California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

Guns: The Last Vestige of Male Dominance

by John Lawrence

When females run the world, hopefully soon, assault rifles will be off the streets in a New York minute. Toxic masculinity has been responsible for war and conflict resolution by violence since the world began. Gun manufacturers advertise, "Get your man card." Mamas don't want their babies to grow up to be mass murderers or the victims of mass murderers. They don't want their babies to go through life with PTSD from having participated in that primordial male occupation - war. Sure there are some masculinized females who have adopted a male consciousness and support war and dominance as a means of conflict resolution, but there are more who support diplomacy, understanding and empathy. Even Hillary Clinton had to prove she was "tough" by supporting the Iraq war because she wanted to run for President. There will be no peace and no love as long as men are in charge. Witness some of the nations on earth where females run things. New Zealand, Sweden and Denmark have female presidents or prime ministers. These ladies reside over relatively peaceful and enlightened nations. Nobody in their right mind would refer to the US as an "enlightened" nation although the enlightenment was supposedly over 200 years ago. At that time the US Constitution was written in such a way to "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity" for white male property owners only. The Constitution excluded African Americans and women who didn't get to vote till the 1920s. African Americans are still suffering generational effects from being excluded first by slavery, then by Jim Crow laws and later by red lining.

Jacinda Ardern, prime minister of New Zealand got assault rifles off the streets in short order after a mass murder in new zealand. Ardern describes herself as a social democrat and a progressive. The Sixth Labour Government has faced challenges from the New Zealand housing crisis, child poverty, and social inequality. In March 2019, in the aftermath of the Christchurch mosque shootings, Ardern reacted with empathy and rapidly introduced strict gun laws, winning her wide recognition. Throughout 2020 she led New Zealand's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, for which she won praise for New Zealand being one of the few Western nations to successfully contain the virus. Ardern led the Labour Party to victory in the 2020 general election, gaining an overall majority of 65 seats in Parliament, the first time this has happened since the introduction of proportional representation in 1996.

Less than one month after a gunman killed 50 people in an attack on two mosques in Christchurch, the New Zealand Parliament voted to ban most semi-automatic and military-style weapons. The law makes it illegal to possess the prohibited weapons in New Zealand. Current owners of the now-banned firearms had a short period of time to return their weapons for compensation under a buyback program. If they didn't return them, they would face up to five years in prison. Speaking before lawmakers, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she knew her country would approve a ban after the police commissioner described the deadly nature of the guns used in the attack, which had been obtained legally and easily modified to hold more than 60 bullets per magazine. "I could not fathom how weapons that could cause such destruction and large-scale death could have been obtained legally in this country," Ardern said. She described visits to hospitals where dozens of victims were still recovering. "I struggle to recall any single gunshot wounds," she said. "In every case they spoke of multiple injuries. Multiple debilitating injuries that deemed it impossible for them to recover in days, let alone weeks. They will carry disabilities for a lifetime, and that's before you consider the psychological impact."

So now the Supreme Court is in the process of reverting the US to the Constitution as originally written where only white male property owners were in charge, the "Age of Enlightenment." Male dominance means that the only means of conflict resolution is by war or the threat of war. There is no such thing as peace. Power and strength is what prevents your neighbor from conquering you so why bother to empathize with your neighbor? The end of the Cold War was the biggest opportunity for bringing about a peaceful world. Gorbachev and Reagan hit it off and actually reduced nuclear weapons with the INF treaty. But their initiatives were never extended and capitalized on. Instead the US and the world reverted to hostility with Russia by extending NATO to Russia's border. It was an opportunity to create peace between the western world and Russia, but no a stance of power based containment ensued so that the Reagan-Gorbachev peace initiative ended up being almost entirely worthless with power politics becoming the operative policy as it always has been, and war is the culmination and outworking of power politics.

Off the Top of My Head

And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea. Mark 9:42

by John Lawrence

We're going to need quite a few millstones for all the Republicans (and a couple of Democrats) who won't vote to get rid of assault rifles because they are the facilitators of the next school shooting. Whoever thinks gun ownership is more important than childrens' lives is a sick, sad sack of shit. Nobody except the police needs to own a gun. Forget "sport shooting." Is that more important than a child's life? Is deer hunting or the killing of other wild animals more important than childrens' lives. There is no existential need for hunting or target shooting or any other activities involving guns that at all compares with the prevention of the destruction of childrens' lives and the lives of their families. A lot of these conservative Republicans are Christians, so they say. Well, do they give lip service to the above quote from the Bible? Do they take that literally that, if they support the sale of assault rifles, they should have a millstone hung around their neck and deposited in the depths of the ocean. Probably more than half of them don't even know what a millstone is. Well it was something used to grind wheat into flour back in the day, back in the day when water power was used instead of fossil fuel to process food.

So now in addition to the gun culture in America there is a "school shoot-em-up" culture. These people, like the gunman in Uvalde, post all their upcoming deeds on social media. Yet the authorities, who evidently can follow all the intentions of foreign countries who might do something nefarious, are incapable of following the social media explicit intentions of Americans themselves. The problem isn't with foreign terrorists. It's American terrorists who are the problem. As it turns out, the police in Uvalde weren't capable of following protocol and putting their own lives at risk. But that's what they are sworn to do - put their own lives at risk to save childrens' lives. It's a sad commentary on the courage of the 19 policemen who stood outside the classroom door for an hour while the shooter was free to wreak the destruction of childrens' lives inside the classroom. They were all cowards, plain and simple, especially the "commander" in charge. They deserve to go to jail for their dereliction of duty. None of them wanted to put their own lives at risk to save children.

Other countries have said no to guns after a mass shooting even those that had a gun culture. Well, they don't have one any more. Australia confiscated 650,000 guns. Murders and suicides plummeted. It was one of the largest mandatory gun buyback programs in recent history. So today is Memorial Day. We need to memorialize the lives of fallen children in mass shootings. Teachers don't need to carry guns. School doors just need to be locked at all times. If a teacher hadn't propped open the door through which the shooter entered, presumably, he never would have gained access to the school. In addition the school resource officer, presumably armed, was missing in action. He was supposed to be on campus, and he wasn't. Is he going to be prosecuted for dereliction of duty? There is nothing to memorialize this Memorial Day. The US is in an epidemic of gun violence and the elected leaders don't want to do anything about it because gun ownership, to them, is more important than childrens' lives, than the Grandmas' lives shot at Tops supermarket, There have been more than one mass shooting per day so far this year. Yet America, the lone outlier among nations in this regard, continues on its downward spiral of violence and destruction while it criticizes other nations for their lack of democracy.

Off the Top of My Head

Uvalde: A Good Guy With a Gun Was Not Able to Stop a Bad Guy With a Gun

by John Lawrence

Yesterday Texas Gov. Abbott held a farcical press conference in which he demonstrated he didn't even know how to pronounce Uvalde. About a dozen white men and one white woman stood up there while Abbott blathered about the tragic Uvalde mass shooting involving 20 Mexican-American children and 2 Mexican-American teachers. So it was up to a bunch of white men to cover up what actually happened in a Mexican-American community. First the school district police officer encountered the shooter outside the building. Here was a guy with an unconcealed (obviously) AK-47 on school property. Why didn't the police officer just take out his gun and shoot him right there? What did he do - try to reason with him? Second, the shooter enters through an unlocked door. Why isn't every school door locked? They are here where I live. No one can just walk into a school. You press a button and announce yourself and your business and then and only then does the door get unlocked so you can enter.

Then the loony school superintendent gets to speak. He couldn't imagine such a thing happening. What planet has he been living on? This event was "extraordinary." No, it happens every day. That makes it ordinary. As it turns out, local police officers were on the scene outside the door where the carnage took place for 40 minutes to an hour before someone went in and shot the guy. Their excuse? The door was locked. You mean to tell me they couldn't shoot off the lock? It happens all the time. A locked door shouldn't stop a good guy with a gun. Instead the gunman was free to shoot probably all the kids in the classroom plus the two teachers. Law enforcement was a total failure at the scene of a horrific crime. But Gov. Abbott wanted to talk about mental health and the fact that this guy was pure evil. Yes, let's religify the situation and ignore the fact that law enforcement (the good guys with guns) totally failed at their job. And prayer it seems won't stop the next mass shooting. It seems that God has delegated that task to the human race which is totally failing to do its job. C'est La Vie! And then Abbott was going to get all kinds of mental health down there after the one who really needed it was dead!

It took Beto O'Rourck to confront all these white men, trying to cover up a crime in a Mexican-American community, to confront them about gun control something Abbott had recently loosened up in favor of gun owners even more. This gunman who had just turned 18 got to legally by 2 AK-47s and 350 rounds of ammunition at a gun store at a price of $3500. which made the gun store owner very happy and profitable. It was a good day for him, a bad day for everybody else. But then that's what the lack of gun control is all about - profit for the gun industry and campaign donations to Republicans from their lobbyists. So gun advocates want the teachers armed? What good would that do when armed police officers who were in a position to prevent this crime weren't able to do it or chickened out, one or the other. And why in the hell didn't they simply lock their frickin doors? Thank you Mr. School Superintendant, Hal Harrell, for your supervision.

Off the Top of My Head

Another Day, Another Mass Shooting

by John Lawrence

And all because there are 2 Democratic Senators in Washington and all 50 Republicans who won't vote for comprehensive gun control legislation or voting rights or anything else on Joe Biden's agenda for that matter. Those 2 Democratic Senators, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, won't vote to suspend the filibuster even just on the single issue of gun control. Republicans had no problem suspending the filibuster so Trump could appoint 3 nominees to the Supreme Court which will probably overturn Roe v. Wade. So it's seemingly more important to get rid of a woman's right to choose than it is to get rid of assault rifles in the hands of every unbalanced male in the society. There have been numerous carve-outs of the filibuster to get important legislation passed. But I guess getting gun control legislation passed is just not as important as getting a certain President's nominees on the Supreme Court. In other words childrens' lives are not as important as politics.

So why did hundreds of law enforcement officers and elected officials descend on the school in Uvalde, Texas after the massacre had already taken place and the shooter was dead? It was over for Christ's sake; there was no need for yellow crime scene tape at that point. Why are they wasting their money performing an exhaustive examination of the crime scene? And it's a very lame statement when media spokespeople say, "They will try to figure out a motive." Who gives a fuck about the motive? How many motives have they never figured out so why do they keep talking about a motive. That guy will never come back on the air and say, "Remember that school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Well they've finally figured out a motive and here it is ..." All the commentary in the aftermath is so lame. The only sane response is to hold elected officials' feet to the fire to get rid of assault rifles and other guns whose only purpose is to kill people.

