Or This Guy (these guys?)

The previous essay, “ID’ing A Trumper” needed this additional character stereotype. The headline below his picture was:

Princeton, MN (KROC-AM News) - Five Minnesota law officers are recovering today from gunshot wounds suffered in an apparent exchange of gunfire with a 64-year-old man at a rural residence in central Minnesota this morning.

You know this doofus is a Trumper.

 

Or all of these guys: 

 

 

 

I Most Likely Will Back Down (and so will you)

A friend’s comment about Tom Petty’s “Won’t Back Down” came at an interesting time for me. A few weeks ago, I was describing to some acquaintances how roughly 60-years ago I had decided to quit being a punching bag for every bully in western Kansas who’d flunked one of my father’s math classes. Petty’s song came up in that discussion.

I am a high school math teacher’s oldest kid. Every half-wit who failed one of my father’s tests and classes went hunting for someone to pay back for that insult and I was usually that someone. By the time I was 12 I’d learned how to straighten my own broken nose after some high school bastard had bent it for me. In my 40s, living in Colorado, breathing through my mouth became a problem due to the dry air and I signed up for nasal reconstruction surgery. After the surgery was done, my doc dropped in to the recovery room to see how I was doing and she said, “If I’d known how many times you nose had been broken, I’d have booked the surgical theater for a couple more hours.” I wish she had, too, because a few days later one of her patches hemorrhaged and a lot of her work was ruined by the inflatable Foley catheter that was inserted to stop the bleeding.

When I was somewhere between 16 and 17, I made the personal decision to never be in another “fight.” If I was forced to fight, it would be a war. And the war wouldn’t be over until one of us was dead or completely incapacitated to the point the fight could not ever be restarted. I had been picked on and pounded so many times that I was at the point that I no longer cared if I lived or died during the next assault. I just wanted to know that fight would never occur again and to make it clear that I wouldn’t quit until either I or the other guy was incapacitated. I didn’t mean at that moment, either. I planned on going back repeatedly until there was a final resolution. Picture the Monty Python Black Knight from The Holy Grail as an example of my 60-years-ago decision.

Almost immediately after coming to that decision, I was assaulted by some asshole railroad worker on my way home from work. I had to cross Dodge’s railroad tracks on my way from school or work to where I lived at the time, a trailer in south Dodge. Pretty much every day, I had to put up with some redneck asshole shouting “Is that a boy or a girl?” or worse. This time, I was out of patience and in a bad mood and I shouted back, “Why don’t you find out, asshole?”

An oversized human beach ball dropped down from one of the flat cars and started waddling toward me. He was probably 40-something, about my height and about wide as he was tall. Due to his weight and character, the man stomped toward me as bow-legged as a real cowboy. When he got within punting range, I drop kicked his nuts most of the way to his throat. I left him squealing and writhing on the tracks between north and south Dodge. I never saw him again and never again heard the usual catcalls when I walked home. For the next 30 years, every squabble I was ever in ended without fists or dropkicks. Some were close to violence, but none went that far. But I’m old now and don’t have whatever it was that created that kind of resolve to win or die. Today, I’d likely back down and/or look for an escape route.

In a similar story, my friend Scott Jarrett has been “a musician” his whole life, from 15 to now, when he is 70. His life-long commitment to be a musician at all costs is no longer something he can manage. For some years, he’s complained that his ex-students were getting the gigs he used to almost automatically get. Now, they aren’t even asking him to try out and that is partially because he is no longer all-in-competing for every paying job. It’s not that he doesn’t need the income, he just can’t find whatever motivation that is required to go balls-out trying to win those gigs/fights. Life is competitive and most of the competition is won by the young, simply because they have less to lose and way more resources to commit to winning.

That “Won’t Back Down” thing is only credible as a young man’s declaration. First, as an old fart the odds that I will survive any sort of physical confrontation vanishes rapidly into my ancient history. Which is why it is so funny to watch all of the decrepit Trumpers thump their chubby chests in faux-defiance of “the system” from which they are so dependent. Most of those lilly-white entitled toddlers are as far from being fighters as they are from being intellectuals. Take away their Social Security or disability checks and they are homeless and begging for spare change. But they won’t know who they are until they pass the moment-of-truth when it is too late to turn back.

The "J" Stands for "Genius"

From the mouths of morons comes the confirmation they were hoping to avoid. "The 'J' stands for 'genius.'" I admit that I do love this on multiple levels. The Trump rioters are throwbacks to the days when the majority of men were cannon fodder to be tossed into the front lines of every battle to die in numbers as large as possible to maintain population control, to efficiently burn off the excess male population, and to toss mostly-useless bodies between opponents and the royals and officers at the back of the battle lines.

