The Flavor of Nectarines

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

The Flavor of Nectarines

Our lives are eternal when we are aware,
and our histories are less than dust when we are not.

Bite into a nectarine
and feel the sweet, fragrant juice
run down the sides of your mouth,
the soft flesh yielding to your tongue,
your fingers and lips
sticky
with the sweet kiss of succulent gratitude
from the orchards of late summer,
sending their seeds into the world –
blindly –
wrapped in enticing nourishment.
Leaves quiver like petals of light,
a flickering translucence in the breeze,
like a cloud of butterflies
scintillating as a breath of sun.
Close your eyes,
run your tongue along your syrupy lips,
and inhale the sweet swollen fragrance released.
Breathe it deep, into your lungs, into your blood, into your mind,
and feel the sunlight sinking through your skin,
the faintest brush of air gliding over the back of your hand –
isn’t everything here?,
completion,
eternity,
peace?
Who is it that is unable to find this?,
why is it necessary to search?
Is not God’s mercy great,
that in the farthest reaches
and briefest instants
even the least among us can find
the great bliss, the transforming grace?

Knowing what is right is embedded,
doing what is right is the test.
In the stilled mind
with no thought,
you know at any instant
what is right.
That is where God is.
For each, there comes a time to run,
a time to fight,
a time to stand,
and a time to abide.
When you release your desires, you lose your fear,
and find your self:
you awaken,
you live,
you transcend concepts and conventions,
you are released from your history,
and now, you are able to face death.
That is freedom in this world.
Once freed, your compassion is able to affect the lives of others.
This is peace.

3 September 2002

<><><><><><><>

Why I Am Leftist (Vietnam War)

Tet Offensive
Phase 1: 30 January – 28 March, 1968
Phase 2: 5 May – 15 June, 1968
Phase 3: 17 August – 23 September 1968.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
assassinated in Memphis, TN
4 April 1968
Riots broke out in about 100 US cities and towns over many weeks.

Robert F. Kennedy
assassinated in Los Angeles, CA
6 June 1968
RFK had won the CA primary election for DP presidential nominee that day.

Richard M. Nixon
elected US president
5 November 1968

In the fall (October-November) of 1968 during his election campaign as the Republican Party’s nominee for US president, Richard Nixon sabotaged the Paris Peace Talks between the Johnson Administration and the Communist Party of Vietnam (“North Vietnam”), by using Anna Chennault (of the deposed Nationalist Chinese regime) as a secret agent to contact the South Vietnamese regime of Nguyen Van Thieu and have him renege on his commitment to send a delegation to the scheduled Paris peace negotiations (Nixon promised Thieu a better deal, if Nixon became President), so the peace talks failed by not even starting.

This was an act of treason by Nixon during a time of war.

Nixon used the “failure” of the Johnson Administration to either “win the war” (militarily) or bring the four combatants (North Vietnam and the ‘Viet Cong’ versus South Vietnam and the U.S.A.) into serious armistice and peace negotiations, as an electoral issue justifying voting for him. Nixon won (over the DP’s Hubert Humphrey) by less than 1% of the popular vote.

Nixon and Henry Kissinger (National Security Advisor, then Secretary of State) then expanded the war (into Laos and Cambodia), and only in 1973 – 5 years later – were they able to get the Hanoi government (the Communist government of North Vietnam, and their allied popular forces in South Vietnam: the ‘Viet Cong’) back to the negotiating table in Paris, with the Communists finally agreeing once again to the concessions they had originally made in 1968.

During the interim, 22,000 additional Americans had died in the war, and perhaps a million more people of Vietnam (north and south) as well as Laos and Cambodia. This is all described in Episode 7 of Ken Burns’ 10 episode TV series, “The Vietnam War” (2017).

It was 50 years ago this month (during Phase 1 of the Tet Offensive) that I registered for the draft. My college deferment was cancelled at the end of 1968, and I was 1-A all of 1969. Bureaucratic delaying tactics and luck kept me from being inducted, and I drew a very high number in the Draft Lottery of December 1969, and so was passed up.