Well, here is my prediction for the future: another mass shooting will occur within a couple of days. And then another and then another. And the American elected officials will do nothing about it. Hundreds of law enforcement people, FBI agents and media people will descend on the place after the fact. They were powerless to to do anything to prevent the mass shooting in the first place, but they will conduct an exhaustive examination of the crime scene. It's all entirely futile and insane. In fact American gun control is an oxymoronic exercise in futile insanity. The Second Amendment was never intended by the Founders to give unlimited rights to individual gun owners. When they talked about "a well regulated Militia" they were talking about the 18th century equivalent of the National Guard, which was more or less a voluntary organization sort of like a volunteer fire department. And yet people talk about the Second Amendment with reverence like it's a bulwark of freedom or something. It's not. It's the worst piece of shit ever perpetrated on any national society. No other nation has the equivalent of it. Most nations have sane gun control laws.

There have been more than one mass shootings per day in this Land of the Free in this year of our Lord 2022. And yet gun manufacturer's profits are more important than childrens' lives. Some 70% of Americans want gun control, but the American undemocracy is more concerned about filibuster rights and campaign donations than protecting childrens' lives. The way the Constitution has been interpreted in regards to the Second Amendment is sick. It's a manifestation of a sick society. For all intents and purposes, the Republican Senators' attitude is that murdered school children is the price we have to pay for honoring the Second Amendment.

Off the Top of My Head

The Solution to Gun Violence in America

by John Lawrence

The government should simply buy out the gun industry. According to Fortune Business Insights: "The global guns and accessories market size was $6.14 billion in 2019 and is projected to reach $9.33 billion by 2027." So for just $10 billion or so, the US government could buy out the gun industry and shut it down except for those guns that are needed by police and the military. Without lobbying and campaign donations to Republican Congressmen, political support for guns would quickly dry up, and gun sales could be carefully controlled by the government. Throw in another $10 billion to buy back guns that are already on the street, and for a measly $20 billion the government could buy up the gun industry and get guns off the street. Or a billionaire could do it. With the government spending trillions of dollars on an annual basis, $20 billion is peanuts in order to solve the gun violence epidemic in America. It would also be peanuts for a consortium of billionaires. Bill Gates is an advocate for global health and eliminating global disease. He could singlehandedly eliminate this one.

Other countries are capable of controlling the sale, distribution and licensing of guns in rational manners. Only in the US is there a literal fury about the right to own a gun as if it were a sine qua non more precious than food or water. There have been 47 mass murders in the last month, and it will only be getting worse without control of gun distribution. Why not replace the right to gun ownership by the right to health care and the right to adequate housing? We have the world's worst and most expensive health care system with the pharmaceutical industry along with the car industry practically supporting network television with ads. It would be better to eliminate pharmaceutical ads like they used to be disallowed before Republicans made them legal. These ads have been generating a nation of hypochondriacs. Sickness is becoming a booming entrepreneurial industry. Better to encourage the American population to have more healthy lifestyles.

Sad to say but the US is becoming a second rate nation incapable of maintaining public order. Liberty has gotten out of hand. There can be too much of anything, and Republicans have doubled down on the Second Amendment despite mass violence which is draining the life and security out of the American people. No one is safe and secure any more as long as mentally disturbed people have the right to buy guns. Republican demands for liberty are also affecting the pandemic response as they demand that Americans go about their business in any way they freely choose despite the best advice from responsible experts on pandemics. Rights should be balanced with responsibilities but in the US there are no responsibilities expected of citizens. Compulsory voting, also called mandatory voting, is the requirement in some countries that eligible citizens register and vote in elections. Penalties might be imposed on those who fail to do so without a valid reason. According to the CIA World Factbook, 21 countries, including 10 Latin American countries, officially had compulsory voting as of December 2017. Instead the US is doing its best to restrict voting. It is a country getting out of whack with the rest of the world yet pretending it has the right to control the world. Even the vaunted US dollar is losing ground as other countries find workarounds to avoid US sanctions.

Compulsory public service should be required as an alternative to military service. This could be in return for free public education. The US has been turned into an exploiter's dream where everything must be paid for or people have to go into debt or people have to do without the necessities of life if they can't pay. Money talks and shit walks. Instead of a rational public order, we get sold a bill of goods about the need for a bloated military and the right to own guns when the biggest threat to the security of American lives is domestic terrorism and random nuts with guns. In short unless some things are changed, America will lose whatever moral authority it ever had. This is a fast track to second ratedness and moral bankruptcy.

Off the Top of My Head

Sadness for a Good Man Leaving After a Life Well Lived Contrasted With the Sadness for Victims of Mass Murders Gone Before Their Time

by John Lawrence

Prince Philip lived a good, successful and honorable life to the age of 99. It is sad to see him go, but that is tempered by the nobility of his life and the fact that we all have to go at some time. On the other hand, the US is in the throes of mass murders on a daily basis killing people senselessly before their time on earth was up. Is there nostalgia for a monarchy to replace the chaos that the descendants of the rebels against the British monarchy have created? Did the emphasis on liberty and the Second Amendment make this inevitable? Now we have politicians whose sole purpose in life is to fund raise off the chaos that they themselves have created. The First and Second Amendments are killing us. That includes the "peaceful protests" that turn into rioting and looting when the sum goes down. God save the queen.

The US is alone in the civilized world with an unrestricted right to gun ownership. The only other countries which have a right to bear arms written into their Constitution are Mexico and Guatemala, Six other countries used to have a constitutional right to bear arms, but they've since repealed those laws. The US should do the same. The US is the only country with a right to keep and bear arms with no constitutional restrictions. Americans own nearly half of all the civilian-owned guns in the world, and on a per capita basis, the US has far more guns than any other nation.

Just south of the US border, the Mexican government has a strict hold over civilian gun ownership. Although Mexicans have a right to buy a gun, bureaucratic hurdles, long delays, and narrow restrictions make it extremely difficult to do so. Article 10 of the 1857 Mexican Constitution guaranteed that "every man has the right to keep and to carry arms for his security and legitimate defense." But 60 years later in 1917, lawmakers amended it following Mexico's bloody revolution. During the rewriting of the constitution, the government placed more severe restrictions on the right to buy guns. The law precluded citizens from buying firearms "reserved for use by the military" and forbid them from carrying "arms within inhabited places without complying with police regulations." Today, Mexicans still have a right to buy guns, but they must contend with a vague federal law that determines "the cases, conditions, requirements, and places in which the carrying of arms will be authorized."

In Guatemala individuals who want to purchase a gun for private security purposes need approval from the government. They are also limited in how much ammunition they can own, and they must re-apply and re-qualify for their firearm licenses every one to three years, according to GunPolicy.org. A license also requires proof that the applicant has a clean police record, does not suffer from mental illness, and has not deserted the army or police. Although Guatemalans are not allowed to own fully automatic weapons, they are allowed to buy semi-automatic weapons, handguns, rifles, and shotguns if they obtain a permit. Still, that can be difficult.

Although Mexico and Guatemala both have a constitutional right to bear arms, the US is in a league of its own, because it is the only country without any restrictions on gun ownership in its Constitution. The US makes up 4.4 percent of the world’s population but has almost half of the civilian-owned guns around the world. The horror show of mass violence will continue until there is gun control at the Federal level or gun restrictions are written into the Constitution. The latter is probably not possible. The Second Amendment to the Constitution in and of itself is probably enough to doom the US to the fate of a second class nation or worse. In the People's Republic of China, access by the general public to firearms is subject to some of the strictest control measures in the world. With the exception of individuals with hunting permits and some ethnic minorities, civilian firearm ownership is restricted to non-individual entities. China is surging ahead of the US economically and doesn't have to deal on a daily basis with the spectacle of mass violence committed by its citizens on other citizens. As Joe Biden said, mass murders are a national embarrassment.

The conclusion is that most of the world's nations are much more sensible about gun control. The US is the outlier, and it's turning the US into a police state not because police own all the weapons but because the citizens own so many of them and are using them on fellow citizens with increasing frequency. This is having a destabilizing effect on the whole citizenry because no one knows who may be next to suffer a random act of mass violence. Lenin once famously remarked that businessmen would happily sell for a profit the rope that would later be used to hang them. American businessmen who sell guns and ammunition are now happily selling American citizens the guns with which on a daily basis they are slaughtering each other senselessly and for no reason at all. The US is degenerating into a nation dragging itself down and destabilizing itself into a black hole that seemingly it can't recover from.

Off the Top of My Head

The Trouble With Belief Systems

by John Lawrence, March 28, 2021

Belief systems lead to cults. A cult can be defined as a group of people who all fervently believe the same things although there is no objective proof for any of their beliefs. People who believe Trump won the election are members of a cult. People who believe their religion is the only correct and true religion and everyone who does not accept their belief system is going to Hell are members of a cult. A lot of wars have been fought because members of one cult dehumanized members of another cult. The European wars of the 16th century were fought because Catholics and Protestants could not accept that there were people who did not have the same cult beliefs as they did. The 30 years war was a war between Protestants and Catholics. The Crusades were wars between Christians and Muslims. People who hold belief systems fervently cannot accept the fact that there are other people in the world who don't hold their same belief system.

There are some things that are unknowable, at least at this point in time, and they form fertile ground for some one or one to develop a belief system around. Charlatans and manipulators realize that there is money to be made by claiming to assuage peoples' anxieties. One of the biggest unknowables is what happens to us after we die. Another is is there a God or, if there is, is He a judgmental or a loving God? The Founding Fathers of the US, cognizant of the European wars of religion, were mainly Deists. They believed that God created the universe, but was not involved with it after that, the so-called "watchmaker God." Founders who fall into the category of Christian Deists include Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was more influenced by the reason-centred Enlightenment than either Adams or Washington. Jefferson also created his own version of the Bible. This Bible was focused only on Jesus, but none of his mystical works. It didn’t include major scenes like the resurrection or ascension to heaven, or miracles like turning water into wine or walking on water. Instead, Jefferson’s Bible focused on Jesus as a man of morals, a teacher whose truths were expressed without the help of miracles or the supernatural powers of God.

Because of our existential anxiety caused by not knowing what's going to happen to us after death or even in this life, belief systems have grown up and attracted adherents. Fervent belief systems are really cults as they exclude and dehumanize people with alternative beliefs. There is no objective proof, but people are willing to kill those who aren't members of their cult. This is from Britannica:

"Deists argued that human experience and rationality—rather than religious dogma and mystery—determine the validity of human beliefs. In his widely read The Age of Reason, Thomas Paine, the principal American exponent of Deism, called Christianity “a fable.” Paine, the protégé of Benjamin Franklin, denied “that the Almighty ever did communicate anything to man, by…speech,…language, or…vision.” Postulating a distant deity whom he called “Nature’s God” (a term also used in the Declaration of Independence), Paine declared in a “profession of faith”: I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and in endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.''"

