Veterans Day 2015

The […] novel sucked. Even when I liked [the author] I saw right through that Rah Rah Military is Awesome bullshit.
  - Facebook Comment

 

Yesterday, I met a man who despised me.

He called me fascist, murderer, and a dumb blunt tool.

I didn’t take it personally – though a younger me might have.

I didn’t meet him in the flesh, like most of my social interactions these days I encountered him online. He surfaced on a well known author’s Facebook page during a conversation regarding a certain well known classic science fiction novel.

Now, it doesn’t matter which author or which novel or exactly where the conversation took place – though I’m certain a number of folks reading this can figure it out in short order.  The conversation and the novel which inspired it aren’t relevant to this essay, other than as a starting point. Suffice it to say the novel and the reputation of its author is such that fully six decades after it was written it still has the unerring ability to generate violent conflict and powerful emotions. Mention it in any conversation about government and/or military service and the sparks will fly.

It’s one of those books you either love or hate.

Very few who are familiar with the work find middle ground between those poles – including those who haven’t actually read it and are familiar with the writer and the novel only by second-hand heresy (yes, heresy, the book is nearly an article of faith to many) and a terrible Hollywood adaption.

It’s one of those stories where your opinion depends very much on your age and experience, and as such your opinion with regards to the story tends to change and temper over time.

To me, well, that’s what makes it a truly great work.

Love it, hate it, it is a coming of age story and it endures as a lightning rod, as a jumping off point for exploration of the human condition, of government, of service, of duty, of war and conflict, of why we fight and why we should – or should not.

I have read this novel many, many times.

I read it as a teenaged boy before I joined the military. 

I read it again at various points throughout my military career, as an enlisted man and as an officer – and in fact it is required reading for students at a number of military academies. I read it the day the author himself died, and raised a glass in his name, while stationed at a far distant outpost.

I’ve read it a number of times since I hung up my sword. I may, in fact, read it again today.

I don’t know that it influenced my decision to join up. I don’t know that it didn’t. The author, in this work and many others, certainly had some impact on my worldview. I do know that this novel did influence what kind of military man I ultimately became and that there were times, very difficult times, black days, moments when I didn’t know what to do next and lives depended on my decision, when I heard the words of its author whispering in my head, honor, courage, duty, ethics, morality, service above self, willingness to give one’s life in the cause of something greater – even and perhaps most especially when the cost is unjust and immoral and terrible.

The ideals of that book, and the veteran who wrote it, those ideals spoke to me in a very personal way.

And they still do.

As a writer of politics and military subjects, I encounter this book and discussions of its author often and I watch the resulting battles with some amusement. I’ve read hundreds of treatises on this book and its long dead author, detailed analyses from bloggers, columnists, best selling writers, noted scientists of various specialties, politicians, academics, and of course, military professionals.

All, every one, miss one fundamental thing.

And that is this: The reason six decades later this novel still generates love and hate and violent emotion is because the protagonist, a man very much like me, finds a home in the military.

War is his profession and he embraces it willingly and without regret.

 

And that, that right there, is the novel’s great sin.

 

That’s the criticism most often leveled at both the book and its author, they are pro war, pro military, and therefore somehow fascist and un-American.

To me this is like saying a fireman, one who runs towards the inferno, who is willing to brave the flames to save others, is somehow pro-arson.

There is no one who knows the terrible cost of war more than a veteran. There are few more anti-war than a combat veteran. Just as there is no one who knows the terrible toll of fire more than those who fight it. And yet, both still serve, because that is who they are.  

It’s okay in our society, at the moment, to love the soldier, to tell the story of war. But it must be done in a certain way. You see, it’s okay to write about war, to set novels among the conflagration and tell tales of glory and honor and sacrifice, so long as those who are caught up in its horror resent their own service. So long as they despise the conflict and the government and the utter ridiculous stupidity which sent them into the meat grinder. It’s okay to tell stories of war and conflict so long as the hero is serving only out of duty and will return to civilian life once the war ends – or die heroically, or tragically, or foolishly, depending on what kind of story you’re telling.

But to tell a story of those who serve when they don’t have to? To write of those who find a home in the military? That is a sin. Those people, you see, they’re the losers. Honor, courage, duty, ethics, the morality of war, service above self, willingness to give one’s life in trace to your country, well, these things are for suckers, wannabe fascists, murderers, dumb blunt tools with nothing better to do.

This is the difference between Full Metal Jacket and The Green Berets.

This, this right here, is the difference between The Forever War and Starship Troopers.

 

This is the difference between the man I met yesterday … and me.

 

Today we honor those who served in peace and in war.

We honor those who came of their own free will and those who came only because they were called.

We honor those who came of age in bloody conflict, those who like me, like the protagonist of that novel, found a life, who found ourselves, in the military. And we honor those who resented every goddamned miserable senseless minute of it.

Today wreaths will be laid. Flags will be raised to the truck and lowered to half-mast and there they’ll fly, cracking in the cold breeze, the symbol we fought and bled and died for, while below words of patriotism, duty, honor, courage, service, and sacrifice will be spoken.

The trumpets will sound their terrible call and the tears will flow – as they are down my face even as I write this.

Because, you see, I remember.

I remember those who trained and led me. I remember those I served alongside. I remember those I trained and led myself. I remember those men and women, every one of them, the good and the bad, the faithful and the faithless, the leaders and the followers, the admirable and the shitheads, those who came before me and those who came after, those who still live and serve and fight out there every day in the dark and dangerous corners of the world, those who have hung up their swords, and most of all I remember those who have given the last full measure – I remember them, each and every single one, each and every single day. 

They are always with me, because they are the people who made me what I am.

Perhaps we are nothing more than blunt instruments. Perhaps we are fools. Today I am disinclined to argue the point.

Perhaps we are. Because after the wreaths are laid, and the flags are lowered, and the trumpets sound their final mournful call, then the politicians will return to the same old divisions, the bailout bill, the election, the latest pork barrel project, or how the other party is a bunch of unpatriotic un-American bastards. Tomorrow they’ll remember us not at all – or at best, only as a way to further their own selfish agendas.

The talk show hosts will cry their crocodile tears, and wax self-righteous and angrily demand that their listeners honor veterans. They'll take people to task for not wearing an American Flag pin, or for not having a yellow ribbon on their cars, or for not serving in uniform - all the while hoping nobody calls them on their own service, of which, most have exactly none. And tomorrow, as always, they’ll forget all about us and go back to telling Americans to hate each other.

The Great Patriots, those Americans who think love of country is a contest and who wave the flag as if it were the cheap symbol of their favorite football team, are going to drink a lot of cheap beer and discount liquor and pontificate drunkenly at great length about how the country is going to hell in a hand-basket because of that son of a bitch in [insert: Congress, the White House, Wall Street, et cetera here] and how we should be doing better by our “Heroes.” All the while hoping nobody calls them on their own service, of which, most have exactly none. And tomorrow, they’ll nurse their sullen hung-over resentment and go back to fearing the men and women they honor today will knock on their door to take away their freedoms and liberties and guns.

Meanwhile today a lot of folks who don't think much about patriotism are going to go to parades and wave little flags and quietly give thanks for those who bought their freedom at such terrible cost. Some will stand ramrod straight even though many can barely stand at all, like me they limp, or they roll, bent but unbroken, they’ll place their hands over their hearts as the American flag passes, and in their eyes you can see horrible memories of Saipan and Iwo Jima, Normandy, the Rhine, the black Ardennes forest, The Chosin Reservoir, Khe Sanh, Tet, Al Basrah, Anbar, and Bagram. They won't talk about honoring veterans, they are veterans.

Today those with sons and daughters and husbands and wives in the service will raise a flag in their front yard, just as they do every day - and pray that those same loved ones get home alive and whole, just as they do every day.

