is in many cases execrable. People steal what few possessions they have, slash their tents, offer them food and then toss it into a trash can. Homeless people are regularly persecuted, rounded up like criminals when they have done nothing wrong and harmed neither people nor property. Many cities have laws against vagrancy, which specifically target the defenseless. Spikes and rocks are placed where the homeless like to sleep, and park benches have armrests in the middle to prevent anybody from stretching out. Some ordinances allow people to keep only what possessions they can fit in a container the size of a large trash can. Some cities will give homeless people bus tickets to another city, along with a direct order to never return on pain of arrest.

Some cities have laws making it illegal to provide the homeless with food, clothes, or other necessities. Good Samaritans still defiantly set up soup kitchens, or roam neighborhoods to pass out socks and hygiene items. Never has the old saw that no good deed goes unpunished been more sadly true.

Churches should be places where the homeless can go for a decent meal and a safe place to sleep. Instead, many of them not only lock their doors, but also set up spikes and automatic water sprayers to deter rough sleeping on their property. Funny, I thought Jesus said that we should care of the unfortunate instead of treating them like vermin.

Whatever happened to compassion for those in need? Whatever happened to loving thy neighbor as thyself? Whatever happened to concern for one’s fellow human beings? How can we be so ice-cold that we have no problem tormenting and persecuting our society’s most vulnerable members?

Shelters are only a partial solution, as many offer only temporary housing and have strict rules about when people must be out and when they can return. People who have jobs may not be able to get back to a shelter until late in the day, when all the beds are taken. Even in shelters they run the risk of theft, harassment and assault.

Gentrification is one factor in homelessness. When affordable housing is torn down to make way for houses that cost $300,000 a pop or more, lower-income people have fewer options. Far too many have joined the ranks of the “perma-rents,” unable to get a mortgage and thus forced to rent apartments or even rooms in a house for their entire lives – even if the monthly mortgage payment is less than what they are shelling out for rent. Without the ability to purchase solid real estate, they cannot provide a solid home or possible cash source for future generations. Meanwhile, companies that own houses and condominiums laugh and oink all the way to the bank.

This is why we need more inexpensive housing – as well as better wages, affordable healthcare, and affordable (if not free) higher education. Far too many people are living paycheck to paycheck, and not because they are spendthrifts but because they make barely enough to squeak by. Millions are literally one broken arm or one speeding ticket from the streets. Nobody should have to live like that. Especially when the 1% are getting fatter and fatter at the expense of the working class, on which they depend, and the planet.

Those who mock the homeless, who automatically assume that anybody without a permanent home is an addict of one sort or another, have no clue about the true lot of those experiencing homelessness. They need to learn what it is truly like, because the mockers could, under the right circumstances, join the mocked.

This is the last in my “The Next Gandhi” series, taken from a long essay I wrote several years ago about our political and other woes. I have made adjustments due to changing circumstances and new information.

Everywhere you turn these days, people are pounding the drums of Doomsday. Experts of one kind or another point to evidence that our society is on the verge of collapse. Economic troubles, crumbling infrastructure, vanishing resources, climate change, drug-resistant supergerms – the list of bogeymen is long, and many of these worst-case scenarios are all too plausible. Our society is far more fragile than we realize, and a lot of people are denial. We think everything is going to be OK, we believe the gold-plated B.S. that the Panglosses and Pollyannas churn out, we let ourselves get distracted by celebrity gossip and ball games on TV. We close our eyes and pretend that the elephant in the room is not there. We tune out bad news and accuse the Cassandras of being fear-mongers who are trying to instigate stampedes.

Some, however, say that these are not the signs of collapse, but of a coming drastic change. And what is this drastic change? Perhaps it is a major shift in our thinking, in how we feed and clothe and house and medicate ourselves. A major shift in how we view economics. Time and again I hear and read we need to move beyond the idea that an economy must rely on growth for prosperity.

Many things that people have suggested on TV shows, blogs and the like appear to be sound solutions to the multi-headed crisis facing us. Localizing production, insourcing, living with less, moving to a post-capitalistic economy – these are drastic and painful changes to make in our lifestyle, but necessary if we are to survive as a society. We do need to prepare for the worst, prepare for the thou-knowest-what hitting the fan. We cannot go on whistling in the dark and pretending that some deus ex machina will descend from the heavens and magically make everything hunky-dory again. We need to be more reliant on ourselves and our neighbors, and get more involved in government at all levels. A good government is important to help solve our problems, but we must not rely on legislature for everything. Remember the fiasco after Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans?

