Storytelling...Superpower?

So today's "assignment" was to take this quiz and find out what your storytelling superpower is. Appropriately enough my superpower is The Protector (i.e. superheroes). I am unsure of this but looking back at previous posts I can see that I like to talk about the little guy/girl a lot. I prefer to look at the world and see the problems so they can be fixed, or at least talked about. I am not the protector though. I think the only thing I ever regularly protect is my child from running into traffic.

So I am not a superhero but I do find myself drawn to the attributes of heroes. I love a good Superman or Flash comic. I will go to first showings of DC & Marvel movies. I want to see heroes saving the day. So I guess why wouldn't I be drawn to writing that type of character?

I don't have any big revelations for you today so go and enjoy your weekend.

Honor My Reality

This will be short. Mostly because I have not found a way to honor my reality yet. Until recently I was working a job that required me to work odd hours so the little time I did have I spent with family and friends. Now that I am unemployed I spend a lot of my time on the computer looking for jobs. Perhaps finding a stable job with a steady schedule I can create a reality that involves me writing more.

Now don't get me wrong I find myself jotting down ideas all the time. I am on my phone reading an article and I must go to notepad and write something down. I recently downloaded an app that allows me to brainstorm ideas in a sort of mind map with bubbles and different colors. I was using it to plan something, but I found myself more worried about the color of the bubbles and making the map look symmetrical. A fun activity but it does not honor my reality so much as create a new one.

Planning time to sit down and write without confidence is hard to do. Clearly, I am doing it right now so maybe it isn't so hard. Although this is based off a prompt and allows me to be sort of free-form with my thoughts. To sit down and write a short story or a novel requires some leg work. Any good writer will tell you that it takes time and patience to create a good story. Look at all the authors we are waiting to finish pieces of work (George R. R. Martin and Patrick Rothfuss to name a few). While some authors find it easy to sit down and pound out a few pages these two struggle to get those pages out and I think they are the real heroes. While I am with everyone else in wanting the next installment of A Song of Ice and Fire as well as Day 3 I am certain that Rothfuss and Martin are closer to the reality of being a paid author then say Patterson or even my favorite author Stephen King.

So, my reality is I am waiting for the spark. Maybe that is the wrong attitude and I should be attempting something every day, but I think that is the point of this book club I joined. A spark to get me writing. Am I doing more than complaining to the void about why I never write? no but who cares. The only people reading these are my family and friends and they all tell me I am the best. Not really but if this makes me write more and then I find the story I have been looking for in the process, yay!

To all the struggling writers and procrastinating authors out there I salute you. May your bookshelves need organizing and your cursor never move.

How Did I Become A Writer?

I have answered the question before as to why I became a writer but not how I became a writer. Although I do not consider myself a writer I did join a program that sends you a prompt once a week that is supposed to spark my creative brain and give me something to write about. This week’s prompt was, "How did you become a writer?"

I don't know how to answer that question. I know that I have always been a reader and I have always admired writers. So, I think it was just a natural progression for me to move from reader to writer. When I was a kid I would read a book a week. I remember in sophomore year of high school we got a yearlong assignment to read 2000 pages by the end of the year. I was done with my 2000 pages by the end of the first month because I was such a ferocious reader.

As I have gotten older and gained more responsibility in my life I have found myself with less time to read but I still find time to look at new books and wish I could read more. In 2013 when I was deciding on where to go to finish my bachelor's degree I found myself in a sort of quandary. I wanted to be a political science major, but I have one problem, I can't right technical papers worth anything. I have a specific writing style that does not translate well to scientific/academic papers. Yet, I wanted to write. So, I found myself looking at creative writing programs. I found one, I was accepted, and in the end, I graduated with the highest GPA of my life. I wasn't honored or anything but a 3.78 GPA for me is like asking a penguin to fly.

Did that make me a writer? No. Am I a writer because of this blog? technically, yes, but truthfully, I am finding it hard to see myself as a writer. at the end of the day I want to write, and I have an urge to write but I get bogged down by the other things in my life. The day-to-day stops me from accomplishing some of the simplest writing tasks.

So, how did I become a writer? To answer the question, I haven't yet. I am still working on it. While writing sounds as simple as putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard it must come from somewhere. I have looked at writing advice from every spectrum. Write what you know. Don't write what you know. Show don't tell. All the advice just swims in my brain as I type and eventually causes me to seize up in panic. I abandon whatever idea I have been working on and forget about writing for a while. I become an ornithologist for a few days. Then I am off to the races to try my luck at gambling. Soon I am back in front of the computer trading stocks. The I find myself with no stocks to trade, horses to bet on, or birds to watch, and back in front of the computer with a blank word document open and the cursor blinking.