Today those with sons and daughters and husbands and wives and mothers and fathers who have fallen in the service will visit graveyards, they'll bring fresh flowers, and fresh flags, and fresh tears.

Today, some just won’t give a good goddamn. They'll get a day off from work. They'll picnic, or party, or go boating, or hiking, or to the track. They'll paint the house, or do chores around the yard, they’ll haul trash to the dump if it's open or take the dog for a walk. Or maybe they won't, maybe today will be just like any other day. Kids still go to school, here in Alaska. Teachers still teach. Stores, restaurants, the mills and mines and rigs are still running. And it may be that these people most honor veterans, by simply going on with their lives, by living without having to remember the dead on some far distant battlefield, without having to worry about their security, without having to thank anybody.

And today, some will protest. Protest war, the military, the government. They'll use this day to burn the flag, they’ll take to Facebook and Twitter to call us fascists and murderers and dumb blunt tools. They’ll use this day to march and to demonstrate and it may be that these people are paying the highest compliment to veterans – even though that is the least of their intentions. Because, you see, it was veterans who bought them their right to despise us.

We are not heroes.

We are not heroes. Most of us anyway, we are simply people like any other, doing the best we can with what we have under difficult circumstance. We came when called and did our duty, each for our own reasons. You don’t have to understand why, just as you may not understand why a fireman would run into a burning building instead in the other direction. 

In our country, in a free society, the soldier should be no more revered than any other citizen.

We should respect the warrior, but we should never worship him.

There is no glory in war. It is a horrible, brutal business and make no mistake about it. We can wish it otherwise. We can rail against the utter stupidity and the phenomenal waste and the bloody obscenity of it all. We can declare and decry war’s terrible necessity and its terrible cost. Be that as it may, given human nature, for now war must often be done and our nation, our world, needs those who would fight, who would stand rough and ready to do violence in their name. It is a duty, a profession, a job, and a calling that must be done.

Perhaps in some distant future we will have put it behind us, perhaps we will have made war and the warrior long obsolete.  We can certainly hope that it shall be so. We can, and should, strive to make it so.

Perhaps some day we will set aside a day to honor the peacemakers and study war no more. Perhaps.

But I wouldn’t count on it.

 

I don’t know. I don’t particularly care.

 

You see, I didn’t do it for you.

I didn’t do it for you and you owe me nothing. Neither thanks nor pity.

I’ve said it before, I’ll likely say it again: If you want a better nation, you have to be better citizens. Me? I joined the military for myself. To prove something to myself. To be a better citizen.  

I joined for myself, but I stayed for them. For my comrades in arms, for those I served beside, I did it for them. I did it for all the things I found in that novel, honor, courage, duty, ethics, morality, service above self, willingness to give one’s life in the cause of something greater – even and perhaps most especially when the cost is unjust and immoral and terrible.

I did it because like the protagonist of that book, that is my sin, I found a life there among friends.

Yesterday I met a man who despised me.

But you know what? That, that right there, is what we were doing in the dark and dangerous corners of the world, defending his right to hold us in utter contempt.

Yesterday I met a man who despised me.

He called me and those like me fascist, murderer, dumb blunt tools.

I can live with that.

And I wear his contempt as a badge of honor.

Empty Gestures

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Bang Bang Crazy – Two in the Bush

So, another mass shooting.

How many is that this year? This month? This week?

You know, it sure does seems like…

 

Really? 

 

What’s the problem?

We’re only two lines in and already you’re rolling your eyes? Already you’ve got your hand up? You didn’t even let me get through the introduction.  How could you possibly have an objection already?

What’s that?

You have a problem with the phrasing? “Mass shootings,” you say? That’s the problem? Oh, I see. It’s like sex with Bill Clinton, it depends on how you define the words. Mass shootings.  It’s not as bad as it seems. It’s all media hype. Liberal hysteria. False Flags by the gun grabbers.

It’s really not that bad.

Why in most of the recent shootings only one or two people have died.

One. Maybe two.

Maybe three.

That’s not so bad. Right?

See, for a mass shooting you need four dead people.

That’s right. It’s got to be four dead victims, not three kids and then the gunman shoots himself. Not one dead and a dozen wounded and the cops kill the bad guy, no, Sir. For it to count you’ve got to have a pile of dead people. At least four of them, that’s the deal.

We’re talking penetration here, not oral gratification.

Four dead, minimum. Preferably more. And they’ve got to be Christians, see? Preferably good God-fearin’ white people. A bunch of unarmed black people killed by a rightwing racist in a church? Doesn’t count. A liberal US congresswoman and her staff and constituents? Doesn’t count. Bunch of people watching a Batman movie when they should have been home studying the Bible? Doesn’t count. School full of kindergarteners? Doesn’t count and they were probably all “crisis actors” anyway. When liberals talk about 30,000 dead each year from guns, well, most of those are singletons, one dumb kid shoots another dumb kid, suicides, black people in Chicago shooting other black people, losers, and like that. Accidents. Stuff happens. Those don’t count.

Gun violence, you see, is on the decline. That’s what they tell us – well, except in the giant gun-free death zone known as Chicago where black liberal thugs rape and murder each other on the streets pretty much 24 hours a day. But other than that, if you eliminate all cases that do not involve Radical Muslim Extremists shooting White Conservative Christians, gun violence is on the decline. Hardly ever happens.

And when it does, well, it’s crazy people who are to blame.

Last weekend, Jeb Bush explained during an interview on WHOTV’s The Insiders how mass shootings in the US are caused by mental illness:

“We can lessen it [mass shootings and gun violence]. And we need to look at: What are the common denominators of these very public mass murders where people then commit suicide?”

What are the common denominators?

What is the common denominator in “these very public mass murders?”