A tense time, and one that ensured I would forever be some kind of leftist.

The Lyndon Johnson tapes: Richard Nixon’s ‘treason’
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21768668

<><><><><><><>

Einstein-Hawking-Pi Day #1

March 14 is given the name “Pi Day” by many mathematics enthusiasts because the numerical calendar label “3/14,” for the month (March) then day (the 14th), coincides with the first three digits of the irrational number Pi, 3.14159…

I have called today, the 14th of March, 2018, “Einstein-Hawking-Pi Day #1” because it is the first instance of the triple ‘resonance’ of: an anniversary of Albert Einstein’s birthday, the actual date of Stephen Hawking’s death, and a Pi Day.

I commemorated the day by taking photographs of living eternity, that is to say eternal (so far as we are concerned) principles expressing themselves in radiant instants of life-giving beauty.

I added 10 of these photos (at maximum resolution) to my Flickr site, for display. They are the first ten scenics “from top down” at the following webpage. You can view them, and get technical details there.

MG,Jr. Photostream
https://www.flickr.com/photos/138500512@N05/

Enjoy

<><><><><><><>

Guns, Control, NRA, Mass Shootings, 2nd Amendment

Guns in America is a topic of undying interest, and we can be assured that many thousands more innocent lives will be sacrificed to the Gun Moloch God to keep it that way. This web-page is a collection of all my writings on ‘Guns in America,’ in an easy-to-read format that minimizes click-digressions to other web-pages and web-sites.

While I have offered solutions to America’s (U.S.A.’s) gun violence problem, in truth there is no need to do so because the solution is obvious and already in daily practice in civilized countries around the world. Unfortunately for the random targets of gun violence in the U.S.A., this country has allowed itself to become an open-air asylum for people afflicted with the ‘viral’ mental disease of Gun Cling, and worse still the U.S.A. has allowed the untreated mental patients with this disorder to run the asylum!

Gun Cling is an auto-erotic mental disorder of arrested development into emotional infantilism and sociopathic isolation. At best its sufferers are harmless “gun nuts,” and at worst they can be suicidal mass atrocity perpetrators.

The best cure is of course prevention, which involves kind and enlightened upbringing and education. The next best remedy is self-cure by the individual becoming motivated to improve their knowledge about life, people and society, and to strive to improve their intellect and moral character by confronting their fears and eliminating their hatreds and fantasies (e.g., racist and/or crudely religious).

Beyond that, it may be that there are no reliable enforced cures or ‘deprogramming’ methods. The ultimate elimination of an individual’s guncling disorder is the blunt instrument of superior firepower by law enforcement. Ideally, we would want to arrange our society to make this violent sanction unnecessary.

A FLOWCHART for the progression of guncling might be as follows:

A vulnerable individual —>

Ignorance —>

Fear —>

Low self esteem, lack of confidence, sense of inadequacy, loneliness —>

Denial; cowardice about facing/beating fear by self-educating —>

Bravado-mask; suppression of empathy, being racist —>

Want-get gun(s) —>

Gain comfort and companionship in fear-minded gun herd/church/cult —>

Gun-crutch to maintain a stunted intellectual and character development: an inability to deal with emotional reactions to life challenges and disappointments —>

NRA infantile single-issue tantrum of security-blanket gun-clinging —>

Reason, logic, morality are not involved; all words are distractions and lies, and also just loud outbursts and threats; guncling is an all-encompassing emotional life-lock —>

A lost and imprisoned soul.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Warren Burger “2nd Amendment Fraud” – 1991 PBS News Hour
https://youtu.be/Eya_k4P-iEo

The Second Amendment

The 2nd Amendment specifically states the “right to bear arms” is for the ability to maintain “a well regulated militia.” So the missing pieces of legislation are the requirements for each state that gun owners must be members of well regulated – by the Federal Constitution – state militias.