The problem with the Trump "true believers" is that they have been sold a bill of goods by those who shamelessly have made money off of feeding this cult a bunch of lies. These people have been conditioned by means of their religion to have a certain set of beliefs which they are willing to fight over. These beliefs coincide with a way of life predicated on an American version of history and an American narrative in which America is a shining city on a hill and a beacon of veracity and truth to the rest of the world. They believe in an America also which is fundamentally white like it's always been in their minds, but that's not the reality any more. American history is not all that noble. Indians were robbed of their lands and Africans were brought here and used as slaves. After they were freed, supposedly, Jim Crow laws made sure that they remained second class citizens. So there is  clash of belief systems. There are those who think the great and noble sentiments expressed by our Founding Fathers should not apply to everyone equally and those who point out the hypocrisy of not doing so.

The problem really is with belief systems which turn into cults. The way forward is really the one expressed by Rodney King: "Can't we all just get along?" With deference to Mission Impossible: your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to make the world a better place for this and future generations without regard to belief systems or ideology. Your vaunted way of life, as perceived to have existed in the past, is irrelevant.

Off the Top of My Head

The Second Amendment Doesn't Preclude Strict Licensing Requirements for Guns

by John Lawrence, March 24, 2020

The "right to keep and bear arms" should be conditioned on strict licensing requirements just as the right to drive an automobile is. Licensing and training in the proper use of firearms should come before an individual is allowed to own one. An individual who passes a training course in the use of a particular firearm would then be authorized to own and bear just that firearm. The type of firearms that can be owned should be severely restricted which would not infringe on the Second Amendment which doesn't say that an individual has a right to own and bear any or all types of firearms. The type of firearms available should be just those necessary for hunting or self defense. Even animals should have a right not to be slaughtered by an assault rifle. Military style assault weapons should be banned altogether, and a buy back program for guns of all types should be implemented at the Federal level. Not everyone is allowed to drive an automobile. By the same token not everyone should be allowed to own or possess a gun.

I'm also in favor of expedited justice for mass murderers caught in the act like the Boulder killer. Why should they be housed, fed and kept alive for years while the wheels of justice slowly grind away and countless lawyers and judges not to mention media pundits make money off of the tragedy. They should be promptly shot within a few days using the same means by which they took the lives of others. They should not be allowed to become notorious on social media. Nothing that has been learned from questioning these murderers about their motives has ever become relevant or information that can be used to prevent such crimes in the future, and any relevant information can be found out after their deaths. Why should FBI and police resources be wasted on finding out stuff that hasn't prevented mass murders from continuing? We already know what is obvious and that is that most of them are mentally ill or have a political agenda.

I wrote on this blog in January 2020:

It seems like the conclusion of every news report about another senseless killing. Why are the police even figuring? It won't do anything to prevent another senseless killing. If only we could figure out a motive, they think, it would prevent another gun nut with an arsenal from going berserk? Or a mentally ill person from gunning down innocents? Basically it comes down to one thing: we live in a sick society, a society which glamorizes guns and criminal activities. While we spend a trillion dollars a year fighting foreign terrorism, we spent nothing on fighting domestic terrorism. Domestic terrorists have been responsible for more American deaths than foreign terrorists in recent years.

At the root of the problem is the proliferation of guns, guns that are accessible to the average nutcase in his [and it's usually his, hmmm] quest to prove something to himself or society or to gain his 15 minutes of fame in an otherwise dull, uneventful and uninteresting life devoid of any constructive activity, a life that needs an act of violence in order to stand out from the crowd, a life fueled by a fantasy life filled with violence made to seem normal by movies, TV and video games.

While the FBI claims to have stepped up its efforts to combat domestic terrorism attacks in recent years and months, evidence suggests that these efforts are falling short. The FBI’s most recent hate crimes report indicates that while hate crimes dipped slightly in 2018, violent hate crimes reached a 16-year high. The US is not spending its money where it needs to to create a more sane and violence free society. Many of the perpetrators have come out of the military where violence is the norm. Spending less money on military activities and more to end poverty and combat mental illness might help to end the senseless violence that the US is in the grip of. Especially in schools and places of worship, where people are most vulnerable, the perpetrators, knowing this, step up their targeting opportunities.

But even more important is the elimination of guns from our society, especially high power, military style guns. They should be outlawed as well as large capacity ammunition magazines. There will still be nuts around attempting to hurt or kill other people, but if these guns were eliminated, they would just not be able to do as much damage. Reducing the size of our military and spending the money on more peaceful pursuits would also help to set a different tone in society than the militaristic one being set now.

Off the Top of My Head

Was the Insurrection a Blessing in Disguise?

by John Lawrence, January 21, 2021

What could have been a horrible tragedy ended up being just a horrible spectacle. But what if, instead of showing up January 6, the mob showed up January 20 catching security off guard the way they did at the Capitol?  As it turned out, Congress persons, in a show of defiance, went ahead with their business on the same day, and the inauguration went off without a hitch restoring hope and confidence in government. Result: insurrection defeated with very little loss of blood. The second thing is that now domestic terrorists and white supremacists are on the FBI's radar the way they never were before.Those who broke into the Capitol will be rooted out and sent to jail. Others will be closely watched. I never thought I'd be singing the praises of the FBI, but I'm so happy that they, the Intelligence agencies and the American people are finally aware of the real threats to America and not just imagined ones.

The one possible shred of a rationale that the election was stolen from Trump is that election laws were changed—legally—by the states to allow more mail-in balloting. This was motivated by a need to save people from congregating due to the coronavirus. The net effect was that more people, especially poor working people, got to vote than ever before. This probably made the difference in who won, but in a democratic society ideally every legally qualified voter should be able to vote. Republicans have always used voter suppression techniques to prevent this from happening. Republican operative Paul Weyrich famously said, "I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down." Well, in this election, unfortunately for Trump, pretty close to a majority of people actually voted. Now Republicans will be doing everything in their power to roll back those election laws so that mail-in voting will not be available in the next election. Democrats need to work very hard to make sure that mail-in voting stays in place permanently and even is expanded. This will insure that the demographic change that favors Democrats will be reflected in the electorate.

I thought that, since the Democrats had majorities in both Houses of Congress, getting legislation passed and signed into law would be a breeze. The only hang-up would be the filibuster, but the filibuster can be nullified by a simple majority vote. Easy peasy. Well, not so fast. There are a couple of conservative Democrats, the most notorious of which is Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia. He has already said he won't vote to suspend the filibuster rule. This leaves budget reconciliation as the only way to get a bill passed by majority rule in the Senate. This will probably be used for the COVID relief bill which will probably pass. It's unclear if it can be used a second time, and, if it were, would Manchin vote with the Democrats? Even then budget reconciliation cannot be used for non budgetary issues.  What it boils down to is that this one man, Joe Manchin, has extraordinary control over the legislative process. Republicans will probably be united in the Senate and be as obstructionist to Democratic initiatives as they were during the Obama administration.

Meanwhile, the FBI is rounding up the mob that violated the Capitol. I want every one of them that went beyond the police barrier, even if they didn't go into the Capitol, rounded up and brought to justice. Some of them are so stupid like one real estate agent from Dallas who even advertised her business live on social media as she was entering the Capitol! Shaman Qanon begged Trump for a pardon. Trump could have blanket pardoned all of them if he had wanted to. After all they attacked the Capitol in Trump's name and at his urging. But when all was said and done, Trump abandoned them to their own fates, something they can ponder while spending 20 years in jail. Something else - I want the FBI to track down everyone who calls or emails someone with a death threat. It seems that a lot of this is happening, and I want the FBI to track down and prosecute all these bozos too. If it takes a Federal law to make this legally all encompassing, then one should be enacted.

Off the Top of My Head

Back From the Brink: You Only Get One Bite of the Apple

by John Lawrence, January13, 2021

Two things stand out: 1) how little bloodshed there was compared to the potential; 2) how much the rioters incriminated themselves. And they will pay the price for their little escapade. The extremest extremists will go to jail for a long time. They have already identified hundreds of them from the voluminous video evidence as they paraded themselves in front of tons of cameras. Stealth was not their strong suit. This was probably the most inept coup attempt in history, THANK GOD! The "USA. USA" people lost their bid to cause a revolution in the name of Trump and Congress won. Trump was the biggest loser. LOSER. LOSER. Trump, don't let the White House door bang you in the ass on the way out. Now even Republicans are up in arms so to speak because what Trump has really done is to destroy the Republican party. It will never be the same again. It might even bifurcate or disintegrate.

Trump will be silenced, neutered, taken off social media, disgraced, prosecuted and more. He brought disgrace to the USA long before he was impeached for the second time by withdrawing from and insulting our allies, refusing to cooperate with other nations of good will, cozying up to dictators and bullying those nations he decided he needed to use as enemies. Now the Republican rats are leaving the sinking Trump ship. They realize that he has destroyed the Republican party, but the Republican party has also destroyed itself long before Trump became President. They made a deal with the devil by embracing white supremicists because they needed a base, and the upper 1% wasn't big enough in terms of numbers. They went shopping for a base and they found latter day Ku Klux Klan descendents. Their grandpappies said, "Segregation Now. Segregation Tomorrah. Segragation Fawevah!" Later generations learned their lessons well, and thy found a home in the Republican party.

Proud Boys stand up and sit down. How does 20 years in an orange jump suit sound to you? This situation, as horrible as it was, as a spectacle and a possible disaster for Congress persons, staff, janitors, family members and others inside the Capitol building is also characterized by the gargantuan ineptness of the people who attempted to take it over. In the final analysis they did little more than incriminate themselves and put these domestic terrorists on the FBI's shit list. DOJ and the National Guard are on high alert. Now lawmakers in Michigan and elsewhere need to roll back the open carry laws. It's unconscionable that these assholes are currently able to bring their AR-15s into state Capitols. If you don't want an armed revolution in this country, guns need to be taken out of the hands of these domestic terrorists and white supremacists. Despite the Second Amendment, felons are forbidden to buy or own guns. That should be the fate of all the gun loving folks who invaded the Capitol of the US. No guns, boys. Sorry. your toys are being taken away from you. Maybe you can find Jesus in the penitentiary and change your thought processes. They need to be reprogrammed. Maybe they will even make friends with a black person when they find themselves in similar situations as they serve 20 years to life ... together! How ironic. Those who chanted "Lock her up" are themselves going to be locked up for many years.