What’s the common denominator? Well, let’s do the math: September 1999, Fort Worth, Texas, a gunman killed six people during a prayer service, then he committed suicide. October 2002, it was the Washington DC Sniper, ten dead. August 2003, Chicago, a gunman locked six of his former coworkers in a conference room and shot them dead, then he killed himself.  November 2004, Birchwood, Wisconsin, a hunter got into an argument with a group of sportsmen over a trespassing issue, the hunter ended the argument by killing six and wounding two. March 2005, Brookfield, Wisconsin, a man walked into a church and shot seven people dead, praise the Lord. October 2006, Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, a disgruntled truck driver shot five Amish schoolgirls to death and wounded six others before taking his own life. April 2007, Virginia Tech, an angry former student set a record with the deadliest mass shooting in the US in recent years, he killed thirty-two people and wounded fifteen others. Go Team. August 2007, Delaware State University, three students were shot and killed execution style by a 28-year-old and two 15-year-old boys, a fourth student was shot and stabbed. December 2007, Omaha, Nebraska, a 20-year-old man killed nine people and wounded five others in a shopping mall.  A few days later,  on Christmas Eve, a woman and her boyfriend gunned down six members of her family in their house in Carnation, Washington. February 2008, Chicago, a gunman tied up and shot six women at a clothing store, five of them died. February 2008, DeKalb, Illinois, a man opened fire in a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University, he killed five students and wounded sixteen others.  September 2008, Alger, Washington, a mentally ill man who was released from jail one month earlier shot eight people, six died. December 2008, Covina, California, a man dressed up like Santa Claus killed nine people at a family Christmas party, then he set the house on fire and shot himself. March 2009, Alabama, a 28-year-old drove through several towns randomly shooting people, he managed to kill ten. March 2009, North Carolina, a heavily-armed gunman stormed into a nursing home and killed eight elderly residents and wounded two more before police killed him. March 2009, Santa Clara, California, six people were shot dead in an apartment building.  April 2009, Binghamton, New York, a man shot thirteen people to death in a bloody rampage at the town civic center. July 2009, Houston, Texas, six people were shot in a drive-by shooting at a community rally on the campus of Texas Southern University. November 2009, Fort Hood, Texas, a U.S. army major opened  fire on his fellows in the middle of a crowded processing center filled with troops preparing for deployment, he killed thirteen and wounded forty-two. January 2011, Tucson, Arizona, a gunman opened fire at a public gathering outside a grocery store, he killed six people including a nine-year-old girl and wounded twelve more including a US Congresswoman. July 2012, Aurora, Colorado, a gunman dressed up like a comic book villain stormed into a packed movie theater and started shooting, he killed twelve and wounded fifty-eight more. August 2012, Oak Creek, Wisconsin again, a gunman killed six people at Sikh temple before being shot dead by police. September 2012, Minneapolis, a gunman kills six including himself and wounds five more inside a small sign company. December 2012, Newtown, Connecticut,  a 20-year old gunman killed his mother and then shot his way into the Sandy Hook Elementary School and killed twenty small children, six adults, and himself.  February 2013, a former Navy officer and Los Angeles policeman declared war on the LAPD, over a period of nine days he killed four people including three police officers and wounded three more before eventually committing suicide by cop.  March 2013, Herkimer, upstate New York, a 64-year old man lit his apartment on fire, then coolly walked into a local barber shop and killed two people, then he drove to another business and killed two more, then he killed a police dog and was subsequently gunned down by the canine’s human partners. June 2013, Santa Monica, California, a 23-year old man went on a killing spree that left six people dead and four wounded and ended when he was shot dead by police inside the Santa Monica College Library.  July 2013, Hialeah, Florida, a man living with his mother lit their apartment on fire and then went on a rampage throughout the living complex, he killed seven before police returned the favor. September 16, 2013, twelve more dead at the Washington Navy Yard. April 2, 2014, Fort Hood, Texas, four more dead, including the shooter. June 17, 2015, Charleston, South Carolina, a racist sat quietly for an hour among the congregation of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, then without warning he  murdered nine people during prayer service and wounded a tenth – he was hoping to start a race war. July 20, 2015, Chattanooga, a self-declared Jihadist suffering from depression and drug use, mad at the US government, shot up a military recruiting center in a strip mall then drove to a local Navy operations support center and launched another attack, he killed four Marines and a Sailor and then died in a gunfight with law enforcement. July 23, 2015, Lafayette, Louisiana, a drifter with a gun fired thirteen rounds into a crowded movie theater, he killed two people, wounded nine, and then turned the gun on himself when police closed in (yes, he only killed two, but I give him an A for effort). October 1, 2015, a college campus in Oregon, ten dead, and the shooter killed himself after being wounded by police.

So? What do they all have in common?

What’s the common denominator? What’s the one thing common to all these mass shootings?

Is it Muslims? Is it males? Is it military targets? Is it children? Is it schools? Is it movie theaters? Malls? What could it be?

Wait.

Wait, hang on. I think I might know. Is it … guns?

Heh heh, nice try, Jim. Nope.

“And I think the one common denominator that’s pretty clear is, there’s a huge mental health challenge in our country."

Ah, mental health. I should have seen that coming.

Guns don’t kill people, folks, crazy people with guns kill people.

Obviously all of those people up above, all of those mass murderers, were mentally ill. Sure, you don’t just go around murdering people if you’re not nuts. That’s it. Well, thank God we figured that out, right?

We have a huge mental health challenge in our country.

And do you know why? (Hint: it’s not because we don’t provide funding and care)

“And people that live in isolation, they go on the internet, they live their lives there, they get deeply disturbed, and then they get worse, and they commit these atrocious acts. There should be some intervention earlier. If people have deep mental health challenges, they shouldn’t have access to purchase guns.”

It’s the internet!

That’s the problem. The internet makes people crazy. In fact, I’m probably crazy right now from writing this blog on the internet. You’re probably all crazy, mad as hatters, from being here on the internet. Look down, are you drooling yourselves? Show of hands, how many of you are Napoleon? Why, it’s Facebook! It’s Twitter! It’s internet porn! It’s video games! We’re all going bang bang crazy! It’s making us deeply disturbed, that’s what it is!

It’s not guns, hell no.

It’s mental health. It’s the crazy people. They’re the ones! And do you know what? People who have mental health challenges shouldn't be able to purchase guns –  it's okay if they already have guns, but they shouldn't be allowed to buy any more. See?

So, something we can agree on, Jeb Bush and me, crazy people shouldn’t be allowed to buy guns. Common ground, at last. Well, now we’re getting somewhere.

“I don’t know the facts about the case in Oregon, how this young man got his guns, but he clearly had mental health challenges. And the capturing system for mental health in this country is not as wide as it needs to be. And so I think states ought to look at this, to determine how you can protect privacy rights for people, but make sure that we get adequate information, so that people don’t fall through the cracks.”

Um, what?

What did Jeb just say?

Now now, hang on. Let’s for the sake of brevity, leave aside the part where he admits he doesn't actually "know the facts" but he's pretty sure the cause of mass murder is the gun lobby catchall, "mental illness,” – a position apparently based on NRA pamphlets and juju magics since there’s no validated scientific evidence for it and agencies which could produce such studies are forbidden by law and lack of funding from engaging in it.   I mean, he might be right, but how would you know?

I digress.

Let’s just go with Bush on this one: Mental illness causes all mass shootings.

Mental illness causes mass shootings. Crazy people with guns. Okay. I want to hear more about this "capturing system" for mental health, the one good enough to provide "adequate information" on every person in the US, which will presumably be reliable enough to flag everybody with even the most vague of "mental health" issues and then be able to determine which ones will become dangerous gun waving mass murders at some future date. 

I think there was a science fiction movie about that a while back, wasn’t there?

Mental health screening that can tell who will become a gun waving mass murder, and the system can do it to such a degree of accuracy conservatives like Bush would be willing to pass a law, or an amendment to the Constitution, and fully fund it, which would subsequently deny these crazy murderous bastards the right to buy guns.

Yeah, let’s hear more about that, because I find that idea fascinating.

While he’s at it, I’d like Bush to explain who exactly would be gathering this information (since, you know, conservatives have passed laws specifically preventing the medical community from asking any patient – no matter how disturbed – about their access to firearms.

I’d like to hear Bush explain who exactly would be reviewing such information should it somehow magically be acquired. There are a lot of guns purchased in America every day, thousands, we’re going to need a lot more government. Or would this be contracted out? Outsource to India maybe? How much is this going to cost? Who’s going to pay for it? Perhaps we could find a bunch of psychologists to conduct the exams and review the records on a voluntary basis, for the good of the community – or is that too socialist?

And what is the criteria we’ll be using to determine future murderous intent? Is mild depression grounds for denial of gun ownership? Or do you have to show up for the interview in a camouflage tutu wearing a mask made from the flensed face-skin of your grandma while laughing maniacally muwahahahahahHAha! Will your mental health status be reviewed by an actual panel of doctors trained in such behavior? Will Tom Cruise receive a magic red ball etched with the details of your future crime by a pre-cognitive mutant kept in a vat? Or will it be somebody experienced and educated in sane and rational firearms use, like, say Ted Nugent?

What?

Oh, now I’m just being silly, am I?

Look, Bush started it, you got a beef, you take it up with him.

“Had there been intervention in this guy’s case, he was in the military, he was, I think he got, he was discharged dishonorably, I believe, I don’t know what the exact circumstance, but he left within months of his enlisting, there should be some way to identify these things."

I believe.

I don’t know.

I’m not sure, but….

But there should be some way to identify these things.

Like fully funding veteran’s healthcare? Like spending as much on what happens after the war as waging it? Like funding Veterans mental health services as if it was an F-35 Strike Fighter assembly line in a Red State. Like throw money at it as if it was an oil subsidy? Like that? Is that what we’re talking about?