That means gun owners would have legal requirements on levels of training for the weapons they wish to own (more training and periodic testing for more powerful weapons), retesting (to maintain their qualifications to keep and bear arms – like periodic testing to keep drivers’ licenses), and the storage of those arms in armories.

When these militias are needed for local defense activities, or scheduled for required training exercises, then the members would have to assemble (as with jury duty, another civic duty) and follow the orders of their commanders in the use of their weapons. In fact they would be under disciplined military authority – not freelance or loose cannon unsupervised solo action.

Gun “patriots” would have no problem with adhering to this “strict interpretation” of the Constitution, and following the intentions of the sacrosanct Founding Fathers. The point of the 2nd Amendment is that everyone – young, old, sound-minded or insane – has the right to apply to prove they can meet the qualifications for being a member of a “well regulated militia,” or continue to participate in it – armed – so long as they maintain their required performance in it.

The failure to produce this necessary “regulating” and “supervisory” legislation is a dereliction of constitutional duty by both Federal and State legislative bodies, and executives, whose oath of office states they must “protect and defend the United States” and its Constitution.

Please refer to the comments (legal opinion) on this issue by former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Warren E. Burger (15th Chief Justice of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1986 – appointed by President Richard M. Nixon).

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Superheroes Require Mega-Victims

During the Roman Empire
crowds flocked to the Colosseum to see
their favorite gladiators kill many disposable victims,
so these fervent fans could experience
an ecstasy of entertainment
and fantasize about being would-be heroes
of glorious combat followed by popular acclaim.

In the American Empire
crowds flock to the big-screen Colosseums to see
their comic-book superheroes kill mega-evil super-villains
who kill many disposable victims,
so these fervent fans can experience
an ecstasy of entertainment
and fantasize about being would-be heroes
of glorious combat followed by popular acclaim.

Our bipolar dualities of superheroes and super-villains
require the mega-deaths of innocent mega-victims
– both real and imagined –
so our patriotic gunmen,
whether in police, the NRA, militias, or just lone sociopaths
– all in their closeted secret fears –
can fantasize about being would-be heroes
who will one day kill a bad guy and blaze to glory
to the ecstatic popular acclaim
of the telescreen-mesmerized masses
jammed into our handheld and big-screen Colosseums.

The reason we have so many guns in America
is because we have so many frustrated ignorant people.

21 February 2018

<><><><><><><>

https://manuelgarciajr.com/2018/02/22/superheroes-require-mega-victims/

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

When Life Is A Crime

The excrement of legalized racketeering by the vampire parasites on the nation’s life-blood
cultures the growth of murderous sociopaths who massacre the bright hopes
of our emerging and redeeming innocents, and our collective soul.

The raw cry of justice screams up from the blood-soaked streets and floors of our schools,
for retribution’s purge to sweep through the corridors of power, the temples of mammon,
and the sanctuaries of privileged bigotry and greed.

The peace of the nation is being blood-sacrificed in a raging war for power over life,
by our materialistic egotists of soulless privilege.

The warmth of kind hearts is freezing into the hardened prayer
for a just God to loose It’s avenging angels.

17 February 2018

<><><><><><><>

https://manuelgarciajr.com/2018/02/17/when-life-is-a-crime/

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Why the Columbine and Las Vegas Massacres?

After the 1999 school massacre in Columbine, Colorado – an exurbia community – by two disaffected teenage boys (who also killed themselves), I came to the conclusion that the killers’ “motive” was not at all a purposeful urge, goal, revenge or obsession, but instead a complete self-abandonment into nihilism – a giving up – and the horrible eruption of that destructive nihilism was a symptom of those boys’ lack of culture – an abysmal lack of culture. I see the same about Stephen Paddock, the shooter in Las Vegas; his fury to kill emerged out of a profound lack of culture.

It seems to me that these rapid-fire suicide-killers had been born into and raised (probably somewhat thoughtlessly) in a cultural void. Their world was a generic beyond-suburbia commuter outpost of sprawl, malls, video games and Internet pablum and porn, instead of real books of literature, real art instead of plastic flamingo-level decorations, and real music instead of throwaway canned between-commercials pop. They had never absorbed real culture, which is the emotional and intellectual glue that binds an individual to the wider human communities both in the present and through the long arc of time.