No, I am not a writer I am an attempted writer. I would never be charged with writing just accessory to writing. I am the fall guy for writing. Perhaps I need more confidence or perhaps I should just quit but sometimes it is fun to see where my fingers take me. Writing is something we all do, and I guess it means we are all writers in the end, but I think the question is not about why I write birthday cards, which I do not, but why I write what I write. Which at this point is nothing? So, if you want you can stick with me through this new "book" club I have joined and perhaps some of the other prompts will lead to an actual book.

My First Fight and Legalized Weed

In the spring of 2015 a movie called Pitch Perfect 2 came out in theaters. It was small film with very few actresses you have probably never heard of in it. The movie is inconsequential to the rest of the story but I like to mention the movie because it creates a certain level of expectation for the rest of the story. So anyway, this movie came out and my wife and I decided we should have a date night. We had just had a kid a few months before and had not really had a chance to go out and be away from the little monster, so movie night it was.

I should also preface this story with a mental image of me. I am average height a little overweight and I have a big bushy beard. While I may look intimidating from far away I am nothing but intimidating when approached. I am shy and sometimes quick to anger but never violent. I should also tell you that we had gone to Lakewood Towne Center, not Point Ruston because well in 2015 Point Ruston was not open yet. The other thing to remember is that you choose your seats at the Lakewood Towne center theater s they are all assigned seats. Do you see where this is going yet?

We get to the theater, purchase our snacks and proceed into screen 13 or 16 or something on the far side of the complex. The side that has the other concession stand that is never open. We had bought our tickets in advance because I knew it was a new movie it was probably going to be sold out or really full and I wanted us to be able to sit next to each other, a smart move on my part. We double check our tickets and we are in seats 3 and 4 in row G or F or something. Not exactly in the middle but close enough for government work. We walk to the aisle and start looking at the seats/ Seat 1, 2, and 3 are empty but 4 is being occupied by an older black lady. Not old just older then me, perhaps 40 maybe even younger but old enough to have a teenage daughter. So I do what you are supposed to do in this situation. I said, "Excuse me, I think you're in my seat. we have seat 3 and 4."

She says, "oh really, well those seats are open," and she points to seats 2 and 3.

I look to my wife and we confer and decide we will sit in those seats and hope the people who purchased seats 1 and 2 don't show or it is only one person who purchased one of the two seats. Well guess what happens? That's right they don't show up and we watch the movie in peace. WRONG! They do show up just a few minutes later. They say the same thing to me that I said to the lady. I respond in a slightly different way though.

"Oh, sorry that is my seat there I will just get her to move now." SO i lean over to the lady and I say, "ma'am they are here for their seats so you need to move now because that is my seat."

"How is this your seat?" She asks as she munches on her popcorn and watches the First Look.

"Well right here on my ticket it says I have seat 4 which you are in. So you need to move."

"Honey I'm high right now and I don't want to come down." A phrase I will remember for the res of my life because it was so nonchalant and weird. I did mention she was old enough to have a teenage daughter right? you know how I know that? Because hr teenage daughter was in seat 5, the seat they had actually paid for. This is also when I lost my cool. I may have been a little unkind but I felt it was justified in this case. I responded with, "I don't give a fuck you are in my seat and you need to move."

Guess what? She didn't move she just ignored me and kept watching the damn First Look. So then I had to get up and leave the theater and go to that lost concession stand that was miraculously being staffed by a little teenage girl getting popcorn for two older ladies. I popped up to the front of the line real quick and said, "Can you get someone to help me move a lady out of my seat? She says she is too high right now and doesn't want to come down."

The young girl gets on her walkie asking for a manager or something and I ear one of the two old ladies say, "well it is legal in Washington now." Soon a little tiny girl about a foot shorter then me and perhaps only half as wide as me walks up with two other employees. I show her my ticket and we walk into the theater. One of the other employees breaks off and walks to the other side of the theater and stands at the end of the row while the little girl and the other employee follow me down to the end where my wife is sitting.

So this next part has only been relayed to me via my wife and the two ladies in seats 1 and 2 so I am not as clear on the details as I am for the rest of the story. I did see the young girl, a shift supervisor I am guessing r even the manager I never even got her name, crouch down and begin to talk to the lady. According to my sources the lady at first played dumb about the assigned seating. Okay I can understand trying to get away with that tactic but that theater has always had assigned seating, or at least even in 2015 it had had it for a while. Then I guess she proceeded to tell this little shift supervisor girl that I beat my wife and I was a bully. Over and over again she told this woman all this nasty stuff about e that I had no idea I had ever done especially not in the 5 minutes i had been sitting next to her before leaving to get a manager.