No? No, I suppose not.

So, anyway, we should have some kind of mental health screening for gun ownership.

Mental health, that’s the common denominator, that’s the problem. We need better mental healthcare in this country.

Everybody got that?

Better mental healthcare. Mental screening before allowing a gun purchase.

Anybody want to argue? No?

All right then. So, exactly how would President Bush (you have no idea how much it hurts me to type that) address the situation as he's outlined it? How would President Jeb Bush keep crazy people from buying guns?

Well, I’m glad you asked.

Today, Jeb Bush unveiled his plan to repeal and "replace" the Affordable Care Act, i.e. Obamacare.

Bush's plan in a nutshell:

- Repeal the individual mandate and make health insurance a benefit voluntarily provided by your employer. Like it was in the Old Republic, before the dark times, before Obama.

- Remove federal subsidies designed to help people buy health insurance and return control of healthcare plans to employers. Because if you believe in capitalism, well, then you know the free market is best suited to decide your healthcare needs. The free market and your boss. 

- “Encourage” people to create "healthcare savings plans,” apparently with all the extra money that will be trickling down from the benevolent largess of Wall Street. Because healthcare savings plans worked so very well in the past, just like those retirement saving plans Wall Street used to fuel their last harebrained scheme – you know, that one where they exploded the global economy with bad mortgages and rich people got even more unbelievably rich and everybody else got fucked right in the ass and lost their houses, jobs and healthcare? Like that.

- "Allow" employers to use "financial incentives" to "encourage" wellness. Your employers will encourage “wellness.” Your employer. Will encourage wellness. Be well, everybody!

I guess if you're unemployed you're on your own, wellness wise.

- Gets rid of the ACA's emphasis on preventative care, such as maternity coverage (remember, folks, in Republican Utopia life begins at conception and ends at birth, so once the kid is born, fuck you), annual screenings (such as cancer screening, gynecological exams, diabetes, high blood pressure, and so on), emergency services, those aforementioned wellness programs, and ...

…and…

Wait for it.

Waaaaaaait for it.

... MENTAL HEALTH SCREENING!

 

 

So, in summary:

Mass shootings are caused by mental illness.

And the cunning plan for addressing this supposed rash of Crazy People With Guns is to give them more guns and less mental health coverage.

It’s just me, isn’t it?

Does anybody else see a problem with this?

Does this seem … crazy to you?

Well, maybe you have to be a Republican.

Then again, it does make it easy to determine at a glance who should be allowed to have guns and who shouldn’t.

Crazy wise, I mean.

---

Addendum 1:  Every time I write one of these, I hope it's the last. But it never is, there's always another massacre. Always.
The Seven Stages of Gun Violence
The Bang Bang Crazy Series:
Part 1, What we need, see, are more guns, big fucking guns
Part 2, Gun violence isn't the exception in America, it's who we are
Part 3, Sandy Hook, the NRA, and a gun in every school
Part 4, More dead kids and why we have laws
Part 5, Gun control and a polite society
Part 6, The Christopher Donner rampage, they needed killin'
Part 7, Still more dead kids and let's print our own guns!
Part 8, Let's try blaming the victim, shall we?
Part 9, Armed soldiers on post, sure, nothing to go wrong there.
Part 10, Big Damned Heroes!
Part 11, Two in the Bush
What do we do about it? How do we change our culture of gun violence? Bang Bang Sanity

Addendum 2: As noted elsewhere, I’ve  been around guns my entire life. My dad taught me to shoot when I was a kid – in fact the very first gun I ever fired was my dad’s prized black powder .75 caliber smooth bore Civil War trench piece when I was about four years old. I still own my very first gun, bought from Meyer’s Thrifty Acres in Jenison, Michigan, for me by my dad when I was fourteen years old – a lever action Winchester 30-30. I got my first deer with that gun.  I grew up shooting, at home, in the Boy Scouts, hunting, target shooting, plinking, with friends and with family.  Thirty years ago I joined the military and spent my entire life there. I know more than a little about guns. I’m a graduate of the Smith & Wesson Rangemaster Academy, the nation’s premier firearms instructor school. I’m a certified armorer and gunsmith. I’ve attended pretty much every boarding officer and gun school the military has. I hold both the Expert Pistol and Expert Rifle Medals. I’ve taught small arms and combat arms to both military and civilians for nearly thirty years now. I’ve fired damned near everything the US military owns, from the old .38 revolver to a US Navy Aegis Guided Missile Cruiser’s 5” main battery – and everything in between. I can still field strip a Colt .45 M-1911 pistol and put it back together in under a minute, blindfolded – I happen to own several of them, along with numerous other semi-auto pistols and a number of revolvers. I used to shoot professionally and in competition. I helped to design, test, field, and fire in combat US Military weapons systems. I’ve spent my entire life in places where gun usage is extremely, extremely, common. I have a Concealed Carry Permit. I’m an Alaskan and I typically carry a gun in the wilds of Alaska on a regular basis. I am neither pro-gun nor anti-gun, a gun is a tool, nothing more. If you feel that I’m ignorant of guns, or that I’m anti-gun, or unAmerican, well, you’re welcome to speak your piece – just so long as you can live with what comes after.

More Bang Bang Crazy - Big Damned Heroes

Malcolm Reynolds: Well look at this. 'Pears we got here just in the nick of time. What does that make us?
Zoë Washburn: Big damn heroes, sir.
     - Firefly, Season 1, Episode 7 “Safe”

 

Ben Carson is a hero.

Oh yes he is. He’s a big damn hero.

Well, maybe. Probably.  In his mind.

Yesterday on Fox & Friends, Carson said,  "Not only would I probably not cooperate with him, I would not just stand there and let him shoot me. I would say 'Hey guys, everybody attack him. He may shoot me but he can't get us all'"

Carson was talking about the shooting at an Oregon community college last week, where yet another angry loser with a gun, mad at the world, murdered nine people and then, as usual, turned his weapon on himself.

In the bloody aftermath, the oh so tediously predictable aftermath, Carson told Fox viewers he wouldn’t have have been a victim.

No, Ben Carson would have been a hero.

A big damned hero.

Carson boasted that he personally would have led the counter attack, charging into a hail of bullets heedless of his own life. Follow me, boys! He can’t get us all! For America! For Freeeeeedom! For mom and apple pie and Republican Jesus!

I mean, it’s not brain surgery. You just shout “charge!” He can’t get us all, right?

Right.

Big damn hero, Ben Carson. Now that’s a campaign slogan worthy of a bumper sticker.

Big damned heroes, they’re always ready to give somebody’s life in defense of liberty, you bet.

I’ve met people like this. Wannabe heroes.

Too many.

I spent more than 20 years on active duty with the US military. I used to have a commanding officer, a Lieutenant, who I am absolutely certain practiced his Medal of Honor acceptance speech in the mirror every morning while shaving his big damned heroic chin. You know that speech? The big damn hero speech? Sure. It’s the one which begins all humble like, “Thank you, Mr. President. I’m sorry every one of my men were killed, but I’m honored, honored, to wear this award on their behalf…” All aw shucks and I wouldn’t call myself a hero, oh no sir. And what’s this? Why it’s a nice little scar that didn’t damage anything vital, just a big damned heroic wound to impress the laaaaadies. Oh yes.

Of course, when the balloon did go up and we were all out there on the pointy end of the stick, Commander Hero Chin (he’d gotten promoted by then) was heroically back in San Diego, heroically risking his life for America making heroic Power Point slides and fresh ground coffee for the admirals.

But man, if he’d been there, why, he’d have been a hero just like Ben Carson. Oh yes indeed. And for years afterward he’d regale anyone who’d listen with his tales of could-have-been heroism, “Man, if I was there, if I was there, man, you’d wouldn’t find me waiting to die, hell no. Why I wouldn’t just stand there and let him shoot me, no sir. I’d step right up and look that bastard in the eye! Follow me boys! He can’t get us all! For freeeeedom!”