Those boys (young and old) had lives of material ease, but they had absolutely no spirit because the nurturing and feeding of the spirit – the essential purpose of culture – was absent from their lives. I believe the spiritual-cultural hollowness of their cores was a reflection of the spiritual-cultural desert that was their environment.

By their late teens the two Columbine killers had had enough of it, and could see nothing in their possible 60 to 70 years of future living except more of the same. That “more of the same” is the listless life Stephen Paddock lived until he too had had enough, at age 64. As they looked into their futures the Columbine teens could have thought that maybe they could become insurance agents or realtors, or some other “normal” occupation that would see them harnessed to the spinning wheels of pointless money-making. And they would have their free time to be just as hollow as their comfort-providing work would be: more video games or video poker?, hanging out at the same beer joints with the same kind of empty-headed crowd?, watching another game on TV?, getting married and keeping up the same kind of families they had grown up in?

What would be the point? It was like looking down an arrow-straight empty four-lane freeway across a dry-lake salt-flat that stretched out to their 80th year and led to nothing but a dead end. Why spend the better part of a century bored, waiting to get to nowhere after having spent the whole trip doing nothing because nobody cared anyway, and end up just as useless as they were now, then die unnoticed and thereafter remain forgotten? Why not cut out all the slow stuff, the boring, tiresome waiting and pointless work, and just get one incredible orgasmically exciting machine-gun humping high, and then check out in a blink before the let-down set in?

I think it is the deep, personal absorption of and sensitivity to culture, and even tradition, that fills a psyche with the substance needed for living life joyfully; and the substance which occupies what would otherwise be a spiritual-cultural void that can only produce interminable lassitude or explosions of destructive nihilism erupting out of deeply submerged despair.

I think the appreciative absorption of culture, along with the received gifts of affectionate nurturing, kind friendship and confident love, are the necessary courses in a complete education of the human heart. I see major tragedies like the Columbine and Las Vegas massacres, as well as so many little-noticed murders of the same sort, to be the result of our society’s many failures at providing all our people with that necessary education of the heart.

I was prompted to write these comments after reading the following article, pointed out to me by Anthony Tarrant.

I went to School with the Vegas Shooter
Greg Palast
13 October 2017
https://dissidentvoice.org/2017/10/i-went-to-school-with-the-vegas-shooter/

See Anthony’s comments at his blog page:

Why Stephen Paddock Snapped In Vegas
15 October 2017
https://anthonytarrant.wordpress.com/2017/10/15/why-stephen-paddock-snapped-in-vegas/

<><><><><><><>

The photo above is of John F. Kennedy’s grave as it appeared in April 1964. My photos of this grave are the only ones I have with any relation to guns and gun violence.

<><><><><><><>

Above now published at Dissident Voice:

Why the Columbine and Las Vegas Massacres?
18 October 2017
https://dissidentvoice.org/2017/10/why-the-columbine-and-las-vegas-massacres/

<><><><><><><>

https://manuelgarciajr.com/2017/10/16/why-the-columbine-and-las-vegas-massacres/

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Guns Are America’s Masturbation

The US news at the moment is dominated by the deep and shocking tragedy of the rampage killing on December 14 in Newtown, Connecticut, where a lone gunman (a 20 year old male) first killed his mother in their home, then went to the Sandy Hook Elementary School to randomly shoot 20 children (ages 6 and 7) and six adults dead, wound one other person, and finally kill himself. Total casualties: twenty-eight dead, one wounded.

The acrimonious debate on “gun control” versus “2nd Amendment rights” in the United States has been momentarily reignited. While this particular massacre is the evil work of one particular sociopath, undoubtedly precipitated by a lack of psychological soundness and moral strength completely disintegrating under the pressure of resisting some personal realization too shameful to confront, the fact that such a disintegration could so easily access modern semi-automatic weaponry and use it at will is a searing indictment of the abysmal state of the collective character of the American people.