Contrary to their desperate self-delusions, they are "stupid" and they have almost no place in a functioning 21st Century society. At an exponentially diminishing rate, society no longer needs ditch diggers, manual labor to lug bags of cement to the tops of buildings, or even slaves to sacrifice building pyramids and shrines to the rich-and-powerful who these goobers live to serve. At some point, useless and excess humans will have to either find a purpose or filter themselves out of the gene pool. Not only does industry no longer need unskilled and uneducated bodies for assembly line work or minimally skilled labor for construction, or farm labor that pays a living wage, but the planet needs to be rid of as many of this dead weight as possible to minimize the destruction of a human-supporting environment. (I'm not talking about "saving the planet." The planet will be fine without us, in as little as a few 100,000 years, but humans will not be on it then. Neither will most of the animal life we currently cohabitate with.)

The January 6, 2021 Trump rioters were a pack of mommas' boys, unemployed derelicts,  Trump's beloved "uneducated," a few trustfund brats and government employees, and, worst of all, off-duty cops demonstrating the kind of "law" they've been administering against citizens, but this time against other police officers.

Regardless of their education, employment, economic or social class, the one thing we can say about all of them is that they are stupid. They are also seditious criminals who deserve the most severe punishment possible for their crimes.

Mangling the American Dream

I am never more out of sync with my country than when it comes to consumerism. For all of the reasons Republicans say people like me are “un-American,” I hate all of the holiday seasons; especially Xmas. It’s not just the superstition and faux-good-will that smears itself across this smarmy holiday from work (for a rare non-retail few) and common sense, it’s the constant guilt-manipulating whining about “gifts” and expectations. If I could pick any time of the year to be struck down by lightning, it would be anytime between Halloween and Easter. Hell, I’d step between practically anyone and a bullet to get out of that time of the year (Trump and his spawn excluded).

One morning a few weeks ago, I was making potato pancakes for our breakfast and decided to drag out my rarely-used food processor to shred the potatoes and onions. As I was assembling the pieces of this vintage machine into something that would turn potatoes into bits of vegetable confetti, I was reminded of where this kitchen implement came from. Sometime around 2005, I decided I wanted to make one more attempt at adding a lot of vegetables to my diet and I figured buying a food processor to make that job a little less irritating might be motivational. As usual, I didn’t want to pay much for this speculative diet-motivational tool. So, I went on Craig’s List, created a “search alert” and let CL do what it does best. A couple of days later, I got a hit on a processor in my price range in the Payne-Phalen area of St. Paul. I called the seller and set up a time for me to check out the appliance a few hours before I needed to be in St. Paul for a recording session later that evening.

The sellers turned out to be a fairly recent-immigrant Asian couple who were doing the American Dream thing: buying all new everything as fast as they could toss their credit cards at anyone with stuff to sell. They had a new Honda Accord in the driveway, a living room full of nice leather-bound furniture and a television bigger than my living room wall, and a recently redecorated kitchen with lots of brand new appliances. I suspect the processor they were selling me was a hand-me-down. When they greated me at the door, they checked out my classy 1998 Ford Escort station wagon and my usual high-style outfit: a tee-shirt and jeans and sandals and a Denver Nuggets jacket. I don’t think I impressed them at all. We talked a bit while I tested the food processor and stuffed it and its parts back into the original packing box they had provided. They wanted to show me their new Cuisinart food processor, but I needed to keep moving so that I wouldn’t be late for my gig.

That morning, I considered the fact that I have never been much of a fan or even a participant in the American Dream; as commonly accepted by most Americans. I have owned exactly one new car—a  1973 Mazda RX3 station wagon—in my life and would just as soon never get financially beat up that badly again. I bought two new motorcycles, both early in 1974, and got my financial ass handed to me on those vehicles. Since then, I’ve owned a collection of beaters and utilitarian used vehicles and have driven a few of them into the ground. I’ve been accused of being willing to buy used food if I could figure out how to safely digest it. During my working career, I allocated so few minutes to meals that I probably wouldn’t have tasted the difference most of the time.

I don’t care about keeping up with the Jones’s, I just don’t want to get screwed. For most large purchases, being the first buyer is accepting the fact that you will likely be the one who takes the biggest financial hit for getting it when it is new. New cars lose 25-50% of their purchase value the day they roll off of the lot. Most motorcycles are no different. I bought a relatively new construction home in Parker, Colorado: I paid $71,000 for it in 1992, the original owners paid $110,000 for the house in 1984. (Thank you, Mr. Reagan.) I bought a like-new carbon fiber guitar a couple of years ago for $750. The original owner paid $1100 for it and a friend bought a lower cost version of the same instrument at the same time I found my used one; he paid $1300 plus tax. I bought a collection of power tools from a local retired guy for $100. On the way out his door with my new tools all loaded in the pickup, he mentioned that he’d paid about $2000 for those same tools when they were new. I bought a like-new $1400 digital oscilloscope a few weeks ago for $200 and the original owner threw in a couple hundred dollars worth of test probes to seal the deal. All of this equipment was barely used when I bought them. And on and on I could go. You too, I hope.