That’s how these people think.

They practice their speeches, getting all the patriotic words just right, just the right amount of Captain America modesty, aw shucks anybody would have done it.

They rehearse how it’ll go down in their minds, a clever kick and a swift karate chop and they’ve got the terrorist’s gun and a pithy squint-eyed Dirty Harryism, do you feel lucky, Punk? and bang bang bang, they’re big damned heroes. Well, do ya?

And yet, oddly, guys like Ben Carson, they’re never on the front lines. Whenever it does go down, whenever the bullets start flying and the blood starts spraying and the screams echo in the halls … somehow, they’re nowhere to be found, these big damned heroes. It’s only afterwards they appear, oh, am I too late? Did I miss the battle? Well, let me tell you what I would have done.

We’re a nation of wannabe heroes, looking for our moment of glory.

This week, in Auburn Hills, Michigan, an affluent suburb of Detroit, a customer in a big box store parking lot attempted to help store security stop a suspected shoplifter by pulling out her gun and shooting at the suspect’s fleeing vehicle. The woman, a concealed carry license holder, saw a Home Depot Loss Prevention Officer attempting to stop a suspected shoplifter from getting into his vehicle. The suspect and his companion got away and took off in their SUV. So the woman, who was not a cop, not law enforcement, not involved, not threatened, not in fear of her life, and not defending herself or anyone else, pulled out her 9mm and began firing at the vehicle. What if there were other people in the car? Children say. So what? Who cares? It’s hero time!

Who presents a greater danger to the innocent public here? Some shoplifter who swiped a power drill or a box of screws or the good gal with a gun shooting in a flat trajectory across tarmac into a parking lot with a crowded highway and shopping center as a backstop?

Think about that.

Go ahead and take all the time you need.

While you’re at it, here's a thought problem for you:

Michigan is a Stand Your Ground state. Since the alleged shoplifter wasn't actually threatening this woman. And since she, as an uninvolved third party, menaced him with a gun. If he had a legal firearm in his possession at the time, would he have been justified in standing his ground, i.e. defending himself ala George Zimmerman, since any reasonable person would say his life was in danger? If not, why not?

Two weeks ago, another good guy with a gun apparently attempted to stop a carjacking at a Houston, Texas, gas station. Police say two men attacked a third man as he was pumping gas and then stole his truck. Another man, a good guy with a gun, pulled up, saw the attack, unlimbered his peacekeeper, and started shooting. Unfortunately, he hit the carjacking victim in the head instead of the thieves. The carjackers jumped into the victim’s truck and drove away. The shooter carefully picked up his spent shell casings and took off – not even bothering to check on the condition of the innocent man he’d just shot. Just another big damned hero.  Note: there is some conflicting information regarding this story. Some reports say the victim was not actually shot, and was in fact injured by the carjackers who hit him on the head.  Even now two weeks later there is no confirmation either way, and none of the original reports have been updated. However, I do note the original reports from local Houston media, based on actual police reports and on-scene witnesses, say the victim was shot in the head. Other media reports, based on secondhand accounts and filed a day or more later, say the victim was not shot. Regardless, all reports agree an uninvolved man fired on the carjackers and victim, policed his brass, and left the scene without helping the victim.

Now, certainly carjacking is a violent and dangerous crime.

Certainly the victim, whether injured by gunfire or by being hit on the head, has every right to defend himself, has every right to be angry and aggrieved at the violation. I don’t think anybody would argue that. Hell, I certainly wouldn’t argue his constitutional right to pull out his own legal weapon, should he have one, and use it to defend himself up to and including shooting at the guy who was shooting at him.

But in this case, who presented a greater threat to the public? The guys stealing a truck or the guy who wanted to be a big damned hero? Both ran away. Both took pains to hide their identities. Both are still at large and unidentified. So, how can you tell the hero from the zero? The victim was still injured, was still robbed, still left bleeding on the pavement.

Tell me, how did the gun improve this situation? How did it make anybody safer?

Think about it. Again, take all the time you need.

While you’re at it, here’s another thought problem:

Ponder the wisdom of a supposed responsible gun owner shooting into a gas station.

Three weeks ago in Des Moines, Iowa, a man was driving down a busy road when he saw another man running across the Dollar General parking lot. The running man jumped into a waiting truck which then sped away. The man suspected a robbery and attempted to stop the speeding truck by blocking it with his own vehicle. He drew his weapon and jumped out of his truck to confront the supposed robber … and was promptly hit by the suspect vehicle. He told police he then executed a “barrel roll”  and came up shooting - and if you’re having T. J. Hooker flashbacks here, rest assured you’re not the only one. The truck sped away. Whether the shooter actually hit anything or anybody remains unknown.

Tell me again, I forgot your previous answer, how did the gun improve this situation?

Tell me how the situation wouldn’t have been better served if he’d shot the suspects with his cell phone camera instead with his gun.

How does discharging a weapon in the middle of a busy intersection without regard to your backstop or surroundings make society safer?

While you’re at it, here’s yet another thought problem:

This guy, the shooter, we can agree he has a right to defend himself, yes? But would that have been necessary to begin with if he hadn’t jumped out of his truck with a gun in his hand? He put himself in danger. He put himself in danger because he could, because he was armed. Then he tried to shoot his way out of it when things went pear-shaped and it’s only by pure luck he didn’t hit a bystander. How comfortable are you with that? Good? Okay, now put your kids in that parking lot and answer the question again.

Big damned heroes.

Meanwhile in that same period, this last three weeks, how many crimes have been successfully stopped by a good guy with a gun?

Come now, let’s have a list. We’ve got nine more dead in Oregon. We’ve got the cases above. In Jefferson Country, Tennessee, we’ve got an 11-year old who deliberately killed his 8-year old neighbor with a 12-gauge shotgun in an argument over a puppy.  Heck, we’ve even got a story about US servicemen on a train in France who took down an armed terrorist with their bare hands.

But where are the Big Damned Heroes? Where are the good guys with their guns?

Why aren’t the headlines full of these people?

No, no, don’t look away. Don’t change the subject. Don’t move the goalposts. Where are they? Given the staggering amount of violence in this country, given the crime that fills our news feeds every day, given the mugs and the thugs and the Ebola infected brown people from Africa and the Muslim terrorists and the invading hordes of red commies and the raping illegals from south of the border, where is it? Where are the hundreds, thousands, millions, of headlines? Where are the tales of heroism and courage? I mean, given the sheer number of home invasions we are warned about every single day by the gun lobby, every single one of us should know somebody who’s fought it out with a crackhead in their kitchen at 2AM or took down a crazed shooter in the parking lot of their kid’s elementary school or defended an abortion clinic from some raging Christian Jesus Warrior equipped with his own personal arsenal of God … okay, that’s a bad example but I think I’ve made my point here.

Well?

Where are they?

Is it like Bigfoot and UFOs? Tens of millions of cell phone cameras and surveillance systems and none of them capture a single Good Guy With A Gun taking down the endless parade of bad guys we’re warned about every single day?

What?

What’s that?

Oh, I see. It’s the Second Amendment hating liberal media. They won’t publish stories about big damned heroes stopping crime with their guns. They’re hiding the truth! The truth! That’s it, isn’t it? Sure. Because Fox News, Newsmax, The Wall Street Journal, Guns&Ammo, Breitbart, Beck, Limbaugh, Coulter, those guys, right, liberal mouthpieces one and all. That must be it.

Sure.

"Can you imagine with Trump, somebody says, 'Ohhh, all these big monsters aren't around, he's easy pickins, and then ... pu-ching! So this is about self-defense, plain and simple!"