So long as guns are America’s most fiercely held form of masturbation, there can be no rational discussion of how to keep shooting sports and mental illness separated, nor of the crafting of intelligent regulatory procedures for keeping the public safe from the pathological misuse of guns.

In 2011, I wrote two articles whose aim was to prod discussion toward such a rational solution. But, I have no hope such is possible until (if ever) a major change occurs in the collective character of the American public. The root of the problem is who we are as a people, not what we do with guns nor how we regulate them. We have to be, individually and collectively, a radically different kind of people in order to maintain a safe, orderly, intelligent and minimal use of firearms. Our debates and arguments about guns — “control” versus “rights” — are all excuses and denials because we don’t really want to admit to the root failure, nor take responsibility for it. We just want to masturbate no matter who has to die for it.

[The following two DV articles are given in full further below.]

Gun Malpractice Insurance
25 January 2011
http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/01/gun-malpractice-insurance/

Gun Freedom, or Owning A Gun The Way The Constitution Intended You To
12 January 2011
http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/01/owning-a-gun-the-way-the-constitution-intended-you-to/

Looking back on these articles, I see them as retreats into the absurd in desperation to find some effective procedure to prevent such overwhelming and unnecessary tragedies. One can only hope.

15 December 2012

<><><><><><><>

https://manuelgarciajr.com/2012/12/15/guns-are-americas-masturbation/

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Gun Malpractice Insurance

In response to my recent article [next below] on “gun freedom”, I received several disapproving letters from people with a “pro-gun” attitude. Most of their arguments centered on the 2nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and the taken-for-granted assumption that having a gun close at hand would always offer them greater protection. Another pro-gun argument is that gun owners are prepared to “defend freedom” and the “constitution” at a moment’s notice in the event of some attack, invasion or national catastrophe — so long as they haven’t been “disarmed” in advance by “gun control.”

The “defend freedom” argument is laughable. Gun owners, as an organized political group, have been invisible in the defense of freedom in the U.S., and they have had many opportunities to do so, from defending civil rights in the 1960s right up to today: fighting against the Patriot Act, fighting to end the Iraq and Afghan-Pakistan wars, fighting to stop the ongoing “renditions,” fighting to close down U.S. military torture prisons like at Guantanamo, fighting to deconstruct the prison-industrial system and black confinement gulag. You can look in any direction today and find a freedom that needs defending immediately. The gun owner PACs have only shown an interest in defending their own freedom to play with their guns, regardless.

However, one pro-gun argument I received was mildly creative, and deserves a response. The argument states that 120,000 (120K) accidental deaths occur every year because of mistakes by some of the 700,000 (700K) U.S. medical doctors. This is a ratio of medical accident deaths per doctor of 1/5.83, which we can round to 1/6. So, for every 6 U.S. doctors there is one medical-accident death per year. However, for 80,000,000 (80M) gun owners (in a total U.S. population of 311.9M) there are only 1500 accidental gun deaths a year, or one per 53.3K gun owners, annually. The claim is then made that “statistically, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners.”

I guess this proves you should quit going to the doctor (and taking any prescriptions, which might just poison you), and you had better pack a gun. That way you can be sure that any gun accident occurring near you happens to somebody else (since you’ll be doing the pointing), and you can also protect yourself by shooting any doctor that comes too close.

This silly comparison of (and obvious joke on) iatrogenic and gun-caused accidental deaths does suggestion one idea, which is amplified in what follows: gun malpractice insurance.

Consider the following data:

75.7K non-fatal gunshot injuries per year in the U.S., of which:
52.5K are deliberate,
23.2K are accidental (statistics for 2000, from the US-CDC);

16K homicides/year in the U.S., of which:
9K by hand guns,
2K by other guns
(11K for gun homicides, total),
2K by knives,
2K by other methods,
1K by blunt objects;

17K suicides/year by guns (2004).

So, about 28K gun-deaths/year in the U.S.