So eventually the lady, the manager girl, and the ladies daughter get up and leave the theater. I sit down and my wife, and the ladies in seats 1 and 2, proceed to tell me as much as they can about what the lady was saying before the movie starts, surprisingly this all happened in enough time that I sat down and the movie started just a minute later.

Yet the story isn't over. After about 15-20 minutes the lady shows back up and sit down, right next to me! I freaked out and slid as close to my wife as as I could. The lady said nothing to me but she said something to the person on the other side of her that sounded mean. Perhaps I am projecting a little. I am fearful because this sort of thing has never happened to me before but the rest of the movie goes off without a hitch.

As we are leaving the theater I see the lady waiting outside the glass doors. I pause for a second but I just need to go to the bathroom. So I am in the restroom and the whole time I can't stop thinking about what I am going to do if this lady wants to fight me when I get outside. I stayed in the bathroom for a little while psyching myself up for a fight. I was ready. I was pumped. I didn't know if I would punch back or if I would just let her hit me and just curl up in a little ball while she kicked me silly.

I finally got up the courage to leave the bathroom, I was really only in there for bout a minute, and saw that she had left. So I would not be getting in a fight after all but I was ready, sort of. Later in talking to my wife she told me she had had a similar conversation about me getting into a fight and whether I should fight back or not.

So what lesson did we learn today kids? Don't mess with me or I will call management on your ass.

On Grief and Sadness

"It's not hard to like a guy when he's doing well. The measure of a man is how does he behave when things are otherwise?" - President Josiah Bartlet

I am glad everyone who didn't vote for Obama accepted him as their next president. I am glad that you continued to say he wasn't your president and emphasize his middle name repeatedly. I am glad that you continued to share racist cartoons depicting President Obama as a monkey or an ape. I am so glad you took the high road and obstructed every piece of legislation he put before you. I am so thrilled for all that you did to show that it was just ridiculous that we elected a black man, twice, to the highest office of the land. The difference between Obama and Trump is staggering. You can gloat and talk about coming together all you want but you don't know what this means for people of color, for women, for the LGBTQ community, for immigrants, refugees, for the poor and disenfranchised. Obama may have been a problem for you because he was black. Obama may have been a problem for you because he supports a woman's right to choose what to do with her own body. He may have been a problem for you because he lives by a message of Hope, Love, and progress. Obama may have been a problem for you because he was black (yes I said that twice) but he is not a problem.

Obama is a great president. He will go down in history as a very good president. His presidency will be talked about in history classes for years to come. Donald Trump is not Obama. He is not just a guy trying to get some hard policies through congress and senate to make life easier for Americans. Trump spits hate and isolationism (building a wall, & identification for Muslims). He is okay with marginalizing minorities and assaulting women (grabbing them by the pu**y). He is okay with ripping away people's basic inalienable rights as set forth by the founders of this country (opening the libel laws & picking Mike "Fuck-The-Gays" Pence as his VP). So, you can talk about taking the moral high road when Obama won and how everyone should just shut up and accept it already but when you say that you shut out the voices of the millions of people who said no to Hate. The millions of people who said no to sexism. You are marginalizing a majority of the country because you are giddy as school girls your racist godfather won.

I am hurting right now and I am not grieving so much as disgusted at these kinds of statements. You didn't have to like Obama and we all know you "accepted" him as your president, even though you talked about him not being born in this country and being a closet Muslim and wanting to take away all your guns (which he never did by the way). You can speak of your Christian high ground but at the end of the day you voted for a bigoted, hateful, sexist, racist, old white guy. While I did not. I am not mad at you and I am not going to say he isn't my president (although I would like to) but I will be ever vigilant. I will continue to push against his hate speech. I will preach to the world a message of love and acceptance but first I am going to be angry. I am going to cry. I am going to fear for the future of our country on a national and international level. I have that right because I voted with the majority and I watched as my vote was cast aside for yours. I have the right to be upset and just like the electoral college stealing the vote away from the people you want to steal my pain from me and then preach bipartisanship and togetherness.