The real American dream used to be to hand off a world and a country that was better than the one we inherited. Americans used to take pride in trying to give their children a leg-up into the world they would possess when their parents were either old and feeble or gone. Today, many Americans appear to be proud of doing exactly the opposite. The two generations currently in power, Boomers and X-gens, seem to be doing everything they can to use up all of the world’s natural resources before their children realize how greedy they are being. We’re cobbling together dysfunctional national and state governments, solely purposed to make the rich richer and everybody else poor and enslaved. At least half of us are pretending that humans are not primarily responsible for the rapid climate change the world is displaying.

Americans and Arabs are doubling-down on their death-cult superstitions, pretending that prayers and wishes and a collection of gods so confusing that even the Greeks would be confused by who-is-who-in-the-sky. In the US, we’ve decided social and economic justice, education, democracy, and national security all take a backseat to making the rich richer and more powerful. That is NOT the American Dream. If anything, it is the Russian ogliarchy’s dream and they seem to be driving the car at the moment. I’d call that an American Nightmare.

From the Mouths of the Next Generation

The survivors of the Parkland High School shooting are being threatened for their gun violence protests by the NRA’s supporters. That shouldn’t come as any kind of surprise. The NRA is a terrorist organization that supports fascist “militias,” has members of its board of directors who threaten to assassinate the President, and actively works to destabilize the country and our democracy. At the core, the NRA is just being consistent to its mission to sell guns to every nutcase who wants one. There is nothing about being an NRA member or a gun owner that indicates a citizen might be loyal to the country or the constitution or even a reasonably decent neighbor. The opposite mostly appears to be the case. The organization is primarily supported by massive “contributions” from gun nuts and their shills from the weapons industry.

The fact that the current drive to shut down the country’s murder industry has come from kids seems to be upsetting some people. They are surprised when teenagers have opinions and that those opinions are not being ignored by the public. There is a long history of young people, students opposing fascism and paying the ultimate price for that fight throughout human history. In the United States, four college students were shot down in cold blood by the Ohio National Guard on May 4, 1970 at Kent State protesting the illegal and grossly immoral war in Vietnam. Sophie Scholl was one of several students, including her brother Hans, who were executed for protesting the Nazi war machine and atrocities. Of course, none of those sacrifices did much toward ending the wars they opposed. The Vietnam invasion went on for another three years after the Kent State students were murdered. Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese and Cambodians were murdered for a “cause” Americans can still not define. Nazi Germany rampaged on with its vicious genocide and war against humanity until the Allies and Russia crushed that nation into submission. Small comfort to Scholl, but in 2003 a German magazine for women voted Scholl "the greatest woman of the twentieth century." If the NRA’s American Nazis act on their threats and kill some of the Florida high school student protestors, it will just be one more sacrifice of the young for the privledge of the old and evil.

The whole scene reminds me of a moment during one of the Faculty Meetings I suffered about a decade ago. The presenter, Stuart Anderson, was talking about “revealing revolutionary learning opportunities” in the classroom and described a scenario where “a young person creates a new form of music that revolutionizes where we go from here.” Immediately, one of the music department instructors raised his hand and said, “I’d be afraid of any new music that came from a young person” (or something close to that). Of course, all new music comes from young people. Often, really young people. I can’t remember any substantial pop culture invention that came from artists over 30. Not one. I do, however, remember lots of those inventions in my lifetime that terrified people over 30. Lucky for us, the future always belongs to the young and if they are committed, dedicated, and fearless maybe they will create a future that doesn’t include a bi-monthly school shooting.

Gun Fallacies

About 15 years ago, a friend (David) made the dumbest possible decision to use a gun to defend himself from a pair of stupid young men late one evening after a gig in a small Idaho town. He didn’t manage to kill anyone or even seriously injure them, but he did shoot two unarmed men and, in a panic, ran away and tried to hide the evidence. In every simulated and real scenario I have ever seen, ordinary people demonstrate no good reason to possess a gun during an emergency. People kill their kids, kids kill other kids, cops shoot unarmed victims or innocent bystanders, and people shoot themselves accidentally or on purpose. But the whole "good guy with a gun comes to save the world" bullshit is just that; bullshit. I just finished reading A Massacre in Memphis, The Race Riot thatShook the Nation One Year After the Civil War.  A couple of the scenes in that story reminded me of David’s experience with a gun.

