Home of the "Little Known Blogger"
Head for the bunkers
I recently contacted both of the Senators from Missouri and my Congresswoman, Ann Wagner.
The reason for my contact was to support President Obama in his push to institute some sanity in gun regulation and control by executive action. This dysfunctional Congress is unable and unwilling to address this important issue. Meanwhile 30,000 Americans a year continue to Continue reading “Mr. Blunt — You have blood on your hands”
yeah I know you did not ask!
By any definition of the word terrorism that I can think of, drive-by shootings fit into the category of terrorism. So why are we not mobilizing against this internal terrorism? Sadly, the answer that I can come with involves race and class.
There is not a lot being reported on this, but one study I did find cited the following statistics from 2006:
“During the six-month period covered in this report, 549 drive-by shooting incidents were reported in the news media as identified by Google, claiming 156 lives and injuring 465 individuals.” 1
Earlier in the document the authors made the statement that they believed drive-by shootings to be vastly under reported.
The main point of this book is that words matter. And the words that we debate with have been chosen by the conservatives to the detriment of progressive causes.
Someone recently posted on Facebook a quote by Robert A. Heinlein that sums up our current political situation nicely:
“You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic.”
The authors phrased it thusly: Continue reading “The Little Blue Book by George Lakoff and Elisabeth Wehling”
yeah I know you did not ask!
I used to have faith in my fellow citizens and democracy. With so many of those fellow citizens thinking that the narcissistic egomaniac, Trump, is a viable choice for our president that faith has evaporated. The man has the intellectual depth of a sewage lagoon.
My Jewish wife has expressed to me that every time she sees an islamicphobic posting Facebook she feels like she has been kicked in the teeth. She sees islamphobia as just a different flavor of anti-Semitism. It is same swallow from the larger cup of racism and intolerance. “Why cannot everyone just remember the Golden Rule,” she said.
From Islam:
“No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself.”
From Judaism:
“What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellowman. This is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary.” ~~ Talmud, Shabbat 3id
From Christianity:
“All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye so to them; for this is the law and the prophets.” ~~ Matthew 7:12
“And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.” ~~ Luke 6:31
It strikes me that both sides of the gun debate are coming from the same place. They both fear the violence and crime that is present in society, especially when it involves guns. One side believes the solution is to arm as many people as possible. Then we would have a “cold war” of Mutually Assured Destruction, i.e. everyone not using their weapon as someone else might have a weapon. If they did encounter crime, they believe they could stop it. The other side seeks to remove guns from the equation believing that fewer guns led to fewer gun fatalities. Crime is less violent when the tools of crime are less violent.
Somehow the two sides need to sit down together, and rationally discuss the situation using objective evidence. They then need to arrive at mutual agreeable solutions. Operating from a place of fear, relying on urban myths, feelings, emotions and beliefs is not solving the issue.
That there is an issue with gun violence in this country is the one thing both sides can agree on. We should not have to live our lives from a place of fear. We are smart enough to solve this problem if we peel away down to fact based data and are brave enough to use what we find.
Sadly this woman has more sense than to run for President in the sick electoral process of this country.
In order to 
get through life we all have certain psychological defense mechanisms that we use more or less depending on the person and the situation. A very common one is rationalization which is defined as:
‘Rationalization is the cognitive distortion of “the facts” to make an event or an impulse less threatening. We do it often enough on a fairly conscious level when we provide ourselves with excuses. But for many people, with sensitive egos, making excuses comes so easy that they never are truly aware of it. In other words, many of us are quite prepared to believe our lies.’ 1
When psychologists talk of defense mechanisms, they are typically speaking of the individual. However, humans practice defense mechanisms as a group. While there are many areas that we practice rationalization, a frequent one in the United States is gun violence. Whether the killing is en masse or an individual, we continually hear comments Continue reading “Flags, Deflection, Guns, Rationalization”