Your statements do not come from a place of bipartisanship or togetherness. You are mad that people won't just accept it like you did oh so gracefully 4 and 8 years ago. So, instead of talking about your high road accept a little fact for me. We are not happy. We are in pain. We feel like our country just told us it prefers hate, racism, sexism, and fear over love and acceptance. Our country let us down on Tuesday. Not because we didn’t vote for the first female president. Not because Republicans won. Our country let us down because it prefers to believe that the biggest threat to our country is people fleeing in fear from a fascist regime. Our country let us down on Tuesday because it chose to build a wall instead of a bridge. So, don’t tell me to accept him as my president like you “accepted” Obama as your president. Don’t tell me to shut up and be okay with that fact.

You can gloat and you can be giddy and you can be jubilant that your racist candidate won but I do not have to happy about it as well. Do not, and I repeat, do not delegitimize the pain and suffering people are feeling right now. This was not the same kind of election that we had in 2008 and 2012. McCain and Romney were not political outsiders with bombastic personalities born of a reality television show. They were normal politicians and while I did not agree with their platform I would not have felt so bad about their winning. Yeah I would have been upset and I would have grumbled but the next day I would have gone about my business. This was different on a completely different level. This was not a moderate Republican going right to win votes. This was not a conservative Christian going even more conservative to get more votes. Trump started out strong on the right of right and never moved, anywhere.

So, I make a request of you. Shut up! You won. We lost, spectacularly and we have a right to be very upset about it. We have a right to complain and question your choices just as much as you did in 2008 and 2012. I will take the words of Dylan Thomas’ ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ to heart;

“Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into hat good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

We must rage against the dying of the light. We must not go gently into that good night. We will come together and we will make sure he does not get to build his wall or stop Muslims from entering our country, or you know living in it. We will rage, rage against the dying of the American light. So, thank you for your recently renewed thoughts on bipartisanship and how you feel we should be with you. Well we will be upset and we will continue to be upset but in the end, we will accept it but you need to give us time. Your blatant disregard for over half of Americas feelings is exactly why we are upset.

“There is a sacredness in tears. They are no the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues.They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.” – Washington Irving

Why Third Place Sucks

No one wants to read yet another piece about how crazy Trump is and how much they should vote for Hillary Clinton. All how Jill Stein is an election spoiler and just runs to protest the two party candidates. Then there is the libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson. I don’t know why it is that Bernie supporters feel the urge to vote for someone who is so obviously not Bernie Sanders. While I can understand why a Bernie Supporter would be drawn to the Green party I can’t for the life of me figure out their desire to vote for Gary Johnson.

Let’s look at it rationally and perhaps point by point to better understand the similarities and glaringly obvious differences:

-         Bernie Sanders believes in doing something about the environmental crisis. Gary Johnson strongly opposes doing something about it.

-         Bernie Sanders ran on the idea of taxing the rich and more tax breaks to the poor. Gary Johnson believes in taxing the rich less.

-         Bernie Sanders believes voter registration should be easier so more people have the ability to vote and will vote. Gary Johnson thinks our current system is fine and does not want to do anything about it.

Those are just three major points that seem to be obvious when you think about what the libertarian party is. Libertarian means more autonomy or freedom while socialism means community or groups. So why would those who so ardently supported Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist, stand to support someone who would in essence be the complete opposite of their savior?

You will see articles such as this one, 6 Reasons Why Bernie Sanders Supporters Should Vote for Governor Gary Johnson. These articles are all fine and good but what they fail to mention is these three key points of Johnson’s campaign. The three things that I feel any Sanders supporter should feel strongly about. That is unless you really are just so ardently supporting Sanders because he is a Washington outsider and all you want is to vote for someone who is not a part of the system. If that is the case you should just stop reading shut your computer, or turn off your phone, and wait to vote for Trump in the fall.

That is another section of the Bernie crowd I can’t seem to understand. Do they actually care about the future of the country or do they just care about stopping “The Man” from keeping power? They think that if a person who is not a Washington insider gets office the heavens will open up and mana will fall from the sky. I can admit that is a sweet dream to have and I voted for Sanders because I wanted some of that dream. Perhaps the heavens would not open up and the mana would only come every other Thursday but it would happen in spits and spurts if he was elected.

That was the main argument from the base Democratic camp when Bernie was still in the race. His plans can never work they “will never work”, “He won’t actually get anything done”, and all sorts of other things to discourage people from wanting to vote for him. I think it worked a little, people told themselves it would never work so they voted for the other “guy” and we are where we are now. This is not a rant against Hillary or the DNC but a discussion about the choices we have to make in the coming months. When I voted for Sanders I did that knowing that not everything he said would happen but I wanted him to try. Isn’t that what campaigning is all about, making speeches about things you want to see change, getting elected and then trying to make the changes you spoke of? If not, then why bother with the whole circus in the first place. I know that Hillary may not fulfill all the “promises” she makes on the campaign trail but I am willing to give her a shot at trying.

