Someday

My son scoffs at his parents because they still watch television poured into their house at exorbitant prices. Why not simply watch what you want when you want? His parents maintain a land line. It's a phone connected to the wall by wires. It doesn't allow you to watch television or play games, unless guessing who that really is when the caller ID says "private number" can be considered a game. His mother and father own hundreds of CDs and DVDs, perhaps clinging to the belief that after the zombie apocalypse there will be electricity to power the lasers that will allow them to watch Planes, Trains and Automobiles as many times as they might like. My son's parents will talk wistfully about Ethernet cables and hybrid cars.

And just maybe my son's kids will have the same puzzled look on their faces when someone talks about assault weapons.

"What were they assaulting, dad?"

"Mostly each other."

"Why?"

"No one really knows, but it may have been the video games we used to play or the music we listened to."

"What music did you listen to?"

"Let's see: Chainsmokers. Deadmaus. Black Sabbath."

"Black Sabbath?"

"Ask your grandpa about that."

"These assault weapons, why did people want them so bad?"

"Maybe they liked to pretend they were playing army."

"Army?"

"We used to have a great big group of men and women who would fight other big groups of men and women."

"Like the Olympics?"

"No. This was a lot more violent. Those assault weapons made it easier to be violent to a whole lot of people really fast."

"You mean killing them, don't you?"

"Well. Yeah."

"But these people weren't in the army?"

"Nope. Or at least most of them weren't at the time they did all that - killing."

"I don't get it."

"And that's great."

"Can we go over to grandma and grandpa's house to watch cable TV?"

"Maybe later, sweetheart. Why don't you go inside and see if mom needs any help with the replicator."

If You Asked

Thus far, no one has asked me what I think about teachers being armed. This is probably because I have been more than happy to share my feelings on the matter to anyone within earshot every time the suggestion is raised. If you haven't caught any of those rants online or in person, let me make sure that my position is clear:

No. 

If there is still some doubt in your mind as to exactly how I feel, I will direct you to this list of synonyms for asinine. Our "President" recently asserted that he never suggested that we give our teachers guns. Then he went on a rampage about exactly how he thought such a program would work. This included the suggestion that teachers get "a bit of a bonus" for being armed on campus. Which brings us to the crux of this argument: Why would anyone who is already being criminally underpaid for the work they do take on the additional responsibility of armed security guard? A bit of a bonus might entice some, but finding time to get out to the firing range while preparing lesson plans and grading papers and making copies and shopping for supplies that are not available due to budget shortfalls and making phone calls to check in on students who have been absent and often working a second job to make ends meet.

And suddenly an image flashed across my mind: George W. Bush on September 11, 2001 sitting in an elementary classroom. As the minutes ticked by, he sat there, barely taking in the goings-on inside the room as he struggled to make sense of what was happening up the coast from him. He was in Florida while airplanes were crashing into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. When he did get up to leave, he left the kids behind to wonder why his visit was cut short. It only now occurs to me the incredible danger surrounding those kids. Was there any kind of credible intelligence that could have been known that Emma E. Booker Elementary School was not a target? George W. was packed into his bulletproof limousine and whisked away to Air Force One. He was safe.

And so is our current "President." He recently tweeted thanks to his Secret Service detail for doing their job. He is surrounded by heavily armed guards at all times. Of course he feels safe. Nobody is suggesting that he would be even more safe if he was carrying his own gat. Maybe a nice bonus would be involved?

Never mind. Strike that. He is just the kind of nincompoop that would relish the opportunity to pop off a couple rounds while real law enforcement officers are trying to do their jobs. Which brings us to the next level of trouble. A deputy on duty outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on the day of the shooting resigned after security video was released showing him taking a defensive position outside the school instead of rushing in to save the day. Later in the week, there was an armed detail guarding that officer as the "President" called him a coward. More guns. 

And so what makes anyone believe that once gunfire erupts that all those "adept teachers" the "President" refers to wouldn't have a similar moment of self-preservation? Would they somehow undercut the awesome tales of heroism by students, staff and teachers during all of these mass shootings? 

No. Teachers are there to protect their students, not to return fire. On the other side of the argument, a cheeky fellow teacher suggested, if we were given guns, we could sell them to buy markers and headphones. See? Problem solved. 

Dream Job

I suppose you could blame Dave. Not me. A more famous and infinitely more amusing Dave: Letterman. To be more precise, you should blame the book about Dave and his Late Night show that was written back in the days when such things existed. I remember a part that was not a description of some of the wacky features of that show but rather a report on the work habits of the staff, specifically the writers. The one I remember best was about a guy who lived in California, a continent away from the rest of the crew. He would get up around six in the morning, go out and get the paper, sit down in front of the morning news shows and look for that one item about which he might craft a joke. A single joke. And sometime before noon he would polish it up and put it in the fax machine to send it to New York where it would be considered for that night's monologue.