For 311.9M people (U.S. population), this works out to:

gun homicides/person (or, probability of being murdered by a gun): 1/28K,

total homicides/person (or, probability of being murdered by any means): 1/20K,

gun suicides/person (or, probability you’ll shoot yourself dead): 1/18K,

gun deaths/person (or, probability of being killed by a gun): 1/11K,

gunshot injuries/person (or, probability of getting shot, and living): 1/4K.

Now, lets see how this comes out per gun owner (using 80M U.S. gun owners):

gun homicides (in general population)/#owners: 1/7K,

gun suicides (in general population)/#owners: 1/5K,

gun deaths (in general population)/#owners: 1/3K,

gunshot injuries (in general population)/#owners: 1/1K.

So each year:
for every 1000 U.S. gun owners, 1 person is shot,
for every 3000 U.S. gun owners, 1 person is shot dead,
for every 5000 U.S. gun owners, 1 person shoots themselves dead,
for every 7000 U.S. gun owners, 1 person is murdered by gunshot.

Recall that for every 6 doctors there is 1 medical-accidental death per year. The hazards of medical practice have long been known and form the basis of the malpractice insurance industry (which, by the way, does a lot to raise the cost of “medicine,” this cash flow overhead going to insurance companies; how about nationalizing those companies to lower the cost of health care?)

A U.S. human is worth about $2M for a “reasonable” wrongful death damages/insurance settlement (the equivalent of $50K for a 40 year working life). (Yes, this is all very crass, but we are restricting argument to the absurdist confines of U.S. capitalist realpolitik.) However, court challenges to wrongful death claims, and legislation for protecting many industries like the airlines, set ridiculously low limits on settlements for fatal accidents, nearer $250K. So, I’ll use an average settlement of $0.5M to estimate the cost of malpractice insurance:

120K medical-accidental deaths/year, at $0.5M/per = $60B.

In fact the cost of medical liability insurance in the U.S. is about $55.6B/year, close to our estimate. However, since insurance companies probably absorb 30% to 50% of revenue for profit and overhead, the actual “average” settlement paid out must be closer to $250K to $350K.

For the 700K U.S. doctors, the average cost would be: $60B/700K = $85.7K = $7K/month. So U.S. doctors making $170K/year may spend up to half their income on their malpractice insurance (and or legal fees).

Fine.  Now let’s apply the same principle to gun owners. Let us allocate the cost of gun injury and death to “gun malpractice,” to be paid for by gun malpractice insurance, which gun owners would buy to compensate gunshot victims.

To estimate the cost of gun malpractice insurance let’s use measly settlements of:

$250K per gunshot death (paid to family members, obviously),
$100K per gunshot injury (paid for victim’s medical/rehabilitation & job/pay-loss expenses),

then for:

11K gun homicides/year, at $250K/per = $2.75B,

17K gun suicides/year, at $250K/per = $4.25B,

(28K gun deaths/year, at $250K/per = $7B),

75.7K gunshot non-fatal injuries/year, at $100K/per = $7.57B.

Total gun malpractice liabilities/year = $14.57B, round to $15B.

Now divide the cost among a total of 80M owners:

gun malpractice insurance premium (cost per owner) = $15B/80M = $188. A bargain, round generously to $200/year.

So it is entirely fair to charge gun owners about $200/year for “gun malpractice” insurance, which would help defray the costs to victims of gunshot. If the average awards were higher by a factor of 5 (to $1.25M per death and $500K for non-fatal injury), then the insurance premium would be $1000/year (and profit overhead for the insurance companies would raise premiums further).

Charging gun owners $1000/year for mandatory gun malpractice insurance does not seem unfair by comparison with what is done with M.D.’s, and it would not in any way infringe on gun owners’ sacred 2nd Amendment right to “defend freedom” personally. Such insurance would do a great deal to rein in both the private and public costs of U.S. trauma-response and health-care. Also gun malpractice insurance would be a great new capital industry, and such companies would probably be desirable investment vehicles.