So if your whole thing is finding someone who is all about being outside the corrupt two-party system then maybe you should look to Jill Stein. I mean she is even more liberal than Bernie Sanders and she has explicitly said, “The two-party system is broken.” So why not go for her? She seems like a great choice for ardent Bernie Supporters. Very liberal, check. Outside the system, check. Able to defeat Donald Trump, absolutely not. While Jill Stein may seem like a good choice for those who just don’t like Hillary Clinton or the two-party system I think you may want to reconsider your options.

Let’s start with the obvious one first. While Sanders, Clinton, and Johnson have all held a public office or two, Jill Stein has only ever been a candidate, and not a very good one at that. She said to the New York Times before the 2012 election that she was no longer a practicing physician and said, “I’m now practicing political medicine because politics is the mother of all illnesses.” An admirable answer to the question but what is she really doing by running other than pulling liberal voters away from the candidate who can actually do something?

Her stance of campaign finance reform is was pushed her away from the two-party system and drove her into the loving open arms of the Green party. A stance that fit nicely into Bernie’s view on campaign finance but perhaps she should take a page out of his book because in this election alone, an election that Bernie is no longer in and was only in during the primary, Bernie Sanders raised $228,557,735 while Jill Stein has only raised $859,155. That is only a little more than 0.003% of what Sanders raised. In 2012 she raised about the same amount and walked away with 470,000 votes, roughly 0.36%. Do you know how many people voted in 2012? 129,085,403 people voted in the general election. Do you know how many Gary Johnson walked away with? 1,275,971 people voted for Johnson, which is almost 1% of the vote. By comparison Romney walked away with 60,933,500 votes (47.2%) and Obama walked away with 65,915,796 (51.06%). That means that if you factor in all the percentages from all four candidates there were still more people who voted for someone other than Jill Stein (0.39% to be approximate).

I digress though and need to get to my original point about Dr. Jill Stein and I use the doctor because I think she needs to give back her degree. When she was asked about the anti-vaccination movement, a thing I wish didn’t exist, she had this to say, “there are real questions that needed to be addressed. I think some of them at least have been addressed. I don’t know if all of them have been addressed.” Which is the most backwards answer to the question if ever I heard one. She says there is public distrust in the FDA due to perceived influence from the pharmaceutical industry. The problem is not with the FDA and it never has been. While the narrative has shifted to the “distrust” with the FDA and how they are “in bed” with the pharmaceutical companies it all started with a falsified report from a doctor in the UK. A doctor whom I might add has since lost his license because he made up the study and put the entire world in danger because he wanted to be proven right or something stupid like that. As a medical doctor and someone seeking public office Jill Stein should not be as concerned with some perceived distrust in the FDA and more with the health and public safety of her constituents. She puts us all at risk by not denouncing the anti-vaccination movement and should not be trusted to run our country.

Maybe I am overreacting to something trivial but I think I should end by saying this. I want to vote for Bernie Sanders. If I wasn’t so afraid of Donald Trump as president I would write his name in and hope for the best but I won’t and for one simple reason, he asked me not to. When Bernie Sanders stood before the world and declared his support for Hillary Clinton he did not do so lightly. He stood before us and proclaimed that after a very long race and some very heated exchanges he would support Clinton because she is the best choice going into the November election. He promised that he would work not only with a Clinton presidency but with his supporters to continue the revolution he started. He was not giving up he was shifting his focus. If he can’t make the changes as president he will do them as Senator and countryman.

Don’t get me wrong I was reluctant to vote for Hillary at first as well and as you most likely know I was quite critical of her candidacy during the primary race. My shifting support does not negate my critical eye towards her candidacy and potential presidency. I have the right as an American to be critical of my elected officials and hold them to a higher standard than I would myself or my fellow man. So just because I am going to vote for Hillary Clinton does not mean I will not still look for her to answer questions I have about how she works as President. That being said I will vote for her and I will do it happily.

Now think about your vote for a second, no really think about it. Where should it go? Should you put all your efforts into stopping Donald Trump a man who is literally the antithesis of Bernie Sanders? Trump may be an “outsider” and not as “corrupt” as Hillary and the other candidates but he is not above making shady backroom deals and lying about those deals after they are made. Think about it this way. Bernie Sanders got in this race to fight the 1%, the billion-class, and stop them from running this country. Donald Trump is a billionaire, a one percenter, and should be stopped by everyone who fought on the side of Bernie Sanders. So as a Bernie Bro or whatever you wish to call me I am standing by Hillary. She may not be the candidate we need right now but she is the candidate we deserve.