The first incident in A Massacre in Memphis that is a classic example of dumb shits with guns demonstrating how criminally easy it is for a pack of idiots with guns to do everything except what they planned with their little toy pistols. The scene is--after a day of white and black idiots waving sticks, throwing rocks, and shooting guns in the general direction of their oppressors or the people they've decided are the reason nobody wants to hire drunken, lazy Irishmen--a group of black men decided to chase a group of white cops out of their neighborhood. Most of the black citizens in this encounter were recently discharged “Buffalo Soldiers” who were well-trained and experienced soldiers, supposedly competent with weapons and with being under fire. Like most modern cops, the white (mostly Irish) cops were more skilled at close-up brutality than being in a gun fight and they not only couldn’t hit a barn door at ten feet, although the only one who did hit something shot himself. Not an unusual story today. 

“To this point no weapon more dangerous than a stick or rock has been displayed. But now a pistol shot rings out. One of the more distant black men, intending no doubt to scare the police men and speed them along on their retreat, has pulled out a revolver and fired into the air. A few others follow his example. The policemen, thinking they are being shot at, halt on the bride and turn. Three of them reach for their revolvers. Two of them draw, level their weapons at the crowd and open fire. The black me who are shooting into the air immediate lower their guns and fire at the policemen. Within moments, twenty or more black men are firing.

“One of the officers, thirty-two-year-old John Stevens, falls. A shout goes up from the crowd, 'He is shot.' He has in fact been shot, but not by any of the blacks. In his panicky attempts to draw his weapon and return fire, he has pulled the trigger prematurely, putting a bullet into his own leg. It is a bad wound: the bullet goes deep and shatters his right thighbone. All who see him go down assume he has been hit by gunfire from the blacks.

“The fusillade is quickly over. The firing has all been hasty and inaccurate. Dozens of rounds have been discharged, but no black person and no policeman but Stevens has been hit.”

In this episode of "Gun Dummies," the two cops who opened fire and started the shootout at the bridge ran away, leaving their wounded officer and the one sane cop who hadn’t panicked to face the black soldiers on their own. That cop and several of the black protesters helped get Stevens to a doctor and, then, to a hospital. The two panicky cops ran back to the police station, exaggerated what had happened and prettied up the fable of their own participation, and helped start a Memphis riot and race war. More of that kind of gun-owner behavior continues throughout the story, but another favorite moment of mine was when black non-participants in the fight were trying to flee the city and escape the white mob.

“Many of the blacks being shot at are fleeing down Rayburn or across the eastern branch of the bayou. Pendergrast sees one who appears to be lagging behind the rest: the man is running down Rayburn just twenty feet ahead of the (white) mob. Pendergrast can see only his back. He takes aim at him with one pistol and fires. The man pitches forward and sprawls facedown on the street. Pendergrast goes up to him and turns him over on his back. To the grocer’s astonishment he sees that his victim is white. ‘God damn it,’ he exclaims. ‘I am sorry I shot this man. I thought he was a God damn yellow nigger.’

“The man is fireman Henry Dunn, who in his eagerness to wreak vengeance on blacks raced ahead of the rest of the mob. He is alive but unconscious, and obviously cannot live long. Pendergrast’s bullet has entered the back of his head, plowed through his brain, penetrated the skull on the other side, and lodged under the skin of his forehead.

Pendergrast now seeks atonement for his error by claiming a black victim. Leaving Dunn, he goes down to the bayou and spots a short young man in an army uniform who is trying to get away. The man is Lewis Robinson, a former corporal in the 3^rd. He is too far off to get a good shot at but is within shouting distance. Pendergrast calls to him, telling him to come back, that he will not be harmed. Robinson takes Pendergrast at his word. He halts, then begins making his way back toward the grocer. When he is close enough, Pendergrast raises a pistol and fires into his face. The bullet hits Robinson in the jaw. A policeman nearby also fires, hitting Robinson in the side.”

American history is littered with the wreckage of lives, families, and communities destroyed by the fable of the "gun that won the West." The west was "won' and became a semi-livable place when communities decided they'd had enough of the mindless fallacy of "good guys with guns." When law officers began to disarm the usual idiots who are inclined to carry weapons everywhere they go and when communities and states decided to disarm the usual suspects, the country finally began to achieve some sort of stability and security. Like most lessons in history, we seem to have forgotten that lesson and the NRA/Russian propaganda is doing everything it can to prevent a rational discussion about the problems a "well armed" society creates for itself. In fact, we have repeatedly disproved Bob Heinlein's drunken claim that "a well armed society is a polite society." It was dumb when he said it and it's even dumber to keep thinking it.