The South's attempt at a second Civil War has failed abysmally. The nation's military assets are on high alert. Domestic terrorists will be on the no-fly list. They'll end up on the no everything list or in other words the shit list. Their favorite social media sites for conspiring together have been and will be taken away from them. Advertisers are withdrawing their funding for right wing media outlets. Threatening phone calls will be traced, and those jackasses will be thrown in jail. Meanwhile, the rest of the country will get to work with a massive bailout, defeating the real enemy - COVID - and putting people to work at good paying jobs building green infrastructure. Life will eventually be good again. Then we can deal with the real threats facing us - global warming, poverty and pandemics, not only in the US but everywhere on earth because in the final analysis we really are all in this together.

The FBI or Congress Should Be Considering FREEZING Trump’s $250 Million in Donations He Could Use Privately

by Frank Thomas

In these times of rampaging riot and death threats by the conservative right radicals, it is understandably quite inopportune to consider a serious question that comes to mind – but question that at least should be raised now.

The simple question is: Is it possible – given Trump’s contribution to the horrendous riot, deaths and destruction emanating from the insurrection attack on our nation’s Capital – to FREEZE the massive donations amounting to $250 million received by Trump recently and rising on every day now! It’s possible he cleverly conned or misled donors for these monies.

Experts say Trump can use the millions donated for personal costs. But, he has created multi-millions of costs for the U.S. government, ^i.e. taxpayers, in his dominant role of inciting the mad mob storming of thousands of Republicans into the D.C. Capital building – the symbolic citadel of our democracy.

Shouldn’t the donated $millions go against the giganticmillions of U.S. government (taxpayer) costs stemming from his actions? I have not heard yet any raising of this idea on CNN or other media. This is because all attention is rightly being directed to holding Trump accountable through impeachment. Greatly speeding up vaccinations, substantially increasing the aid to people and small enterprises, and sharply increasing jobs. I think this can be done while working on the impeachment process, or postponing it, or taking some other strong joint action against Trump.

The urgent need is to prevent this mentally deranged man from ever running again for the presidential office and from his setting a precedent he did no criminal or constitutional wrong … which future insurrectionists can exploit.

Frank Thomas, The Netherlands, January 12, 2021

Accountability for the Attempted Coup

by Robert Reich

Sunday, January 10, 2021

Call me old-fashioned, but when the president of the United States encourages armed insurgents to breach the Capitol and threaten the physical safety of Congress, in order to remain in power, I call it an attempted coup.

Last week’ rampage left five dead, including a Capitol Hill police officer who was injured when he tangled with the pro-Trump mob. We’re fortunate the carnage wasn’t greater.

That the attempted coup failed shouldn’t blind us to its significance or the stain it has left on America. Nor to the importance of holding those responsible fully accountable.

Trump’s culpability is beyond dispute. “There’s no question the president formed the mob, the president incited the mob, the president addressed the mob. He lit the flame,” said Rep. Elizabeth Cheney, the third-highest ranking Republican in the House.

He should be impeached, convicted, and removed from office – immediately.  

To let the clock run out on his presidency and allow Trump to seek the presidency again would signal that attempted coups are part of the American system. If Senate Republicans can install a new Supreme Court justice in eight days, Trump can be removed from office within ten.

He should then be arrested and tried for inciting violence and sedition (along with Trump Jr. and Rudy “trial-by-combat” Giuliani).

Those who attacked the Capitol should also be prosecuted. They have no First Amendment right to try to overthrow the U.S. government.

Trump’s accomplices on Capitol Hill, most notably Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, should be forced to resign. Knowing Trump’s allegations of voting fraud were false, Cruz and Hawley nonetheless led an attempt to exclude Biden electors, even after the storming of the Capitol.

The United States Constitution says that “no Person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress” who “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against" the Constitution, “or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.“

Both Cruz and Hawley are eyeing runs for the presidency in 2024. They should be barred from running.

Other abettors are now trying to distance themselves, but their conversions come too late.

Senator Lindsey Graham now says Trump must “understand that his actions were the problem, not the solution,” and criticizes the White House for making “accusations that cannot be proven.”

Graham had been one of Trump’s key attack dogs, even bullying state election officials to change voting tallies. If Graham is not forced to resign, he should at least be censured and stripped of his ranking membership on the Senate Judiciary Committee.  

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Vice President Michael Pence finally broke with Trump, but only after remaining mute as Trump lied and bullied his way through the last eight weeks, thereby signaling agreement with his preposterous claims.

McConnell should also resign or be censured and stripped of committee assignments. Pence should be barred from any future public office.

Some administration officials have already resigned in response to the attempted coup. Transportation secretary Elaine Chao said it was “entirely avoidable,” and education secretary Betsy DeVos told Trump there was “no mistake the impact your rhetoric had.” Other Trumpers are reportedly jumping ship, too.

Yet before Wednesday most of them defended Trump’s antics, lavished him with praise, and willingly did his dirty work. Their complicity should forever haunt their reputations and consciences.

Other accessories are Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, and Sundar Pichai,CEO of Alphabet, YouTube’s parent company.

For four years, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube have functioned as Trump’s megaphones, amplifying his every lie and rant. When pressured to remove Trump’s fabrications about the election, they labeled them “disputed.”  

Twitter has now permanently suspended Trump, preventing him from sending messages to his more than 88 million followers “due to the risk of further incitement for violence.” Facebook has banned him indefinitely. YouTube should be next.

But why did it take an attempted coup for them to act?

Many business leaders who are now denouncing the violence enthusiastically bankrolled Trump’s re-election campaign, knowing full well who he was and what he was capable of doing. And they’ve had no qualms about advertising on his largest megaphones, including Fox News. All are complicit because they knew Trump would stop at nothing.

Fox News’s mendacious hosts and producers have no excuse. After repeatedly telling Trump supporters the election was stolen, they’re now saying the attempted coup was “understandable” because Trump supporters believed the election was stolen. Morally, if not legally, they share responsibility for this travesty.

All are all part of the ecosystem that led to Trump’s sedition. That ecosystem is still in place.

Those who say we should “look forward” to a new administration and forget or dismiss what occurred last week are delusional. Unless all who participated in or abetted the attempted overthrow of the United States government are held accountable, it will happen again. Next time it may succeed.

Fools Rush In: Trump, Pardons and the Tyrant’s Cult

January 11, 2021 from Counterpunch

by Joshua Frank

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Trump insurrectionists laying siege to the Capitol building – January 6, 2021. (Tyler Merbler, CC BY 2.0)

There is little doubt among readers of this online magazine that Donald Trump, like all U.S. presidents before him, is a criminal. His grotesqueness and belligerence, however, has elevated Trump to Nixonian heights. With Bugsy Siegel’s mob swagger and the ponzi-salesmanship of Bernie Madoff, Trump, the petty grifter, is unlike almost any official we’ve witnessed in public life.

In his 1979 book, the Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations, social critic and historian Christopher Lasch all but predicted the dawn of Trumpian politics, writing:

“…the prevailing obsession with celebrity and a determination to achieve it even at the cost of rational self-interest and personal safety. The narcissist divides society into two groups: the rich, great, and famous on the one hand, and the common herd on the other … The narcissist admires and identifies himself with ‘winners’ out of his fear of being labeled a loser. … his admiration often turns to hatred if the object of his attachment does something to remind him of his own insignificance.”

The only point that Lasch perhaps missed in his pioneering work is the cultish atmosphere a specimen like Donald Trump is able to cultivate and exploit for his own personal and political gains. It’s this innate narcissism, emboldened by a coterie of abiding fools circling round him, that led to the invasion of the Capitol. His racist minions, not too unlike the conditioned and dutiful helter-skeltering Manson Girls, were more than willing to sacrifice their personal safety for what they believed was the greater good — in this case, a battle against the “injustice” Trump had faced at the hands of some mysterious electoral fraud. The sinister enemies were everywhere. The media. Mitch McConnell. Nancy Pelosi. The Georgia Secretary of State and even that smarmy Mike Pence. The lone truth-teller was Trump, the great defender of the supremacy of white America, and to his energetic fans, the only man able to save our fragile and dying Republic from the brink of collapse.

Understanding Trump as a cult leader is the only way to truly appreciate the power he wields and the idiocy he manifests. Few others could call upon their legions to storm government buildings with the dashing hope their efforts would make a difference, overturning what they falsely believed was a rigged election. No longer did police lives matter to these twisted Patriots. No longer did America’s legal system matter, which shot down one election lawsuit after another. No longer did common sense matter, if the Capitol stormers had any to begin with. Only their President mattered. Only fulfilling his delusional fantasies mattered, and this was worth risking imprisonment and even death for. While the refrain may have been “Make America Great Again”, the real mantra echoing through Washington last Wednesday was “Keep Trump President.” He had not, after all, lost, according to them. The multiple logics here were murky at best, but the essence of their rhetoric was not.

As an ice-cold Trump stood at his podium, cold air blowing against his puffy, orange cheeks, he bellowed nonsense to the assemblage below, which was largely made up of white men and women clasping red Trump flags and banners. Like so many of his election trail spectacles, his speech was long-winded, meandering, and bellicose. The crowd screamed “Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!” At the end, he called on the riled-up crowd to parade with him to the Capitol building where Congress was meeting to certify Biden’s electoral victory. They would finally be heard. There would finally be justice.

“…we fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore … So we are going to–we are going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we are going to the Capitol, and we are going to try and give–the Democrats are hopeless, they are never voting for anything, not even one vote but we are going to try–give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don’t need any of our help, we’re try–going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country. So let’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.”

We all know what transpired next. The broken windows. The stolen podium. The “QAnon Shaman” with his horns and fur hat. A self-proclaimed white nationalist kicking back at Pelosi’s desk. The woman, shot and killed by police as her fellow rioters violently attempted to break down a barricaded door. One cop was killed. It was chaos as numerous fascist groups converged for action. Trump, of course, did not march with his cult down Pennsylvania Avenue that afternoon. He never planned to. Instead, he stayed back, stoically watching the scene unfold on television screens safely under a white tent as Laura Branigan’s “Gloria” blared in the background. Everyone was packed in, smiling. Dancing. Celebrating. Maskless. Drunk on Trump madness.