Let’s be real for a minute here and chat about Secretary Clinton. I want to vote for her not just because Bernie asked me to or because I can use a cool quote from The Dark Knight to describe this race. I want to vote for her because she speaks in positives. She wants to make changes because we can be better. She does not go to a campaign rally and call people names and kick babies out. She has not offered to pay the legal fees for someone committing an act of violence at her rallies. I am not saying she doesn’t pull out the negative words sometimes, we all do, but she does not run at 99% negative like Donald Trump. He yells about walls, that he will make others pay for, while she talks of finding a way to make it easier for these people who so desperately want to be here to find a legal and safe way to do so. He says we should stop all people of a certain religion from entering the country, Christians and Jews are just as likely to commit act of terrorism, while she speaks of welcoming them and loving them so as to not bolster the ranks of dangerous terrorist organizations such as ISIL.

We should not think our vote above that of others and vote for Hillary. You saying it does not matter to you so you will vote for Stein or Johnson or write-in Sanders is privileged speak coming from a privileged place. I know that we cannot allow Trump to win and the best way to do that, no, the only way to do that is to vote for Clinton in the fall. By allowing your voice to say you would rather allow Trump to win and destroy the lives of millions of Americans, and potentially the world. Is saying you do not actually care about your fellow man like Sanders does. It is saying that the problems Sanders has fought so hard for do not matter so much as making a statement.

I am a working-class white man that was born in Washington state. I don’t speak another language, although I have tried to learn a couple. I don’t drive American cars, but who does these days, and I am basically set if Trump wins. I will find myself in a world of little change. You know why, because I have privilege and that is just that. I am not trying to hold that over your head or anything. I was born with it, like brown hair or detached earlobes. Yet I know I have privilege and I am speaking from a place of privilege and I know that Donald Trump is the wrong choice and Hillary Clinton is the right one.

So from a white guy I am asking you, other privileged people, to please not throw away your vote and hand it on a golden (only the best, no silver for Trump) platter to Trump. We live in a world with a two-party system and that is what we have to live with. So pick one or the other and stop being idiots. You can either have a candidate that may get some of the stuff Bernie talked about done or you can have Trump. You will not get Stein, or Johnson, or Bernie, or some other ridiculous third, fourth, or fifth party candidate. You will get one or the other and you should do everything in your power to not let it be the GOP.

If you must vote third party, then do it at the local level. Get your community organized to vote in those third party candidates for state city council, state representative, county officials, and everything in between. That is how you can get the narrative changed. That is how you can send a message to the folks in Washington that you want real change in this country. That is how you tell Hillary Clinton that it is time we stop living by the party rules and we want real and direct change in this country. That is how we get single-payer healthcare, $15 minimum wage, higher taxes for the rich and lower taxes for the poor, and free-college tuition. We can do it from the ground up. You know it, I clearly know it, and obviously that is what Bernie’s Our Revolution is all about (the announcement is not for another couple of days but I bet I’m right).

Our Strange Addiction: Guns

I want to talk about guns.

Scratch that, I want to talk about gun violence.

That’s not it either, I want to talk about America’s obsession with guns. Actually I think obsession is the wrong word. I think addiction is the right one to use. America is addicted to guns and it is killing all of us. Much like any addiction it is bad and it should be dealt with as we deal with any addiction.

In fact, this should not be a discussion. Like some things in life there really is no discussion it is just a known fact that we do not do those things. Yet we continue to run into people who think guns are the answer. So instead of treating this situation like we treat a 1-year-old standing on wobbly chairs we allow gun owners to totter wildly until the chair comes crashing to the floor and someone gets hurt. Instead of thinking perhaps we shouldn’t stand on wobbly chairs, we all get wobblier chairs and start playing musical chairs while juggling live grenades.

Just think about that for a second. We react to horrible situations like what happened at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando and Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut by buying more of the thing that does the killing. When there is a reported case of mad cow we stop buying beef, because it can kill you. Yet there have only been 4 reported cases of Mad Cow Disease in the United States and it cost the beef industry close to $5 billion. After Sandy Hook the gun industry took in about $630 million. So if the beef industry loses $5 billion dollars for 4 cases and the gun industry gains about $630 million after each mass shooting let’s do the math.