On the other hand, though, we shouldn’t be too pessimistic and think that the totality of our society is going to go kablooey so that we will go all the way back to a pre-industrial lifestyle. We need to realize that, in times of crisis, people do a lot more cooperation and looking after each other than trying to save their own a**es. Also, human ingenuity has almost no bounds, and nothing brings it out like adversity.

Human beings are naturally good. We evolved that way. Civilization would not have been possible if we were not ethical and moral by nature. On top of that, we are tough as all get out. The Great Depression was the crucible that created the Greatest Generation – the men who fought and won World War II, the legion of Rosie the Riveters who gave birth to the Women’s Libbers. Tough times never last, but tough people do.

Now is a great time to get a major movement for positive change started. Americans are seriously p***ed off about a lot of things. CEOs are drawing salaries that seem downright obscene while the working class struggles to put meals on the table and keep up with rent and bills. Getting the minimum wage increased requires effort that makes moving heaven and earth seem like child’s play. Right-wing bugnuts howl about a “stolen” election. Republicans in Congress block any and all efforts to make voting easier because they care about their party – and thwarting President Biden – more than they do about this country and its citizens. Big Businesses pull the strings of government in order to squelch efforts to reduce humanity’s contribution to climate change.

Wherever you turn, you see injustice. George Zimmerman acquitted after slaying Trevon Martin. A spoiled rich brat gets not even a slap on the wrist after killing four innocents while driving drunk. Poor, weak people receive bloated sentences and are bled white with outrageous fines and fees while the wealthy and powerful get away with everything. Bankers not being punished for robbing people of their savings and homes, money being the only thing that matters in our “justice” system – one need not even cherry-pick to get a basket full of examples.

Several people I have talked with agree that, right now, the USA is a powder keg. Hell – it is a boxcar full of nitroglycerin. The right person or the right incident can give it the right shock, and KABOOMBA! In some ways it is like Russia during the last days of the Czars, when the rulers and nobles were lolling in their mansions, oblivious to the suffering and rage of the peasants and workers. Our situation is, in a major way, worse, because the Russian people had already been living in horrid poverty for generations; but many people in the U.S. who are now struggling once knew a decent standard of living. Also, we are far better informed thanks to the Internet. Finally, don’t forget the good ol’ American spirit of independence and self-reliance, as well as our right to keep and bear arms. It all adds up to an extremely volatile situation, one that could easily explode, possibly thanks to an unanticipated stimulus, one of the sort one doesn’t associate with setting off revolutions. We experienced a straw-that-broke-the-camel’s-back moment with the tragic and inexcusable death of George Floyd – suddenly, the Black Lives Matter flared into action, and people by the thousands took to the streets. Those protests were mostly peaceful; unfortunately, some loose cannons and agent provocateurs caused trouble.

All this anti-Congress, anti-Wall Street, anti-establishment, anti-politics-as-usual sentiment carries a great deal of energy; but it must be properly gathered and harnessed before it dissipates. The Big Bad Guys are relying on matters simmering down, on people having short memories and even shorter attention spans, of the Occupy types getting bored or distracted. They hope that we will continue to complain but just mill around rather than organize and get active. Remember, the only thing necessary for Evil to triumph is for the forces of Good to do nothing. When good people get off their rear ends and start really doing things, evil is toast.

Our numbers will be few at first, but that is true of any great movement. The Indian independence movement and the Civil Rights movement both started small and weak, but because the leaders were dedicated and determined, they grew and accumulated support. Like the proverbial snowball that gets larger as it rolls downhill, we can make this new movement grow in power and clout if we can maintain the momentum.

Most importantly, we need the right people with the right vision running the show. The wrong leader, the wrong group will get us out of the frying pan but lead us into the fire. Look at the Russian Revolution and the rise of Communism, or Germany between the World Wars and see what happens when the wrong folks lead the charge. We can change this country for better, we can drag it out of the current downward spiral towards a police state where a handful of people control nearly all of the wealth. We can restore freedom and justice to the USA, and prevent unspeakable tragedy.

So, where can we turn for support? EVERYWHERE!!! America – indeed, the whole world – is lousy with groups of people, already fairly well organized and funded, who are ready to rally for the sweeping changes we need to bring about. Even if all they can do is march in protest while holding a banner, or sign a bunch of petitions, hordes of people are just waiting for that Great Organizer to stand up and start speaking. All thanks to the Internet, a ready-made army of 99%ers, progressives, ecological activists, privacy advocates, human rights defenders and so on awaits the next Gandhi.