Then he would go back to bed.

I wanted that job. I knew that it would take a certain degree of talent and sophistication as well as a willingness to throw fifty pounds of fertilizer at a wall to see if you could get one pound of it to stick. Each morning I get up and face a similar challenge. I open up Al Gore's Internet and pore over the headlines, looking for something that amuses me or, more often, puts a burr under my saddle. Then I open up a new post and begin to type furiously before that sensation leaves me. If I am lucky, I have latched on to something that will amuse and antagonize the folks lucky enough to stumble up on it.

As the saying goes, these days if you're not amused or antagonized you're not paying attention.

I don't have that job. When I finish typing and press Publish, I return to my regularly scheduled day. I have not made a penny off of these musings, though you are welcome to click on over to the gift shop and pick up a hard copy of a year's worth of what I had to say. Or you could continue stopping by here once a day to see what was on my mind that morning. Or just once a week since that allows a little more of that fertilizer to stick.

Meanwhile, I continue to use this space to vent my spleen, which sounds a little messier than it actually is. I still wonder what happened to that writer who had that job. I wonder what became of him once Dave (not me) retired. Is he writing his own sit-com? Is he delivering pizza? Or is he getting up early and scratching out a daily blog before he begins a day teaching school?

Hope And Change

There was a moment in the Town Hall Meeting, played out on CNN last Wednesday night, when a junior from Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida asked Senator Marco Rubio if he would go on record saying that he would not accept any more campaign money from the National Rifle Association. It was a moment among many in a nearly two hour confrontation between student survivors and representatives of the establishment status quo. It should be pointed out that by showing up at this event as a Republican, Senator Rubio was the lone representative of his party while Florida governor Rick Scott and the "President" either declined or ignored their invitation. This did mean that Mister Rubio stood on the stage and took the brunt of the anguish and fury of a crowd that has had enough. 

Did he cave? No. He did not. To his credit, under duress, he made a very interesting point: “U.S. politics is only aspect of our lives where changing your mind is a bad thing.” A pretty terrifying notion when the call comes down to the captain that there is an iceberg squarely in front of the ocean liner and the captain screams "Full speed ahead!" Slowing down or changing course is waffling. It's wimpy. The fact that he was unable to say that he would cut off funding from the NRA was no real surprise, but the moment when he said that he would consider legislation limiting magazine size and that he believes the age limit for buying rifles should be raised from eighteen to twenty-one was applauded and cheered by those in attendance.

Those in attendance were community members, families, faculty and students of the high school where just a week before there was yet another deadly school shooting. These were the #neveragain crowd, who were using their moment to cry out against the senseless killing of children in a place where nothing like that should ever happen. They want to be the last auditorium full of devastated individuals who cannot understand how something like this could happen. How long can this go on? 

And then there was the sheriff. Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel responded to the NRA representative who was there to show compassion by repeating talking points: “An 18-year-old kid should not have a rifle...They're in high school. These kids should not have a rifle. Bump stocks should be illegal. They should be outlawed forever. Automatic rifles should be outlawed forever. And anybody who says different, I don't know about other people, but Emma and I, we're calling BS on that.” And with that, he returned the focus of the meeting to Emma Gonzalez, whose impassioned words in the days after the tragedy have given hope and strength to a community that has seen enough. Heard enough. Had enough. 

Good for them. 

Law Abiding Citizens

Let's see: Over here we have this book that says, "Thou shalt not kill."

Over there we have this document that says we have the right to "bear arms."

That first one is the revealed word of God. At least that's how most readers tend to view it.

The second comes from the words of our founding fathers.

The first came from stone tablets delivered by a guy with white hair.

The second came from a bunch of white haired guys on some lovely parchment.

At first glance, they don't seem to conflict much. You could bear arms without killing. Unless you killed a deer or two. For food. For sport. Or you might need that gun to hurt someone who was trying to hurt you or your family. Still, you shalt not kill. Unless you were forced to. By the circumstances. Or the voices in your head.

Then you would be sentenced to a system that might ultimately find you guilty of murder and the punishment for that turns out to be killing you. It's not a fully cohesive system, binding these two firmly held beliefs together. The really clever folks are the ones who insist that it is the state doing the killing in that case, not a person. Or even better, it is God's will that the person being executed showed up on that particular gurney with humane chemicals injected into them by a machine. We are not killing anyone. Pretty convenient, right?