Had the rioters had black or brown skin, armed or not, they would surely have been shot on the spot as they climbed walls and ransacked the congressional building. Instead, a few of Trump’s intruders were greeted by gleeful officers while hordes of off-duty cops hung out in the crowd. The breach was easy for the mob, as security forces holding the line futilely fired pepper spray. Their efforts failed miserably. They were outnumbered and ill-prepared. Why weren’t they ready for what so many knew was coming? Because these were wholesome white goons and not black rights activists? During last summer’s BLM protests in DC, there were far more stormtroopers present, an overwhelming show of force. The lack of police presence on January 9 appeared intentional.

As more photos are corroborated and verified, it’s becoming evident that a group of these fascist thugs, some with military backgrounds, had something even more sinister planned than smearing their feces on the walls of power. They planted pipe bombs and had a truck full of weapons at the ready. One instigator, as Ronan Farrow reported for The New Yorker, decked in full military garb and a handful of zip ties, was Air Force Academy graduate and retired Lt. Colonel. Ret. Larry Brock, a decorated combat veteran from Texas. He and his fellow Confederate flag-waving terrorists were out for blood. As the raid transpired, Trump, the pseudo-conductor, gleefully responded that he “loved” them and that they were “very special” but they could go home now. The National Guard, after Trump initially resisted, was finally called in. As of this writing, only 82 have been arrested for breaking into the Capitol. By comparison, DC cops arrested five times that number during last summer’s BLM protests.

There is little doubt, legal or otherwise, that Trump fomented this haphazard insurrection. While some of the planning was orchestrated in the darker corners of the web, Trump’s Twitter account acted as ground zero for the disorder. After months of claiming, falsely and without evidence, that the election was stolen, he tweeted on December 19, “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th.” This was one of several tweets he blasted out supporting the action. “Be there, will be wild!”

His cult, from the Proud Boys to QAnon, latched on quickly, and Pro-Trump forums across the web were exuberant about their “daddy’s” call (yes, some called him “daddy”) for an uprising against Congress. It was all out in the open. They were planning to be armed. They were planning to “arrest” members of Congress. They said Trump’s Tweet was a “marching order” and prepared themselves to shoot counter-protestors.

While the FBI ignored the threats, Twitter and other social media giants took note. Following the three-hour takeover, Facebook and Instagram blocked Trump. Twitter placed his account in jail for 12 hours, only to later ban him altogether. By the weekend, Twitter began to scrub those they deemed QAnon or promoters and supporters of Trump’s call for insurrection. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group that works to defend civil liberties in the digital world, was swift to respond:

“The decisions by Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and others to suspend and/or block President Trump’s communications via their platforms is a simple exercise of their rights, under the First Amendment and Section 230, to curate their sites. We support those rights. Nevertheless, we are always concerned when platforms take on the role of censors, which is why we continue to call on them to apply a human rights framework to those decisions.”

This social media blockade is the first real punishment Trump has faced for his actions since the failed impeachment attempt of last year. Could he receive more? The 25th Amendment is not going to be invoked and impeachment proceedings are facing hurdles. Once Trump vacates the White House he may be facing numerous charges in New York for financial crimes and even election finance fraud for his various payments to Stormy Daniels. But will he ever be brought to justice for inciting this ugly white nationalist riot? It’s possible. The New York Times reports the DOJ is open to pursuing charges. Others believe the charges could stick. “Based on everything I saw my 30 years as a federal prosecutor, it sure looks like there’s enough to charge him with inciting a riot,” says former Assistant U.S. Attorney Glenn Kirschner.

Of course, any criminal case against Trump would not transpire until he leaves office on January 20. But what of a self-pardon? There’s plenty of talk of Trump not only pardoning those around him who have yet to be accused of a crime (Ivanka, Rudy, Jared, etc.) but of pardoning himself as well. Such a pardon, however, may or may not hold up in court. In a 1974 opinion by the Dept. of Justice, written in response to Nixon’s dealings with Watergate and the potential for his own self-pardon, the DOJ responded that, “Under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case, the President cannot pardon himself.”

For such a self-pardon to be litigated, Trump would first have to be charged. Such an indictment is no guarantee but still possible. On Friday, a DC City official, who was not authorized to speak on the matter, told me the City was discussing a charge against Trump for the mob disorder. On Sunday it was confirmed by Washington DC District Attorney, Michael R. Sherwin, who said he will be going after all those involved, including any elected officials. However, any prosecution in DC falls under federal jurisdiction. So any pardon challenge would go into effect and likely make its way to the Supreme Court, where Trump-leaning appointees now stack the bench.

Though it may be only a matter of days, we have a long road to traverse before we reach the end of this four-year-long dumpster fire. Already, scores of Trump’s acolytes are planning a violent confrontation on Inauguration Day and these fascists are more armed and crazier than ever. As Trump, the pathological narcissist that he is, finally loses grip on power, his significance will wane and breed further resentment in this sick and sinister faction of white America, energized by their vile settler mentality that has existed since these lands were first stolen from indigenous nations. It may take years before this latest chapter of our country’s history finally comes to a close, if it ever shuts completely. In the interim, there will be more sporadic madness and more bloodshed, until the day the Trump cult, outnumbered and on the ropes, has nothing tangible to fight for, no leader, no mythical wrong that can be righted. Hopefully, Trump’s white nationalist goons will be left with only a faint memory of their childish insurgency, shining dully like the fool’s gold they’ve been sold.

---

JOSHUA FRANK is managing editor of CounterPunch. His most recent book, co-authored with Jeffrey St. Clair, is Big Heat: Earth on the Brink. He can be reached at joshua@counterpunch.org. You can troll him on Twitter @joshua__frank.

Off the Top of My Head

Congressional Republicans That Supported Insurrection Should Be Censured

by John Lawrence, January 10, 2021

Although it takes a two thirds majority to expel someone from the House or Senate, it only takes a majority to censure. Therefore, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Kevin McCarthy at the very least should be censured. They will lose their committee chairs and be publicly shamed because the politician must stand before his peers to listen to the censure resolution. Meanwhile, Trump should be impeached in the House, but there should be no trial in the Senate because that would be a media circus of which Trump would be the star, and this would steal Joe Biden's thunder just as he assumes the office of President of the United States. The page needs to be turned and Trump should be blacklisted from every form of media exposure. Twitter, Facebook and others have already banned him for life which is the best thing that could have happened. Right wing app Parler has been deplatformed. Rudy Giuliani and Don Junior need to be prosecuted for inciting to riot for the words they spoke at Trump's Save America rally that preceded the insurrection. "Trial by combat"? Indeed. Long story short, Trump should be denied any media exposure whatsoever. The focus should be on Joe Biden's Presidency and the reckonings of those that have committed prosecutorial crimes needs to be done offstage, so to speak.

We need a breath of fresh air come January 20 while in the background those who have committed crimes connected with the insurrection need to be brought to justice. Every one of the rioters need to serve jail time or be fined - even those who crossed the barriers but did not go inside the Capitol. Those who went inside the Capitol need to be dealt more severe penalties. None of these rioters should be left off the hook. The myth that these assholes are Patriots needs to be dispelled. The only ones who are innocent in my opinion are those who didn't cross the line that the barriers represented. I'm sure that over time they all will be penalized in one form or other because there is so much video and social media evidence including their own bragging on social media. The FBI has their work cut out for them. In the meantime security needs to be ramped up at state Capitals all across the country, and gun laws need to be augmented and strengthened. Probably the only thing that saved the Capitol from an armed insurrection was the fact that so many of them flew to Trump's event and weren't allowed to bring guns on the plane. You can't have people with machine guns threatening state Capitals or office holders of a party they disagree with. We've seen too much of that already. Security around Joe Biden and Kamala Harris needs to be extremely tight. We don't want what happened to Abraham Lincoln happening to either of them.

At the same time Joe Biden and his Democratic allies in Congress have to get a humungus aid package passed and into the hands of the American people - all of them - so that there are tangible benefits for all to see and benefit from including Trump, hopefully former, supporters. The coronavirus must be brought under control. The ineffective US intelligence agencies have a budget of about $75 billion and yet they had no intelligence relating to what an average American could plainly size up: a Trump rally attracting tens of thousands on the same day that Congress certified the election results. I wrote previously how like James Bond's arch villains, Trump would show up January 6 for one last stand even when we all thought the election was finally, after repeated certifications at multiple levels, over. Bond's villains do not give up and neither did Trump after he had tried every other trick in the book to overturn the election. I'm sure he had plans for the inauguration on January 20 as well. That's why security at the inauguration needs to be extremely tight.

Social media by and large has finally done the right thing banning Trump and right wing wack jobs and conspiracy theorists. But it is obviously too late. They should have done this long ago. There are much needed reforms that need to be undertaken regarding social media. They have in fact aided and abetted the worst impulses of American society as their algorithms favored conspiracy theories and other fantastic falsehoods as they brought more eyeballs to the platforms than did the plain unvarnished truth. We have to reckon with a model in the media that is basically centered on entertainment including the news. Bringing eyeballs to the media - all media - is what advertising is all about. Advertisers won't pay and media corporations won't make any money from sober analysis because it's not entertaining enough and people demand to be entertained. Although Trump's lies are being finally called out all over the media, let us not forget that lies perpetrated via the media are nothing new. The Willie Horton ads promulgated for George H W Bush's 1988 Presidential campaign typify the lying that political candidates have always partaken of with Trump just being the latest purveyor.

"Horton, an African-American man, was a convicted murderer who raped a white woman and stabbed her partner while furloughed from prison under a Massachusetts program in place when Dukakis, the Democratic nominee, was governor. The TV ad is now considered one of the most racially divisive in modern political history because it played into white fear and African-American stereotypes. In it, an off-screen narrator tells the story of Horton’s crimes while pictures of Bush and Dukakis and a menacing mug shot of Horton flash across the screen. The narrator notes that Bush supports the death penalty for murderers."

Clearly, there should be thought given to bringing about truth in media and what can be done to insure that the American people aren't sold a pack of lies by politicians or in any other kind of advertising. American culture has also been brutalized and vulgarized because this has been shown by advertisers to attract the most eyeballs. Violence in media runs rampant. It's almost like you have to watch movies from Europe to see something which doesn't contain violence and usually gun violence of the most graphic sort which pervades US entertainment. This is the stuff that media corporations produce because they think it's the most lucrative. Politicians supported Trump's lies because they thought it was the best way to get elected or reelected. Other societies have not put up with this crap. Violence and lies, although they may be entertaining, need to be restrained if America is ever to attain some degree of collective mental health. I for one will send up a cheer for sober analysis.