998 mass shootings since Sandy Hook (why don’t we round that to a nice neat 1000) x 630 million = $630 billion dollars in 3 years and six months (the time between Sandy Hook and Orlando). What the inconceivable fuck! I am trying not to curse. To keep this as family friendly as possible but sometimes I just lose my mind.

You know what you can do with $630 billion? A lot of stuff that’s for sure. I mean a slice of pizza at Costco only costs $1. I could give everyone in the world 84 pieces of pizza. Hell, I could buy Costco and give out the pizza for free and still make money off all the groceries and other stuff. In fact, with $630 billion I could afford to buy Donald J. Trump’s “empire”, which he says is worth only $10 billion. Perhaps though instead I will just run for president against him. I could literally fund every candidates campaign and still have over $620 billion to live off of (using the total amounts of $10 billion spent in 2012).

I have gotten off track with this money thing but in truth have I? Think about how much money that is for just a second and realize that these are the people dumping money into our politician’s pockets. They can literally fund every single candidates campaign and in the end walk away with a profit and no fear of losing out on any future profit because Every. Single. Politician. Is in their hands. So how can we expect anything to change when it comes to gun control laws?

Granted what I have presented to you is purely a hypothetical, at least them giving money to every politician. The amount is hypothetical to a degree but it is not hard to assume that the number spike after each shooting. It would still most likely more money than Donald J. Trump has, or will ever have. So how do we combat this sort of thing? Why does this keep happening? Why can’t we agree on anything?

The answer to the first question is a lot harder than you think because we don’t truly understand the answer to number three yet. The second question though is easily answered. This keeps happening because we allow money to control our decisions. I know this seems like an over simplification of the problem but in truth if we stopped allowing money to do the talking when it came to our politicians we might actually get something done in this country.

That being said I know that most people would blame the wording of the second amendment as the answer to the third question and they would be mostly right. The second amendment has caused way more problems for our country then it has solved. Just look at the wording and see why it is such a problem, “A well regulated militia,being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people tokeep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” 

To best understand why this sort of amendment was placed in the bill of rights we have to look at the record of human history. Up until this point in time (1776) there had never been a truly democratic state. Or at least a democratic state in which the people had power (although the majority of people would not have full rights until the 20^th century). A free state not ruled by a king or queen. A nation built by the people for the people. So in the best interest of not allowing some power hungry fool (Donald Trump?) to claim himself king they wanted the people to be able to rise up and take back the country. They just had one problem. The people most afraid of that happening were the ones who took power in the first place and laid the foundation for all future generations.

The founding fathers meant well when they wrote it and signed it into law but they never could imagine a world where a person would be able to fire more than 2 rounds per minute, let alone 30. So they could not even fathom a world where a crazy lunatic, fancying himself after the Joker, bursts into a theater and murders 12 people. They could imagine a world where the locals would have to rise up and defend themselves against an oppressive force looking to subjugate them. They knew that if that were to happen and the people didn’t have access to firearms they may never get their freedom back.

Why do we still have the second amendment? Why, when we have a well regulated militia (e.g. the five branches of the military) and a police force in every municipality across the country. Should we not be able to trust those in the armed services and the police to protect us and keep us safe? You may think that with police shootings and the almost militarization of said police forces that perhaps the police are not to be trusted. Hollywood would have you believe that the military will just follow along with the whims of some tiny king dictator (Trump?) to oppress the people of this country. What we fail to recognize is that those in the military may be taught to follow orders but that doesn’t make them heartless and stupid.

The people in the military are taught to defend our country not attack it. I find it hard to believe that those in the armed services would actually attack the citizens of the United States of America. Of course this is all conjecture but think about the people who are afraid of this happening and insist on having guns and then think about the people who join the military... They tend to be cut from the same cloth. So why would they take up arms against each other?

In the end it really comes down to something that people like former Justice Scalia and other Originalist judges never think about it that the founders meant muskets not assault rifles. They meant farmers and blacksmiths running through the forest fighting men in red coats not a young man in an elementary school shooting children. The Originalist judges would have you believe that it is the intent not the actual meaning of the words that should be taken as the law but should we not think about the world the founders lived in when they had that intent? Should we not think about the time and place that it was written and not assume that they just meant every killing machine to be thought of and manufactured in the next 240 years?