Then there's that vast middle ground, filled with apologists and rationalizers who will tell you these are more guidelines than actual laws, and a world with guns that frowns on killing is a messy one that cannot be fully regulated. Do you want to be the one to try and creep into Charlton Heston's crypt and pry that gun from his cold, dead hands? The threat of taking guns away is more fear inducing than the suggestion that we are using guns ninety-three times a day in America to break that sixth commandment. If it had been in the top five, maybe it would compete with the Second Amendment.
Every day Americans fail miserably in attempts to live by God's Law while we tenaciously cling to our constitutionally guaranteed right to own the guns that make all that commandment breaking possible.

Why don't we outlaw cars? They kill one hundred people a day in America. Let's remember also that you have to be licensed to operate a motor vehicle and there are a few ancillary benefits to owning a car aside from their killing potential. Guns, while being particularly ingenious and mysterious machines are kind of one-trick ponies. As the poet once suggested, "Hand guns are made for killin'
Ain't no good for nothin' else."  This was a guy who died in a plane crash, of course, so maybe we should ask God to outlaw those. 

Survey Says...!

What good is any survey? People who use them for evidence tend to point to them only when they confirm the point they were going to make themselves. In a world that includes Al Gore's Internet as a means to gather numbers and opinions, you can have your pick of evidence. Chocolate syrup is the most popular ice cream topping, for instance. Rome ranks number one in the race to determine the best place to visit on a vacation. The best record store is Hard Wax in Berlin. You don't have to look long to find the epitome of whatever category you might want to explore. The greatest chess game ever? Gerry Kasparov versus Deep Blue back in 1997. 

Of course, all of these are opinions, choices that fell outside the spectrum such as the nut who likes to put ground glass on their ice cream don't get a lot of play after they have been summarily dismissed. And it's probably not a good idea to ask a group of eight year olds where their favorite record store is. Records? What are those? 

But political scientists ought to be able to gather together and make a comprehensive list of the American presidents from best to worst. We should trust them, right? They're scientists. It just so happens that a group of political scientists did just that and released the "Official Results of the 2018 Presidents & Executive Politics Presidential Greatness Survey." Three hundred twenty surveys were issued and they received one hundred seventy "usable responses." This makes me wonder just exactly what the unusable. Returned via regular mail, scrawled in crayon, "Alfred E. Neuman." 

Those that were returned in a usable fashion were culled and calculated and your number one greatest president turns out to be Abraham Lincoln. No big surprise there, with the top five rounding out with George Washington, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson. Sure, I know there will be those who will want to argue the Teddy before Thomas ordination, but it's pretty hard to argue with that list.

Which brings us to the ground glass. At the bottom of the list we find the current occupant of the Oval Office. Below James Buchanan and William Henry Harrison. Even Richard Nixon sits at a very comfortable thirty-three. Barack Obama is number eight, up ten spots since the last time the survey was taken four years ago. If the current "President" were to make that kind of leap in four years, he would still rank just behind Nixon. 

Now it's time to take a survey to find out who believes in surveys. 

Lysistrategy

I am so proud of our children. When they woke up one day and realized that they were being slaughtered, they decided to do something about it. When they were told that their elected representatives were sending them thoughts and prayers, they said "thank you, no." Okay. They didn't say that exactly. They did have some suggestions about what their elected representatives could  do with their thoughts and prayers. Six years after Sandy Hook. Nineteen years after Columbine. A week after Parkland. Thoughts and prayers are not filling the holes left by the deaths of our children.
These children were not killed by foreign terrorists or illegal immigrants. They were killed by Americans, many of whom were the same age or just a little older than their victims. And now, decades after this terrible series of events began to unfold, those potential victims have had enough. They aren't going to stand around like sheep waiting to become yet another object for thoughts and prayers.

They are raising their voices. They are calling for action. They are walking out and laying down. In front of the White House. On President's Day. While the current "President" was honoring the victims of the most recent killing by not playing golf, students from the Washington D.C. area gathered in the street in front of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and staged a die-in. They laid there, silently, as cameras rolled and adults standing around the spectacle chanted "Shame, shame, shame."

I wondered why they hadn't chosen the front gates of Mar-a-Lago for their action, but then I realized that this is a savvy group. There are funerals taking place in real life this weekend. In Florida.

Showing up there would be in the poorest possible taste. Like Speaker of the House Paul Ryan arriving this past weekend at the Key Biscayne Ritz-Carlton for a fundraiser. These school shootings are ruining every party this season.

Do not expect the children to make this a one-off, either. There are walkouts and marches planned in the weeks and the months ahead. And if anybody understands how to effectively use social media, it's those darn kids. My thoughts and prayers are with them.

As they should be.