It is obvious that the people of the U.S. accept the costs in gunshot injuries (76K/year) and deaths (28K/year) in the general population (312M), for the maintenance and convenience of unrestricted (or nearly so) gun ownership (80M owners). While no individual wants to be a victim of gun violence, we accept possibly having to make such personal sacrifice in order to uphold the higher social benefit of preserving the 2nd Amendment right of almost anyone being able to have all the guns of their choice as soon as possible.

However, some less-indulgent people, who do not have as high a regard for the U.S. Constitution as to accept this socialist accommodation, may agitate annoyingly for “gun control,” the restriction to gun ownership by legislation, even constitutional amendment. One argument they can use favorably is that the costs of gun violence are now borne unfairly by members of the public, gun owners or not, who happen to get shot.

This argument can be met by issuing gun malpractice insurance to gun owners, the proceeds of which will help compensate victims of gun violence (and create a new line of profitable insurance products). The existence of such insurance could be used by gun owners to indemnify them, individually and collectively, from “gun malpractice” liabilities. Indemnification would undoubtedly be set by legislation making gun malpractice insurance mandatory, in a similar way that medical malpractice insurance and automobile driving liability insurance are mandated.

Gun malpractice insurance would make maintenance of our 2nd Amendment freedom a win-win for both gun-owners and the non-gun members of the public, so long as you personally didn’t get shot up too badly. But if you did find yourself randomly chosen to participate in the socializing duty of gun action absorption, then you would have the comfort of knowing that the gun owners of America had provided for you to receive an immediate award of insurance money to help defray your medical expenses, and whatnot. That, and the red badge of courage pride you would have for your part in upholding the 2nd Amendment, would make you happy to be able to live with such freedom as we have in this country. Freedom carries responsibilities.

<><><><><><><>

Gun Malpractice Insurance
25 January 2011
http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/01/gun-malpractice-insurance/

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Gun Freedom, or Owning A Gun The Way The Constitution Intended You To

Since the January 8th shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, Arizona, in which 13 others were wounded and six killed, including 9 year old Christina Taylor Green who was born on September 11, 2001, there has been a renewed public debate about “gun control.”

If you have ever masturbated or been hosted to an orgasm with a living or even an artificial phallus, or you have experienced the deep satisfaction of a nitrocellulose-warmed and jolted Muladhara chakra, as described by John Lennon in his primal scream song “Happiness Is A Warm Gun,” then you know that the gun control debate is impervious to logical assault.

Nevertheless, I wish to make a suggestion.

First, let me say that I have no problem with anyone owning all the guns they want, so long as they don’t actually kill anyone (or anything) with them. Actually, that is too stringent; I don’t mind if a gunslinger absolutely hellbent on killing someone kills themselves — and no one else. This is a clean solution to the problem of finding a target for the killing urge and simultaneously safeguarding the public. I admit the result may not be entirely satisfactory to the family members of the killer, but I think it the best compromise short of avoiding a killing entirely.

Some have suggested that it is remotely possible that on rare occasions a shooting death would be a humanitarian blessing. This type of thinking usually seeps out of militaristic and war-games fantasies. However, I think such possibilities are so rare in civilian life that we can discount giving this excuse further consideration.

Proponents of unrestricted gun ownership and use usually base their argument on the 2nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and the further argument of applying a “strict interpretation” to the Constitution: “following the intent of the framers,” or the intent of “the founding fathers,” without allowing for any re-interpretations — “deviations” they would say — as informed by later historical developments and evolved social thought.

Very well. My suggestion is the following. Allow for the unrestricted ownership and use of guns and ammunition as they existed in 1789, when the Constitution and its first ten amendments were written. This would conform EXACTLY to the intent of the framers. It would satisfy the 2nd Amendment freedom to “bear arms,” without allowing for any deviations from ‘strict interpretationalism’ that would excuse the weaseling in of ownership of semi-automatic and automatic guns, and anything beyond ball, shot and black powder for ammunition: no full metal jackets, no nitrocellulose propellant, no late 19th century cordite-filled cartridges, not even percussion caps (from about 1830). Just flintlocks.