Off the Top of My Head

We Have Met the Enemy, Sir, And It Is Us

by John Lawrence, January 8, 2021

Why are we spending a trillion dollars a year on a defense establishment when the biggest threat to the republic is domestic terrorists? The failed coup attempt by inept Trump supporters could have ended a lot worse. Congress persons could be dead. Vice President Pence could be dead. Hundreds of Trump conspiracy theorists could be dead. The Capitol could have gone up in flames. And they will probably give Trump a slap on the wrist. He needs to go to prison. In other countries failed coup attempts end quite differently. The best outcome so far is the suspension of Trump's Twitter and Facebook accounts. It needs to be made permanent. Social media is responsible for spreading Trump's lies and conspiracy theories. They have profited from spreading lies.  Everything connected with Qanon should be taken down and accounts canceled. These white people (were there any blacks or Latinx in  the insurrection) need to be reeducated. I wonder if the Chinese have any room in their reeducation camps for the Uyghurs?

During the Jim Crow era in the South, African Americans by design occupied the lowest rung of the social ladder. The next rung up were people other southerners referred to as "poor white trash." The poor white trash were the most avid racists and white supremacists because their only point of pride was that they were better than African Americans. They did the dirty work for the Ku Klux Klan. Basically, Trump supporters and especially those that broke into the Capitol building are poor white trash. I have called the Republican party the WPP - White People's Party - and it's evident that that is what it really is. It remains to be seen whether they will remain loyal to Trump, but he has certainly exploited their grievances and pandered to their racism, white supremacy and demands that they be given supremacy over blacks, Latinx and immigrants. They are one rung up the ladder from minorities and immigrants, and they have demonstrated that they will go to great lengths to stay there just like the poor white trash of a foregone era.

Social media needs to be reigned in. The internet at this point has done more harm than good when you consider the hacking of government secrets and the harm social media has done in spreading conspiracy theories, falsehoods and lies. In the early days of the internet I taught a course at Palomar college. In our discussion I remember there were several layers of protocol that the internet was supposed to provide. One of them was security. Security then was mostly ignored by commercial software developers because it subtracted from their profits and didn't add to the commercial appeal - the bells and whistles - of the product. They need to go back and redesign the internet from scratch making security the number one concern. As far as social media is concerned, it needs to be tightly regulated by Congress with Federal authority to take down websites and cancel social media accounts. We now have seen a demonstration of what can happen when we let these wahoos run rampant. People exploit other people for profit, and even though that has been the American way, it needs to be stopped. Cults need to be taken down from social media. Free speech needs to have limits. So far this has been ignored, and it has been at our peril. It's a miracle that only one policeman was killed in the insurrection. What if the entire Congress had been taken down. There was practically no police presence and certainly not in the numbers required to withstand the mob that was incited to riot by Trump.

Hopefully, America has been chastened. Hopefully, this near coup has been a wake up call. Some of the people most likely to benefit from Joe Biden's initiatives are Trump supporters whether they know it or not. Of course they will have to occupy the same rungs of the ladder as minorities and immigrants, and this is what this latter day poor white trash of the WPP will hardly consent to do. Federal law makes it a crime to engage “in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof.” Someone who violates this statute faces a fine and up to 10 years in prison. Perhaps while these domestic terrorists are serving their 10 year jail sentences, they can be reeducated. At the very least their social media accounts should be taken down, and Trump should never be allowed to Twitter again.

Off the Top of My Head

They Should Have Seen It Coming. What Happened Yesterday Was a Failed Coup Attempt.

by John Lawrence, January 7, 2021

Miraculously, very few people were hurt. The inadequate police force was totally overwhelmed. Why wasn't the National Guard there in the first place? Why did it take hours for additional police to show up? The rioters could have taken over and held the Capitol if they had had weapons. They could have taken Congress persons hostage. These guys are Second Amendment advocates. Each of them could have had a gun under their winter coats. A good question is why didn't they? I'm assuming Trump's intention was a coup, but it failed because of ineptness on the part of the leaders. It might have been a dry run for January 20. Why are our leaders so naive? Why is the decision to activate the National Guard up to the President who had to be "convinced" to call up the Guard. Really? He was the one inciting the riot in the first place. Why would he call in troops to disperse it? The only way he would want any troops there is if they were loyal to him and were there to protect and enable the rioters. Remember the military presence at the Black Lives Matter movement when Trump wanted to cross the road and hold up a Bible in front of a church. Where were the helicopters yesterday? Why doesn't the Mayor of Washington DC have the authority to call in the National Guard?

January 20, the day President elect Biden is inaugurated, should see a sufficient police and military presence to insure that everything goes according to plan without the threat of disruption by any person or group. The perimeter for the event should be extensive and well guarded. No fooling around. It is a travesty that people were able to get inside and rampage in the Capitol building putting the lives of Senators, Congress persons, staff people, media and the vice President at risk. These rioters had been egged on by President Trump, Rudy Giuliani who called for "trial by combat" and Don Junior. "It should be a message to all the Republicans who have not been willing to actually fight, the people who did nothing to stop the steal," he. said at a "Stop the Steal" rally on the National Mall. "This gathering should send a message to them: This isn't their Republican Party anymore. This is Donald Trump's Republican Party."

I half expected Trump to come on TV, proclaim martial law, suspend the Constitution and declare the election invalid, as troops, loyal to him, held Nancy Pelosi hostage on her knees and blindfolded. This is how coups are done, but, fortunately, the ineptness of the planners contributed to their not being able to go all the way. Also the fact that Trump didn't have any military units loyal to him, although he has put people loyal to him in important positions in the Pentagon, doomed Trump's coup attempt. In the final analysis I guess some people in important positions took their oaths to protect and defend the Constitution more seriously than their loyalty to Trump.

Now it's up to the FBI to track down all those people who invaded the Capitol and give them lengthy jail sentences. They have tons of visual records from cameras in the Capitol, and they have hotel records although a lot of them stayed at Trump's hotel. They probably have already destroyed those records. A lot of them flew there so they have those records. It's a credit to the Congress persons that they reconvened and got their business done even though they had to stay there most of the night. The election of President Biden has finally been certified. What an excruciating ordeal! By the way, Biden should not keep saying in regard to the rioters, "That's not who we are." The question is who do you mean by "we", Mr. President elect? Obviously, it is who some of us are. There are now two classes in America who are at war with each other. It has nothing to do with capitalists and proletarians. It has to do with those who have the decency of Biden and his followers and those who are basically latter day Ku Klux Klanners and white supremicists, who also by the way used the slogan "America First".

Now we have to be concerned about January 20. As Yogi Berra said, "It's not over till it's over."

Off the Top of My Head

Black Lives Ain't A Gonna Matter if Trump Gets Reelected

by John Lawrence, September 5, 2020

Right now peaceful protesters need to get off the streets in the lead up to the election. Why? Because they act as human shields for the rioters, looters, arsonists, gun nuts and counter protesters who come right in behind them and who have more nefarious purposes. Getting the protesters off the streets takes away Trump's law and order issue. People sitting on the fence are going to vote for Trump if they see cities going up in flames. It's as simple as that. We need calmness to prevail in American cities. When people see visuals of burning buildings on nightly news, it plays right into Trump's playbook.

I don't dispute the fact that black people have been treated differently by the police than white people. There is no question that there needs to be police reform, that there should be no choke holds, no 'no knock' warrants, that more social workers need to be dispatched to deal with people with mental health issues. However, it's no secret that at least some of these black men who have been shot and killed by police would be alive today if they had simply obeyed the cops' orders. Resisting arrest, giving the cops verbal back talk, physically struggling, trying to run away - all these things tend to make it more probable that a black person or any person is going to get killed. Rayshard Brooks, the man shot and killed in a Wendy's parking lot in Atlanta, would be alive today if he hadn't struggled with police and then tried to get away. When a situation escalates, things can get out of hand. Cops don't always act in such a way as to deescalate the situation. They should of course, but they are human beings. They can lose their cool. There is no question that police need more training as to how to handle tense situations and how to better control their emotions.

Right now this situation is playing out in Rochester. Mainly peaceful protesters are acting as cover for a relative few to do more dastardly deeds. There are skirmishes with the police. Tear gas spews out. Bottles are thrown. Trump tweets the whole scene. He couldn't be happier. Trump compared the cop's shooting of Jacob Blake to a golfer "choking" over a 3 foot put. While this is a horrible analogy, there is a kernel of truth there. The cop in question probably wishes he had handled the situation differently. However, if Blake had obeyed his orders in the first place, he wouldn't be paralyzed today.

There are 2 sides to every situation, and a lot of people sitting on the fence about who to vote for are people who just want to go about their lives as peacefully as possible. They are not necessarily Trump's base supporters. In battleground states, Trump won in 2016 by just a handful of votes. These fence sitting voters are very important to the outcome of the election. All those concerned that black lives matter have already been convinced and especially by the example of John Lewis who represented non violence and working within the system to vote, take power and get results that way. At this stage of the game it is totally redundant to react with street protests over every questionable situation in which a black man is killed by police. We have seen this movie many times before. And Trump's counter protesters are getting very active because they know that the more violence that occurs, the more this is only going to help Trump's chances of being reelected.

Sorry to put it this way, but that's the truth as I see it. I am totally in favor of police reform, economic reform, universal health care and a Green New Deal. But first Joe Biden has to get elected. I would have preferred Bernie Sanders, but he would have been an easier target for Trump to take down. The importance of this election is not only for the future of America. It is important for the whole world. The US and China are the world's 2 leading greenhouse gas emitters, responsible for about 40% of total world emissions. If these 2 countries don't cooperate to reduce GHGs and get the world using renewables, nothing else will matter. If Trump is reelected, not only will the US go up in flames, the entire earth will burn and very soon. The tension that the Trump administration is creating with China makes it less likely that GHGs will be reduced especially in light of the fact that Trump does not even believe in global warming and is telling the fossil fuel industry, in effect "Full steam ahead!"

In short street protests are counter productive at this time. Someone other than me needs to tell the protesters that.

Off the Top of My Head

How Important is the Culture of Poverty as a Determinant of Criminality?

by John Lawrence

Police reform is now being undertaken to some extent because of the Black Lives Matter movement. Whether it is sufficient to solve any problems is questionable. Most of the policing activities take place in poor neighborhoods both black and white because most street crime takes places in poor neighborhoods. In some families and neighborhoods there is not only a culture of poverty, there is a culture of crime. The two of them seem to go together. If your uncle or brother or father has spent time in jail or in prison, it seems to young people growing up that this is a normal part of life. Close to six million kids in America have experienced losing a parent to prison or jail at some point in their lives. African Americans are incarcerated at more than 5 times the rate of whites. The imprisonment rate for African American women is twice that of white women. 45.8 percent of young black children (under age 6) live in poverty, compared to 14.5 percent of white children. This says it all.