Self defense? I thought this was about shooting down your government because you’re feeling oppressed by tyranny? No?

Okay, self defense. Whatever you say, Chuck.

Donald Trump told the crowd at a suburban Nashville campaign stop on Saturday he has a New York state concealed carry permit and if faced with an attack like that last week in Oregon he’d go all Charles Bronson. The crowd loved the idea of The Donald as a raging vigilante so much they started chanting “Death Wish! Death Wish!”

Trump then went on to rail against "gun-free zones," telling the cheering crowd the Oregon shootings could have been stopped if only teachers and students had been armed.  He somehow left out the part where Umpqua Community College is not a gun free zone – and in fact Oregon state law forbids colleges from outlawing guns. But hey, Death Wish Trump is on a roll and why spoil a thing with facts, right?

I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to visualize Donald Trump, Donald Trump, massive gold-plated .50 Desert Eagle clutched in one hand, American flag in the other, chest bared, fighting it out Hollywood style with the next mass shooter in the hallways of your kid’s school. Pu-Ching! Oh you want some of this! How about some of this? Do ya, Punk? Pu-Ching! Pu-Ching!

Trump, like Jeb Bush and his fellow conservatives blamed the vague catchall “mental illness” for America’s gun violence and then, like Bush, noted stuff just happens. “No matter what you do, you will always have problems," Trump said and added that “it doesn't make sense to limit access to firearms.”

It doesn’t make sense to limit access to firearms.

Not even for people with “mental illness?”

Ah, you know, never mind.

As extra credit, consider this thought problem:

Mass shootings in the US are random events unrelated to gun proliferation and violent culture. Nine unarmed innocent people are gunned down in cold blood by a nut with a bad haircut and a grudge, and we shrug and say, hey, shit just happens. A nut dressed like a comic book character shoots up a movie theater? Shit happens. A racist murders people in their church? Shit happens. Another nut with a bad haircut and mental problems takes his mother’s personal arsenal and murders first her and then a school full of kindergarteners? Whoa, slow down there, Hoss, look here, shit just happens. There’s nothing you can do about it and we don’t need to be making any rash changes. Did I say rash changes? Hell, we don’t need to be making deliberate changes either. No changes.

Shit just happens, man.

Now, given that, what do you call it when four armed Americans are gunned down in the middle of a violent revolution in a North African country steeped in gun culture?

Hint: 10 congressional committees and 32 congressional hearings are pretty sure shit doesn’t just happen.

Shit just happens.

And Bobby Jindal knows why. Jindal didn’t blame fate. Shit might just happen in Bobby’s world, but at least he knows where the blame lies.

It’s bad parenting, see? 

Jindal went after the shooter’s father:

“He’s a complete failure as a father! Because he failed to raise his son.”

Jindal was enraged because the shooter’s father condemned his murderous son’s actions, questioned how a kid with mental problems could just legally buy four guns, and called for reasoned discussion of gun violence. Jindal was pissed! How dare he? It’s an outrage! Why a real father, a real father, would have … I dunno, bought his mentally disturbed kid more guns like the Charleston Shooter, took him to the range like the Sandy Hook Shooter, something, man. A real father of a mass murderer wouldn’t be talking about gun control, why that’s unAmerican. A real father would have charged the shooter, yeah, like Ben Carson, been a big damned hero.

Jindal wrote a blog post titled We fill Our Culture with Garbage, and We Reap The Result. He blamed music that promotes “the degradation of women” and flouts “the laws of God and common decency.” And of course, he wouldn’t be a Republican if he didn’t also blame abortion. 

Mike Huckabee chimed in on that theme:

“We have not so much a gun problem, we have a problem with sin and evil.”

Sin and evil. Abortion. Ah, of course. In other words, “If women weren’t rutting godless whores, none of this would have happened.” Sin folks, who’s fault is that?

Exactly.

 

And so what have we learned in the wake of yet another bloody rampage?

 

All of this violence has one thing in common. But that’s not the problem, folks. No, Sir.

It’s women having sex, that’s the problem here.

It’s that Rock & Roll music. It’s Elvis the Pelvis and that Satan loving heavy metal.

It’s TV. It’s video games. Though oddly, you don’t see conservatives promoting peaceful TV and non-violent video games and why is that?

It’s gun free zones. Though, perversely, the vast majority of gun violence occurs outside of gun free zones pretty much every single day, but just never mind that. Move along. Move along.

It’s mental illness.  But, hey, let’s fight tooth and nail against anything that might keep crazy people from buying guns.

It’s sin. It’s evil. It’s abortion and gay people. It’s illegal aliens. It’s divorce and bad fathers who don’t like guns. Because, and lets be honest here, if we let God make the laws, why this sort of thing wouldn’t happen. No violence in the bible, right? Other that part about virtuous fathers sacrificing their sons on stone altars or handing out their daughters like door prizes, or that part, you know, where God slaughters all the firstborn kids and drowns the entire planet.

No, it’s everything but guns.

What we need, see, is more guns. Yeah, that’ll fix the problem.

What we need, is some big damned heroes. Follow me, they can’t shoot us all!

Last night, Ben Carson appeared on SiriusXM’s Karen Hunter Show and related his own real life act of heroism. Carson, it seems was once held at gunpoint inside a Popeye’s fast food restaurant during a robbery.

“Guy comes in,” Carson tells it. “Put the gun in my ribs.”

Did Carson refuse to cooperate? Did he refuse to stand there and take it? Did he shout Hey guys! Everybody attack him. He may shoot me but he can't get us all!

Actually what Ben Carson, Big Damned Hero, said in his own words was:

“I have had a gun held on me when I was in a Popeye’s organization. I just said, ‘I believe you want the guy behind the counter.'”

Are you feeling lucky? Well are ya? Because I believe you want the guy behind the counter. Punk.

Zoë Washburn: Do you know what the definition of a hero is? Someone who gets other people killed.
- Serenity, 2005

 

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Addendum 1:  Every time I write one of these, I hope it's the last. But it never is, there's always another massacre. Always.
The Seven Stages of Gun Violence
The Bang Bang Crazy Series:
Part 1, What we need, see, are more guns, big fucking guns
Part 2, Gun violence isn't the exception in America, it's who we are
Part 3, Sandy Hook, the NRA, and a gun in every school
Part 4, More dead kids and why we have laws
Part 5, Gun control and a polite society
Part 6, The Christopher Donner rampage, they needed killin'
Part 7, Still more dead kids and let's print our own guns!
Part 8, Let's try blaming the victim, shall we?
Part 9, Armed soldiers on post, sure, nothing to go wrong there.
Part 10, Big Damned Heroes!
Part 11, Two in the Bush
What do we do about it? How do we change our culture of gun violence? Bang Bang Sanity

Addendum 2: As noted elsewhere, I’ve  been around guns my entire life. My dad taught me to shoot when I was a kid – in fact the very first gun I ever fired was my dad’s prized black powder .75 caliber smooth bore Civil War trench piece when I was about four years old. I still own my very first gun, bought from Meyer’s Thrifty Acres in Jenison, Michigan, for me by my dad when I was fourteen years old – a lever action Winchester 30-30. I got my first deer with that gun.  I grew up shooting, at home, in the Boy Scouts, hunting, target shooting, plinking, with friends and with family.  Thirty years ago I joined the military and spent my entire life there. I know more than a little about guns. I’m a graduate of the Smith & Wesson Rangemaster Academy, the nation’s premier firearms instructor school. I’m a certified armorer and gunsmith. I’ve attended pretty much every boarding officer and gun school the military has. I hold both the Expert Pistol and Expert Rifle Medals. I’ve taught small arms and combat arms to both military and civilians for nearly thirty years now. I’ve fired damned near everything the US military owns, from the old .38 revolver to a US Navy Aegis Guided Missile Cruiser’s 5” main battery – and everything in between. I can still field strip a Colt .45 M-1911 pistol and put it back together in under a minute, blindfolded – I happen to own several of them, along with numerous other semi-auto pistols and a number of revolvers. I used to shoot professionally and in competition. I helped to design, test, field, and fire in combat US Military weapons systems. I’ve spent my entire life in places where gun usage is extremely, extremely, common. I have a Concealed Carry Permit. I’m an Alaskan and I typically carry a gun in the wilds of Alaska on a regular basis. I am neither pro-gun nor anti-gun, a gun is a tool, nothing more. If you feel that I’m ignorant of guns, or that I’m anti-gun, or unAmerican, well, you’re welcome to speak your piece – just so long as you can live with what comes after.