The world is a much different place then it was 240 years ago. We don’t know what the founding fathers intended. Yet why should we think of what they intended and not how they intended it to be interpreted? Perhaps I am going over your head. The constitution and the Bill of Rights should not be taken as gospel, ever the same, they are living documents and sometimes a living document needs to be adjusted to fit the needs of those reading it. Think prohibition, then repealing prohibition. Think giving African Americans and women the right to vote. Think abolishing slavery. We have changed the constitution before because it needed to be changed so why not now?

In fact, Jefferson (a founding father) supported rewriting the constitution every 19 years. Think about that for just a second. That would mean we would be almost onto our 13^th version of the constitution right now. That of course is a discussion for another day but it would really change the way we viewed our politics and reshape the very fabric of our country.

It seems as if I have veered off again into other topics but it all comes down to guns and the second amendment. We are addicted to guns in this country and it is because a bunch of guys in wigs wanted to keep themselves from being taken over by the King of England. Because a bunch of guys in wigs wrote it down 240 years ago we get to deal with it mentally unstable people shooting up elementary schools. Because some people are just to addicted to their guns we can’t feel safe in public places anymore.

We have an addiction and it is sickening. We must fight the addiction but most people are unwilling to admit they have a problem. You would think that after Columbine we would have hit rock bottom, but that didn’t happen we just blamed it on video games and not a strict enough dress code. So we took away the baggy pants, put metal detectors in all the schools, and started rating all our video games. That should stop the problem, they said, but it didn’t.

You would think rock bottom would be rock bottom when 32 college students were killed at Virginia Tech. Nope, that would be absurd. So instead we bought more guns and blamed it on his mental illness. We mourned and we asked for reform but nothing happened.

You would think that he deaths of 20 first grade students would be rock bottom. I mean how could it not be? 20 that is a big number. 6 and 7-year-olds every last one of them. How could the death of all those tiny babies not be the breaking point? How could we not make more common sense gun laws and make it so no more babies were killed by lunatics with a right to have a gun? No we bought more guns and started talking about arming the teachers. “If the teachers had all been armed this would not have happened.” This is where the myth of the good guy with a gun comes into play. Also a discussion for another day but also a false ploy to sell more guns.

You would have thought the other 21 shootings since Newtown and the 400+ deaths would be the moment we as a nation hit rock bottom. Nope, now when people try to make a statement about gun violence they are yelled down as politicizing a tragedy. Congress and the Senate hold moments of silence, we have candlelight vigils, we protest and nothing happens because 240 years ago some guys wanted to make sure people were able to keep their muskets.

So now after too many deaths and not enough reform we sit silently waiting for something to happen. Waiting for the country to hit rock bottom and admit they have a problem. Well it doesn’t seem to be working so I propose an intervention. A sit down with the country. An airing of grievances. A chance to see if we can put the country on a new course. Will it work, probably not because we are addicts and we just can’t stop shooting up (sorry for the pun but it had to be done).

When will we hit rock bottom? What will finally be the driving force that pushed even the most die hard gun addicts over the edge? Will it be when one of their own falls prey to the hot lead of a bullet? Or will that just reinforce their need for more guns and more bullets? Will nothing ever be done to stop this epidemic that is sweeping our country? Is the second amendment purely to blame or is something else, something even more nefarious, at work?

I am hoping that if anything should ever happen to these people’s children or friends they might see the light and understand why this is such an unhealthy addiction. Sure more people die in car accidents every year but car accidents are exactly that, accidents. When was the last time they reported a mass shooting as an accidental mass shooting? Never. You cannot accidentally open fire in a packed movie theater. Or say you slipped and pulled the trigger 20 times to a judge when she asks about why you shot up a first grade classroom. There are no accidents when it comes to guns just negligence.

I know what you are going to say, “No really it was an accident when that 3-year-old shot his older sister.” I would say yes it was an accident on the 3-year-old's part but the adult whose gun was left unsecured like a dirty needle in a crack den was not an accident it was negligence. “Oh, the kid will never find it.” “I only turned my back for a second.” Any time you leave a gun loaded you are negligent. Any time you fail to lock up the gun, you are negligent. The kid may have accidentally shot their brother, sister, father, mother, or themselves but at the end of the day. Just like an addict leaving their paraphernalia out they are negligent and responsible for that death or injury.

I could go on and on about the similarities between guns and drugs but I will leave you for now to think on this. We could very easily live in a country where guns are not such a scary and threatening issue. We have the power to stand up and say, “No More!” We don’t. We wait until the next mass shooting in a church, school, or night club to spur us into action. We must continue to fight for guns to be eliminated from the American psyche or we will never hit rock bottom. If we do not look at truly getting rid of guns, then we will never end the violence. Guns are never the answer and they never will be.