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Before I leave the political aspects of the Giffords massacre behind in preparation for several days of phony debate and false equivalency to pollute mass media channels, I'll reprint below a comment on my post entitled "And Dove bars shall issue from the assholes of the righteous," contributed by that frequent and prolific Fifty50 visitor, "Anonymous." It evidently didn't make it to the comments section because Blogger thought it was too long or something, but it came through via email notification. Without further comment (except in the comments section):yes, let bygones be bygones. Sage advice.
I put Fox news on (something always done with utmost caution) yesterday to see how they were reporting what MSNBC and CNN were doing their 24 hour work on. Hey, on Fox we could learn about smokeless cigarettes--a news infomercial since nothing else was happening in the country.
The right was momentarily caught unprepared to spin this stuff but guys like that "Fineman" give them a break to recover and crank up their propaganda.
The 74 yr old sheriff of Pima County AZ did the country a big service yesterday by stating very clearly what the hell is happening in AZ and in the US. Let Fox spin that. But many other issues are and should come up because of this, especially once the identity and circumstances of the other victims are made public.
Such as health care: the medical help the victims require as well as the mental health help guys like the shooter never get anymore (doesn't take a psychiatric degree to read that youtube shit and diagnose a schizophrenic).
Such as gun control: why the hell is a guy like that carrying around a police/ military style weapon? Why does he have access to it any more than he does to plastic explosives? And so much for the idiotic NRA rationale that in states like AZ with open carrying gunslingers the bad guys won't stand a chance. That could have been an NRA convention and, with that weapon, he could have hit 19 people just that quickly before anyone could react.
Such as the role of government: I didn't notice any private business dealing with that mess. Like evacuating the scene, like getting the injured to medical facilities, like the state university med school they were moved to itself. The public law enforcement entities handling the crime scene and investigation (city, county, state and federal--all taxpayer supported). No, the only role I noticed for the private sector in all this shit was the strip mall stage on which it took place. There is a very good reason for the taxes a society pays-- many of them demonstrated in this tragedy.
So lets sit back, take the "fineman's" advice, give our Randian and Paulian-worshipping brothers and sisters the benefit of the doubt, and hear what they have to say. Already the Alaskan snowbilly has pointed out that the "surveyor's" sights on her website were misinterpreted. Reload babe!
I've read your recent posts about the event in Tucon. I'm not qualified to express any views on the right wing ranters that many blame for creating an environment that lead to this murderous event.
ReplyDeleteMy only comment is that if the killer had not had a semi automatic weapon maybe fewer innocents would have died.
I don't see how the US can be shocked at such events when almost anyone can buy arsenals of weapons. Aren't such killings inevitable, if such material is so freely available?
I don't say that you should remove the right to bear arms. Just accept that that right in the hands of some people is extremely dangerous.
Keep up your postings - they're extremely stimulating and funny - usually.
Barry: I don't think there's any way to explain to a non-American how psychotic our discussions of gun safety have become. People clearly hold clearly contradictory and insane thoughts in their minds at the same time---guns are a fetish object to a plurality of Americans, and the fetish is reinforced by "king mixers" like the NRA who use appeals to racism and right-wing propaganda themes to vilify anyone who suggests any sort of compromise regarding "Second Amendment" rights. Ultimately I think the NRA will go too far even for this gun-fetishing society, and they theoretically could find themselves on the receiving end of a RICO investigation depending on how actively they support international gun commerce.
ReplyDeleteThere is a US gun rights group with the Orwellian name of "Guns Save Life," and they festoon the roadsides with signs expressing four-line jingles about the virtues of gun ownership in terms of saving life. They're reminiscent of the famous Burma Shave signs, if you've ever heard of those. As Grace Slick said about something else, there is no logic or proportion when it comes to discussing this topic in the good old USA.