Those Good Old Labor Days

Editorial Note: portions of this essay have appeared previously here on Stonekettle Station.

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You ever stop to wonder what your life would be like if it was 1915 instead of 2015?

Imagine.

Imagine what it was like to be your great grand parents.

In 1915, the United States was in the middle of the Second Industrial Revolution.  It was a time of wonder and ever advancing technology. It started in the 1860’s and would last right up until the beginning of World War I. It began with steel, the Bessemer process to be specific, a cheap and easy way to mass produce strong and reasonably lightweight metals.  Strong lightweight steel was the skeleton of the modern age, the core of everything from the new cars to steamships and oil rigs to utensils and lunchboxes, to the machines that manufactured the future.  A few years before, in 1911, a tall skinny fellow by the name of Eugene Ely landed a Curtiss #2 Pusher on the deck of USS Pennsylvania and took off again – and thus was born naval aviation, a profound moment that would change the very way wars were fought and thus change almost everything else too and the effects of which are still being felt to this very day.  If you were moderately wealthy, you could buy a Cadillac with an electric starter. Despite the fact that there were still plenty of horses out there on the roads, the car had become so ubiquitous and affordable that Michigan created the first modern roads when the state started painting white lines down the middle of the more heavily traveled avenues.  Though many factories were still powered by steam, electricity was no longer a novelty.  The first modern public elevator began operation in London, England, and soon became common everywhere – leading directly to the modern city skyline.  America was booming. Her factories were churning out new products at a record pace. The western frontier had all but disappeared – oh, there were still a few bandits and cattle rustlers out there, but the wild woolly west was long gone.  The gold rushes, the boom towns and gun fights were long over.  Hell, by 1915 Wyatt Earp was living in Hollywood and working as a consultant for the new movie industry. 

It was certainly a marvelous time.

If you could afford it.

If you lived through it.

See, those churning factories were horrible places.  In 1915, most were still powered by a massive central steam engine which drove an enormous flywheel, which in turn powered shafts and belts and pulleys, which finally powered the machines.  And though, as noted above, electricity was becoming increasingly common, most of those factories were dark and poorly lit – typically illumination was sunlight through skylights and banks of single pane glazed windows.  Often boiling hellholes in the summer and freezing dungeons in the winter – both air conditioning and central heating were still decades away and all those single pane windows didn’t do much to keep out either the cold or the heat. Those factories were filled with smoke and poisonous fumes from the various manufacturing processes, lead vapor, heavy metals, acids, chlorine, bleaches, all were common.  Normal working hours were from dawn to dusk, typically anywhere from twelve to fourteen hours a day, sixty and seventy hours per week for wages that would barely pay the rent and put food on a factory worker’s table.

Child labor was common, especially in the textile industry, though in some states there were supposed to be laws regulating it.  The kids toiled right alongside their parents.  The children typically worked the same hours as adults, but for a quarter, or less, of the pay.  Pictures of the time show children working barefoot among the machines, ragged sleeves flapping near the flying belts and spinning pulleys.  Whole families hired out to the factories, the men doing the heavy labor, the women and children doing the more delicate tasks. Towns sprang up around the mills, often controlled by the factory owners. Company towns, where workers very often became little more than indentured servants.  Life in a company town was often better than the alternative on the streets of places like Hell’s Kitchen or out in the fields of the South. Company towns gave workers a higher standard of living than they would otherwise be able to afford. But the running joke was that while your soul might belong to God, your ass belonged to the company.  Mill towns and mining towns and factory towns and logging towns were common across America, places where the company owned everything from your house to your job to the church you prayed in to the store you bought your food from. And prices were whatever made the company the most profit and in many places there were laws that prevented you from renting or buying outside the company town.  The company might pay you a decent wage for the time, but they got a lot of it back too.  Get crosswise of the company and you lost it all.  Get injured on the job and could no longer work, and you lost it all. Get sick, and you could lose it all.  Get killed, and your family was out on the street.  There was no workman’s comp. No insurance. No retirement but what you managed to save – and since you probably owed a significant debt to the company store, your savings were unlikely to go very far.

Of course, you could always take a pass on factory work and return to the land.  In 1915, millions of Americans were farmers.  Farming was hard back breaking work (it still is, just in a different way) – so hard that seventy hours a week in a smoke filled factory with a high probability of getting maimed or killed looked pretty good in comparison.  Most of those farmers, especially in the South, didn’t own their fields. They were sharecroppers, living in conditions little better than slavery or the serfdom of the Dark Ages.  Of the small farmers who did own their own land or rather owed the bank for their own land, more than half lived in abject poverty.  In the coming decade, the decade of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, most would lose everything.

Most of America was powered by coal in those days and if there was anything that would make life in a factory town or in the sweltering fields look good – it was working in a West Virginia coal mining town.  It was a race to see what would kill you first, explosion, cave-in, or the black lung.  And just like in the fields and factories, children worked alongside their parents – if they had parents, orphanages were also common. And orphan labor was even cheaper than the average child, both in life and in pay. Renting out orphan labor was a good gig, if you could get it.

You could always become a merchant seaman, though life at sea was damned rough. You could move west and become a logger, though you’d probably live longer in the mines of West Virginia. You could still be a cowboy, or a cop, or carpenter none which paid worth a good Goddamn and had the added benefit of a short lifespan.

Since people got sick and injured a lot, and most couldn’t afford even rudimentary medical care, many turned to patent medicines.  The pharmaceutical industry was only loosely regulated, but by 1915 there were some few laws in a handful of states regulating the more outrageous claims for the various elixirs. The big medicine shows were gone, but there were still plenty of drug store shelves stocked with hundreds of varieties of patent medicines. Some were mostly benign, like Coca-Cola. And some were downright toxic, like Radithor, made from water and radium.  As late as 1917, The Rattlesnake King, Clark Stanley, was still making Stanley’s Snake Oil, a worthless mixture of mineral oil, turpentine, and red pepper, and fleecing sick people out of their money and making them yet sicker (hell, as late as the 1960’s TV’s commercials touted the benefits of smoking for sore throats. And, as late as 1970 there were still X-ray foot measuring devices that would give you cancer in use in a handful of shoe stores across America).

In 1915, only a few states mandated that your kids attend school, and then only through elementary.  In the South segregation and Jim Crow Laws were in full force and civil rights were decades away. Lynching was common.  On the other hand, women could actually vote in exactly five states, well, six if you included California which grudgingly acknowledged in November that females might be citizens too despite their unfortunate plumbing. 

In 1915, maybe three out of ten Americans could ever expect to own a home, most would pay a landlord their whole lives. Few had any rights in those relationships either, you paid the owner and you lived with what you got or you got thrown out. Period.

In 1915, a lot of Americans were hungry. More than fifty percent of seniors lived in poverty, but then the average lifespan was only about fifty-five, maybe sixty if you hadn’t been breathing coal dust or lead vapor all you life.  Few of those seniors had pensions, most lived on the charity of their families – if they were lucky enough to have families.  Sanatoriums were a common place for the aged and infirm to spend their brief final years. 