There is a culture of imprisonment in predominantly black families and neighborhoods. My contention is that the solution is the elimination of poverty in the black community, and that would go a long way to eliminating the need for police enforcement in the first place. The culture of poverty and imprisonment is cultivated by both black and white artists, playwrights and musicians. For example, take the play Porgy and Bess written by a white man, DuBose Heyward about a poor crippled black man. It was developed into an opera by George and Ira Gershwin, also white. Porgy and Bess started out as a novel, was converted into a play, then an opera and finally a movie. It contains many cultural stereotypes of black people. Wikipedia reported:

Another production of Porgy and Bess, this time at the University of Minnesota in 1939, ran into similar troubles. According to Barbara Cyrus, one of the few black students then at the university, members of the local African-American community saw the play as "detrimental to the race" and as a vehicle that promoted racist stereotypes. The play was cancelled due to pressure from the African-American community, which saw their success as proof of the increasing political power of blacks in Minneapolis–Saint Paul.

The belief that Porgy and Bess was racist gained strength during the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power movement of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. As these movements advanced, Porgy and Bess was seen as more and more out of date. When the play was revived in the 1960s, social critic and African-American educator Harold Cruse called it, "The most incongruous, contradictory cultural symbol ever created in the Western World."

One of the characters in Porgy and Bess is Sportin' Life, a pimp and dope peddler. This emphasizes the connection between black people and a traditional role model - pimp and dope peddler. Now Sportin' Life is one of the most successful members of the neighborhood. Why is this? Because most of the people were extremely poor. The lesson is, if you want to be successful, if you want to have money, be a pimp or sell dope. Or gamble like Porgy does in jail. So all the associations of black people with dope, prostitution, police and jail are reinforced by this work of art which has been praised as a brilliant story filled with brilliant music. Even Miles Davis, a black jazz artist, recorded a much praised album with orchestration by Gil Evans: the Jazz Soul of Porgy and Bess.

In order to have street cred, even black men make up stories to make them seem bigger criminals than they really are. Then they peddle their art to make money. Take Akon. According to the Baltimore Sun:

The world of thug culture has its own perverse equivalent, in which middle-class men with minor legal transgressions exaggerate their bad behavior, claiming to be hard-core degenerates in order to impress youngsters looking for outlaw role models. In this destructive environment, the more violent and predatory you are, the more heroic you seem.

That helps to explain why a hip-hop star known as Akon wove a tall tale of malevolence and criminal activity, claiming to have spent three years in prison for running a "notorious car theft operation," a story he's been telling for years. In fact, he has apparently never served hard prison time. A Web site called The Smoking Gun recently exposed Akon as a thug wannabe, a "James Frey with ... an American Music Award.".

So the culture of criminality is perpetuated so that some black men can make money off of it, and young kids can grow up wanting to emulate them. This culture has to change in order that black and white kids grow up with more positive role models, but the root cause of this criminal culture is poverty so, if you want to change the culture, first change the culture of poverty. Give incentives for black men to stay with their families. Give them good jobs. It's not only black people who have lived in a crime culture due to poverty. Take the Mafia. White Italians looked up to the mafia dons because they were financially successful at a time when many Italians were in poverty. Black or white, poverty breeds a criminal culture. Problems with the police are going to persist as long as there is a huge amount of poverty and homelessness in the US. Progressive and enlightened government policy could start to change that for poor people, both black and white. Positive incentives to do the right thing go a long way to dispel poverty.

Off the Top of My Head

The Police Are Trying to Figure Out a Motive

by John Lawrence, January 4, 2020

It seems like the conclusion of every news report about another senseless killing. Why are the police even figuring? It won't do anything to prevent another senseless killing. If only we could figure out a motive, they think, it would prevent another gun nut with an arsenal from going berserk? Or a mentally ill person from gunning down innocents? Basically it comes down to one thing: we live in a sick society, a society which glamorizes guns and criminal activities. While we spend a trillion dollars a year fighting foreign terrorism, we spent nothing on fighting domestic terrorism. Domestic terrorists have been responsible for more American deaths than foreign terrorists in recent years.

In an article entitled "The Enemy Within: Why Domestic Terrorism Poses a Greater Threat than Foreign Terrorism," David Chipman writes:

Americans are much, much more likely to lose their lives to gun violence, which kills 36,000 people in the United States each year, than foreign terrorism. Despite the outsized fear of foreign terrorism in our post-9/11 world, you’re twice as likely to be shot and killed by a toddler than you are to be murdered by a terrorist. And despite the rhetoric we often hear from President Trump, Muslim Americans are more likely to be victims of terrorism than perpetrators.

[FBI Director Christopher] Wray’s statement highlights a dangerous trend—one that requires immediate action. In attacks like the bombing in Oklahoma City and the mass shooting at a concert in Las Vegas, shooters targeted their neighbors for slaughter. As this administration continues to focus its rhetoric and resources on enemies abroad, we must recognize that more frequently, the enemy is one of us.

...

We make it far too easy for hateful people to acquire weaponry they can use to hurt others. Investing more resources in ATF would help keep guns out of the hands of domestic terrorists. Its agents need further support to face the threats we face. ATF’s annual budget is only $1.2 billion, while the last aircraft carrier purchased for the Navy cost $13 billion. We have only 2,600 ATF agents to defend this nation against gun violence but 28,500 troops in South Korea alone.

At the root of the problem is the proliferation of guns, guns that are accessible to the average nutcase in his [and it's usually his, hmmm] quest to prove something to himself or society or to gain his 15 minutes of fame in an otherwise dull, uneventful and uninteresting life devoid of any constructive activity, a life that needs an act of violence in order to stand out from the crowd, a life fueled by a fantasy life filled with violence made to seem normal by movies, TV and video games.

While the FBI claims to have stepped up its efforts to combat domestic terrorism attacks in recent years and months, evidence suggests that these efforts are falling short. The FBI’s most recent hate crimes report indicates that while hate crimes dipped slightly in 2018, violent hate crimes reached a 16-year high. The US is not spending its money where it needs to to create a more sane and violence free society. Many of the perpetrators have come out of the military where violence is the norm. Spending less money on military activities and more to end poverty and combat mental illness might help to end the senseless violence that the US is in the grip of. Especially in schools and places of worship, where people are most vulnerable, the perpetrators, knowing this, step up their targeting opportunities.

But even more important is the elimination of guns from our society, especially high power, military style guns. They should be outlawed as well as large capacity ammunition magazines. There will still be nuts around attempting to hurt or kill other people, but if these guns were eliminated, they would just not be able to do as much damage. Reducing the size of our military and spending the money on more peaceful pursuits would also help to set a different tone in society than the militaristic one being set now.

Off the Top of My Head

Democratic Socialism in America

by John Lawrence, December 2, 2019

The Democratic Socialist period in America took place between the two gilded ages. The first gilded age was in the 1890s when you had incredible fortunes being made by Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould, John Rockefeller and others. The second one is today when you have incredible fortunes being made by Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and others. In between was the Democratic Socialist era presided over by the Democratic administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But progress breeds poverty, and the first gilded age led to the Great Depression. His administration oversaw the tools that brought America out of the Great Depression. Tools like the Works Progress Administration which built schools and civic buildings all over America including San Diego's County Administration Building and the Wantage school where I attended as a child and where my Dad was fortunate enough to have gotten the principal's and later the superintendent's job.

But progress breeds poverty, and the first gilded age led to the Great Depression. FDR's vice President was Henry Wallace, a committed Democratic Socialist in the Bernie Sanders mold or rather Bernie Sanders is in his mold. He used the term "economic democracy." While vice President in 1942 he gave a speech at Madison Square Garden in New York City in which he said "The new democracy, the democracy of the common man, includes not only the Bill of Rights but also economic democracy, ethnic democracy, education democracy and democracy in the treatment of the sexes." In 1942 President Roosevelt delivered the Four Freedoms speech in which he declared that there should be not only freedom of speech and freedom of worship but freedom from want and freedom from fear. After WW II, these ideas which amounted to economic guarantees by government in addition to the guarantees provided by the Bill of Rights were embedded in the United Nations Declarations of Human Rights.

Article 22 and 23 say;

Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

There was an excellent documentary on Nova about violence - "The Violence Paradox" presided over by Steven Pinker who claims that violence has decreased over the millennia. When the data was looked at more closely they found that there were pockets of violence within a larger area that was mostly peaceful. Where were these pockets of violence? In places where there was enormous economic inequality compared to surrounding areas and enormous poverty. Makes sense, doesn't it? Such areas as the south side of Chicago which is mostly comprised of poor African Americans living side by side with the rich areas of Lake Forest and Oak Brook. The same goes for Detroit in which the worst area to live in is Forest Park. In Forest Park 94.42% of the population is Black or African American. On the other hand Grosse Pointe Shores, a Detroit suburb is the wealthiest town in Michigan. The overall crime rate in Forest Park is 275% higher than the national average. So there you go.

The legacy of racism is still extant in the US and manifests itself in gun violence in poor neighborhoods comprised mostly of African Americans. So who is doing something about it? The main idea is could violence be treated in the same way as infectious diseases for which the most important thing is to detect the first case and cut it off there before it spreads. With violence one shooting leads to revenge shootings which lead to more revenge shootings etc so if there could be an intervention after the first shooting, then maybe the others could be prevented. So a new kind of health worker has been invented - a violence interrupter.

Safe Streets Baltimore is doing just that. These guys who know the streets identify the hot spots and intervene to try to resolve problems before they escalate. They deserve a lot of credit. They are putting their own lives at risk. They know that the precipitating factors are lack of economic opportunities, lack of education, lack of all the things they have in the wealthier communities. Cure Violence International is working on the same principles around the world. But the root problem is the same. People take to street crime because they don't have the things other people take for granted - a roof over their head, proper nutrition, education, health care including mental health care, a good job, a community that cares.

Back to my first point. Bernie Sanders and his philosophy of democratic socialism is nothing new, therefore, nothing radical. It has been made to seem that way by radical Republicans and reactionaries who hated FDR, hate the UN, hate anyone or any group that is trying to alleviate poverty and, therefore, violence in the world. But the challenge now is far worse than just the eradication of poverty and violence. If the nations of the world can't cooperate and work together to ameliorate global warming, then the whole earth and its peoples don't have a chance. This calls for putting nation state conflicts aside and massive government collaboration on a global scale. We can't afford to dither while the economic forces of the elite are all about making more billions for themselves. This goes hand in hand with eliminating poverty in the world and making the whole world a better and safer place.