In 1915, if you had ten kids, you might expect six of them to survive to adulthood.  If you were lucky. Polio, tuberculosis, measles, mumps, pneumonia, whooping cough, hard labor in the mines and factories and fields, lack of social safety nets, lack of proper nutrition, lead paint, food poisoning, poverty, orphaned by parents killed by the same, would probably claim at least four of those kids. Likely more.

People from that generation always wax nostalgic for The Good Old Days – and then they immediately proceed to tell you why life was so much harder and more miserable back then.

The simple truth of the matter is nowadays we Americans live a pretty damned good life.  And we live that good life because since 1915 we’ve put systems and laws and regulations in place to improve life for all of us.  Programs like Social Security and Medicare have a direct and measurable effect on how long we live, and how well. Regulations governing working conditions and workplace safety have a direct and measurable effect on the probability that we’ll survive to retirement.  Laws that prevent the rich from owning a whole town, or abusing workers, or turning them into indentured servants, or hiring children at pauper’s wages to maintain the machines in their bare feet, have directly benefitted all but the most greedy few. 

The American dream isn’t dead, far from it. 

I’ve been to countries where dreams have died, America is far, far, far removed those hellish places. 

It is a measure of just how far we’ve come, and just how big an impact that those laws, regulations, and social safety programs have had that those who directly benefit from those very same laws, regulations, and programs can complain with full bellies just how terrible they have it.

Things like Social Security, Medicare, Workman’s Compensation Insurance, The Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance, child labor laws, federal minimum wage, occupational health and safety standards, the Environmental Protection Agency, The Centers for Disease Control, The departments of Education and Health, Labor Unions and workers’ rights, and yes, even Welfare, all of these things were created for a reason. For a good reason. For a compelling reason. 

These things were created because when you leave it up to the church and charity to feed the hungry and clothe the poor and heal the sick, a hell of a lot of people go hungry and cold and ill.  It is really just that brutally simple. 

These things were created because when you leave it up to charity and family to take care of old people, a hell of a lot of old people end up stacked like cordwood in institutions. The moldering remnants of such places are all around us.

These things were created because when you leave it up to people to save for their retirement or a rainy day or for accident and infirmity, a hell of a lot of them don’t, or can’t, or won’t.

These things were put in place because when you leave it solely up to the market to weed out poor products and fake medicine and unsafe machines, the market doesn’t, or can’t, or won’t, and it’s perfectly happy to go right on killing people for profit.

These things were put in place because when you leave it up to industrialists and share holders to treat their workers with dignity and respect and to pay them a living wage for their hard work, you get indentured servitude.

These things were put in place because when you leave it up to devoutly righteous people who go to church every Sunday to decide what is right and proper and moral, you end up with lynchings and segregation and Jim Crow. And that is a Goddamned fact.

These things were put in place because when you leave it up to the factory owners to decide wages and safety and working hours, you get this:

When you leave it solely up to bankers and the factory owners and the industrialists and the politicians, well Sir, then what happens is they end up owning it all and you get the privilege of paying them to eat out of their garbage can.

And for most of history, right up until very recently, that’s exactly how it was.

Fundamentally, government exists to protect the weak from the ruthless, otherwise what damned good is it?

Lately there are a lot of folks who think they want to live in 1915, rather than in 2015.

 

The question you need to ask yourself, on this of all days, is what century do you want to live in?

Fund Drive

Like anybody else, I have bills to pay.

I have a mortgage and a kid in college and the cat needs to eat.

As Stonekettle Station has increased in popularity, it takes up more and more of my time to do proper research and analysis, write the content you come here for, and manage the site, commenting, and the associated social media feeds.

And when I’m doing that, I’m not writing novels or short stories or paying copy.

That said, as a number of folks have noted, I’ve been a little light on posting here lately. This is for several reasons mostly having to do with travel and real world issues. I’ve got a number of things going on my life at present which require a significant amount of my time. It’s nothing horrible, don’t panic and please don’t write to ask. I appreciate your concern, but not everything I do is public domain. It’s simply that a number of things happened all at once which require my attention in priority over writing this blog, the mundane details of which don’t need to be shared publicly – though they will likely become fodder for future articles and projects. That’s the best part about being a writer, everything is grist for the mill (too bad it’s not likewise tax deductible). The situation should be resolved shortly and I’ll be back to publishing at least one in-depth essay each week along with some shorter pieces.

Now, based on my business model, every once in a while I need to run a donation drive. 

 

I don’t like this.

 

I don’t like asking for money.

Ideally, I write an article and if you like it enough, you’ll kick in.  And thankfully, you do so often enough that I can survive doing this. I’ll never get rich doing it, but it beats writing advertising jingles or flipping burgers. That is going to become even more important to me as my business model evolves. More on that later.

But as I said, every once in a while I have to run a donation campaign. I refuse to do it more than once a year. And it makes me very uncomfortable to say, hey, give me money and, you know, maybe I’ll write something you like later. Don’t get me wrong, you toss the coins and I’ll dance like a monkey in a shiny silver vest, sure, but I’ve been thinking about this and I’d like you to get more. So here’s what I’ve come up with:

As many of you know, I’m also an artist.

I turn trees into things, sometimes firewood but usually stuff more like this:

 

This is a beautiful piece of California redwood. When I acquired it, there were a number of naturally occurring cracks on one side caused by drying. Now, normally a turner (someone who works on a lathe) would cut the piece down to solid wood and throw the flawed part away. But redwood in this size is expensive and increasingly difficult to acquire and I really didn’t want to throw any of it away.

So the flaws became features.

The cracks were filled with resin and stabilized to hold the wood together while it was being worked on the lathe. Then after turning the bowl was hand carved with a variety of tools to highlight the natural features and give the piece character. It’s 12” in diameter and finished with walnut oil and soft wood wax which gives it a deep luster and complex finish.  It’s food safe, suitable for nuts or hard candies, but it is probably better suited as an art piece for display.

It is signed via laser-etch on the bottom:
 

Typically my artwork sells so fast I can’t keep up with it (how terrible right? Every artist should have such problems). This piece is different. I’ve had this piece available for sale for a while now on my Etsy store, but it hasn’t sold because it’s simply too expensive.

So here’s what I’m going to do:

- Donations of $50 or more:

Anybody who donates $50 or more during the month of September 2015 will be put in the running to win this piece.

- Donations of less than $50:

Anybody who donates between $1 and $49 during the month of September will be eligible to win a handmade customized laser-engraved pen in the same style I recently made for a number of famous writers at the World Science Fiction Convention (Sasquan) in Spokane, Washington.  I will randomly select TWO winners in this category. Winners will be able to specify what they want engraved on the pen within certain limitations (you can only fit so much on a pen barrel folks).

 

Additionally, the three winners will each (if they so desire) suggest a topic for an in-depth essay on current events and I will write it for publication here on Stonekettle Station.

Winners will be selected October 1st.

To donate, click on the “Donation” button on the upper right side of this screen and follow the directions.

Note: Those of you who already donate via an automatic monthly payment, you’ll be entered automatically in the drawing. 

 

Thank you.

 

_________________

Addendum: To be clear, this is not a lottery or a raffle.  Donations are voluntary subscription fees specifically in support of this blog, i.e. you’re paying for content not a chance to win something. I am not claiming any tax-exempt status or charity. Donations are considered business income and I pay all applicable state and federal taxes on that income and I have the records to prove it.

The bowl, the pens, those are my artwork, created and paid for by me.  As such I chose to randomly give them away to supporters, just as I gave away pens to writers and supporters at Worldcon last month. I’m simply using this month’s subscriptions as the pool to select from since I have no other way to determine who readers are. 

You are not paying for a chance to win a prize, you’re paying for the content of this blog and my associated social media feeds.  // Jim