Off the Top of My Head

Did Homo Sapiens Wipe Out the Neanderthals?

by John Lawrence, October 13, 2019

We will never know for sure. But Neanderthals flourished in Europe and Asia for about 360,000 years - from  circa 400,000 until 40,000 years ago. Modern humans spread across Europe about 40,000 years ago. What a coincidence that the Neanderthals disappeared from Europe at about the same time that modern humans, homo sapiens, entered Europe.Since our species, homo sapiens, is known for its predilection for war and genocide, it's likely that modern humans committed species-cide on the Neandethals. Genocide comes from the Greek word, genos, meaning "race, kind". There have certainly been many examples historically of genocide, Hitler's attempted elimination of the Jews being the most well known example. But there have been others. In the past 150 years, tens of millions of men, women and children have lost their lives in genocide or mass atrocities. Millions have been tortured, raped or forced from their homes.

The Turko-Mongol conqueror Tamerlane was known for his extreme brutality and his conquests were accompanied by genocidal massacres. William Rubinstein wrote: "In Assyria (1393–4)—Tamerlane ...  killed all the Christians he could find, including everyone in the, then, Christian city of Tikrit, thus virtually destroying Assyrian Church of the East. Impartially, however, Tamerlane also slaughtered Shi'ite Muslims, Jews and heathens." Christianity in Mesopotamia was hitherto largely confined to those Assyrian communities in the north who had survived the massacres. Tamerlane also conducted large-scale massacres of Georgian and Armenian Christians, as well as of Arabs, Persians and Turks.

From the earliest years of colonialism, conquistadores like Vasco Núñez de Balboa would brazenly advocate genocide against the native population. In the 1700s, British militia like William Trent and Simeon Ecuyer gave smallpox-exposed blankets to Native American emissaries as gifts at Fort Pitt, "to Convey the Smallpox to the Indians", in one of the most famously documented cases of germ warfare. While it is uncertain how successful such attempts were against the target population, historians have noted that, "history records numerous instances of the French, the Spanish, the British, and later on the American, using smallpox as an ignoble means to an end. For smallpox was more feared by the Indian than the bullet: he could be exterminated and subjugated more easily and quickly by the death-bringing virus than by the weapons of the white man."

From 1885 to 1908, the Congo Free State in central Africa was privately controlled by Leopold II of Belgium, who extracted a fortune from the land by the use of forced labor of natives. Under his regime, there were 2 to 15 million deaths among the Congolese people.

Beginning in 1915, ethnic Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were rounded up, deported and executed on orders of the government. The combination of massacres, forced deportation marches and deaths due to disease in concentration camps is estimated to have killed more than 1 million ethnic Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks between 1915 and 1923.

In the four years after the Khmer Rouge took power in Cambodia in 1975, between 1.7 and 2 million Cambodians died in the Khmer Rouge’s "Killing Fields."

In 1994 in Rwanda approximately 800,000 Tutsis and Hutu moderates were slaughtered in a carefully organized program of genocide over 100 days, making history as the quickest killing spree the world has ever seen.

In 1992 the Serbs targeted Bosniak and Croatian civilians in areas under their control in a campaign of ethnic cleansing. The war in Bosnia claimed the lives of an estimated 100,000 people.

There are many other examples so the probability is that modern humans exterminated the "subhuman species" of Neanderthals when they entered Europe about 40,000 years ago.

According to Canadian scholar Adam Jones, if a dominant group of people has little in common with a marginalized group of people, it is easy for the dominant group to define the other as subhuman. In the eyes of homo sapiens the Neanderthals were probably seen as subhuman because they actually were subhuman or at least extrahuman, other than human. Hypotheses which suggest that genocidal violence may have caused the extinction of the Neanderthals have been offered by several authors, including Jared Diamond and Ronald Wright. However, several scholars have formed alternative theories as to why the Neanderthals died off, which means there is no clear consensus as to what caused their extinction within the scientific community.

At the present time Homo Sapiens is in the process of wiping out every species on earth including itself because of its addiction to fossil fuels and the resultant global warming that is producing. Oh well, it's been a noble experiment in part.

The U.S. Culture of Violence is Killing Us All

Published on

Wednesday, August 07, 2019

by

Common Dreams

The U.S. has the most guns per capita and the weakest gun control laws of any developed country.

 

 

by 

César Chelala

 28 Comments

Nearly 40,000 Americans who died of gun-related injuries in 2017 represent a 19 percent increase from 2012 and the highest annual total since the mid-1990s. (Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

The two recent mass shooting incidents in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, in which more than 30 people were killed and dozens injured, are one more manifestation of a culture of violence that threatens not only people’s lives but also our future as a civilized society.

Although violent incidents occur in other countries, they are not as frequent — or as deadly — as in the United States, which has the highest homicide-by-firearms rate among the world’s most developed nations. Civilians in America own over 300 million guns, making Americans the most heavily armed people in the world on a per capita basis. As a contrast, the police own approximately one million guns.

The U.S. has the most guns per capita and the weakest gun control laws of any developed country. It is estimated that at least 30 percent of American adults own a gun, and an additional 11 percent lives with someone who does. Nearly 48 percent of U.S. adults grew up in a household with guns. Nearly two-thirds of Americans who own guns own more than one. 

The National Rifle Association (NRA) has been unrelenting in its efforts to influence lawmakers.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) has been unrelenting in its efforts to influence lawmakers. Although the majority of Americans say that gun laws should be more restrictive than what they are today lawmakers, to a large extent, are deaf to these demands.

To make matters even worse for gun control advocates, landmark Supreme Court rulings in 2008 and 2010 dramatically curtailed the authority of state and local governments to limit gun ownership. In a banal show of macho posturing, almost half of the 50 states in the U.S. have adopted laws that allow gun owners to carry their guns openly in most public places.

Although self-defense is often cited to justify the people’s right to bear arms, research has shown that a gun kept in a home is 43 times more likely to kill a member of the household or a friend than an intruder. The number of teenagers who die from gunshot wounds in the U.S. is greater than those who died from all other causes combined.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2017 saw more gun deaths in the U.S. than in any previous year in decades. Nearly 40,000 Americans who died of gun-related injuries in 2017 represent a 19 percent increase from 2012 and the highest annual total since the mid-1990s.

Although many Americans claim that guns are necessary for security, experiences such as in Japan and Australia show that this is not true. In Japan, which has adopted very strict gun-control laws and where –unlike in the U.S. - people who purchase guns have several background checks that include mental health, drug use, and a relative or a colleague’s perception of the applicant. A result of these policies is that there were 10 fatalities for a population of 128 million. Australia, which implemented a program against the use of firearms in 1996, saw the fatalities reduced by 40 percent.

Americans are exposed to violence since they are children. It is estimated that when a child becomes an adult he will have seen 16,000 assassinations and 200,000 acts of violence in television. Children tend to imitate what they see on television and in the movies, and see violence as the normal way of solving conflicts.

Andrew Exum, who was a soldier in Iraq and in Afghanistan, wrote about his dismay when, on returning to the U.S., he noticed the number of billboards on the side of the highways, advertising guns. “And not just guns –these were not .30-06 hunting rifles or shotguns, but rather, the kind of tactical firearms, including assault rifles that I had carried in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why in the world, I thought then, would anyone have a need for such weapons?”

Arno Michaelis, a former white supremacist turned anti-hate activist, called on President Donald Trump to stop using fear to motivate people to commit violent acts. He also said that the government needs to take ownership of guns more seriously, saying that there need to be federal laws in place to “stop people who are unbalanced from obtaining assault rifles.” Michaelis also blames Trump for using a kind of rhetoric that increases the possibility for this kind of incidents to take place.

Princeton Professor Eddie Glaude goes one step further in its criticism of the situation. As he commented to a reporter on MSNBC, “America is not unique in its sins as a country. We are not unique in our evils, to be honest with you. I think where we may be singular is our refusal to acknowledge them—and the legends and myths we tell about our inherent goodness to hide and cover and conceal so we can maintain a kind of willful ignorance that protects our innocence.”

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Off the Top of My Head

Movie, "The Hunt," Loaded with Gun Violence. That's Why It Wasn't Released After 3 Mass Shootings.

by John Lawrence, August 13, 2019

Hollywood movies are getting more and more violent. In particular they are filled with gun violence. Is there a connection between this aspect of American culture and what is happening in real life? One might think so. Universal Pictures has pulled the release of The Hunt, which was scheduled to come out September 27. In a statement on the movie’s website, the studio said that this is not “the right time” for the film to be released, especially considering the recent mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. Marketing for the film had already been suspended due to the gun violence depicted in it.

The movie is about two groups of people: the liberals and the deplorables. Does this ring a bell? The liberals set out to hunt down and kill the deplorables. It is set in a world where “liberal elites” hunt Trump voter types for sport, having selected their prey based on the horrible opinions the targets shared on social media.This is all depicted as completely normal, even sporting. It normalizes violence, in particular gun violence.Such a treat to see people gunned down for the sport of it. It is really, really enjoyable. We can laugh as another one bites the dust, especially all those Trump voters.

However, in the movie the Trump voters take out their revenge on the "liberal elites" as well so both sides get to cheer when one of their opposite number gets gunned down. Is it any wonder there are mass shootings? Reality imitating culture? Gun violence in movies and in real life is totally normal? It gives the media something to convey which will raise their ratings. If it bleeds it leads, and the more blood the better. Meanwhile, nothing of importance concerning America or the world gets talked about. The Romans distracted their populace with bread and circuses. American culture distracts its constituents with blood and circuses.

Take any action movie. The guns in it are a whole lot bigger and more destructive than AK-47s. By comparison AK-47s seem like BB guns. You can't watch an American TV show or movie without gun violence being portrayed in it. That's why I mainly go to foreign produced movies. They are still capable of telling a story and formulating a plot line instead of relying on pyrotechnics to amuse and titillate the audience. "The Hunt" will probably be released at a later date in between the mass shootings if such a convenient time can be guessed at. They've spent too much money making it not to release it so that the American audience can be treated to another movie emphasizing gun violence.

The movie, Hobbs and Shaw is also incredibly violent, but it was released anyway amidst the mass shootings. Vox reported:

While the current iteration of Bond films, as well as other contenders to the action franchise throne like Mission: Impossible, frequently become mired in their own self-importance, Fast and Furious manages to float perpetually above such petty concerns as “plot” and “consequences.” Rather than giving a toss about elevating the action genre through serious themes, angsty heroes, and trope subversion, The Fast and The Furious instead consistently focuses on found family, homoerotic male bonding, and blowing shit up. What else, these films perpetually ask, do you really need?

Yes, what else do you need other than a lot of guns and "blowing shit up"?