If it was good enough for the Founding Fathers, it’s good enough for you.

<><><><><><><>

Gun Freedom, or Owning A Gun The Way The Constitution Intended You To
12 January 2011
http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/01/owning-a-gun-the-way-the-constitution-intended-you-to/
and
https://www.counterpunch.org/2011/01/12/gun-freedom/

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Rampage Killing In Aurora, Colorado

The outrage in Aurora, Colorado on July 20, 2012 is now dominating the news.
Just below is a partial list of rampage killings in recent times in the U.S. (otherwise Europe), and all after 1983 (those selected are mostly between 1999-2012). A much fuller set of lists (by category of rampage killing: in geographical regions, as school shootings, workplace shootings, hate crimes, familicides, vehicular, grenade, and by other means of mass killing) is given at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rampage_killers

Some recent rampage killings:

City/Town – State – Date – (died/injured)

San Diego, California, July 18, 1984, (21/19)

Jacksonville, Florida, June 17-18, 1990, (11/6)

Killeen, Texas, October 16, 1991, (23/19-22)

Littleton, Colorado (Columbine High School shooting), April 20, 1999, (13/21)

Atlanta, Georgia, July 27-29, 1999, (12/13)

Red Lake, Minnesota (school shooting), March 21, 2005, (9/5-7)

Blackburg, Virginia (school shooting), April 16, 2007, (32/17)

Binghamton, NY, April 3, 2009, (13/4)

Kinston, Samson and Geneva, Alabama, March 10, 2009, (10/6)

Fort Hood Texas (workplace shooting), November 5, 2009, (13/30)

Tucson, Arizona (shooting of US Rep. Gabrielle Giffords), January 8, 2011, (6/12)

Oslo and Utoya, NORWAY (hate crime) July 22, 2011, (77/42-242)

Toulouse and Montauban, FRANCE (hate crime), March 11-22, 2012, (7/8)

Oakland, California (religious school shooting), April 2, 2012, (7/3)

Aurora, Colorado (“Dark Knight” Movie House), July 20, 2012, (12/58)

The Aurora tragedy has rekindled the debate over gun control in the media, for example:

58 Murders a year by Firearms in Britain, 8,775 in US
by Juan Cole (21 July 2012)
http://www.juancole.com/2012/07/58-murders-a-year-by-firearms-in-britain-8775-in-us.html

and

Colorado Gun Laws Remain Lax, Despite Some Changes
by John Schwartz (20 July 2012)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/21/us/colorado-gun-laws-remain-lax-despite-changes-after-columbine.html

However, the presidential candidates have been careful to avoid talking about gun control, even as they “honor” the victims at Aurora:

Obama Joins Romney in Gun-Control Silence After Shootings
By John McCormick (July 21, 2012)
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-07-20/obama-joins-romney-in-reticence-on-gun-control-after-shootings

Gun control is not an issue that can be discussed rationally in the United States, because in this country gun ownership is masturbation. After the shooting rampage and attempted assassination of US Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), I wrote two articles on guns and society (“gun control”):

Gun Freedom, or Owning A Gun The Way The Constitution Intended You To
12 January 2011
[see further above]

Gun Malpractice Insurance
25 January 2011
[see further above]

It’s hopeless. These occasional massacres, perpetrated by young to early middle aged frustrated males, are the price we accept to keep our personal arsenals. Why do we need them? Because we are afraid. Why are we afraid? Because too many of us are of weak character and cruel. Why is that? Because ignorance is allowed to dominate too many of our lives.

23 July 2012

<><><><><><><>

https://manuelgarciajr.com/2012/07/23/rampage-killing-in-aurora-colorado/

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Love & Life, Then & Now

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Love & Life, Then & Now

When I was young,
life was fast
and love was slow.

Now I’m old,
life is slow
and love is fast.

In the 1960s
girls wore miniskirts
and I wanted to see more.

Fifty years later
they wear leggings
and I want to see less,
much less.

Her:
“Oh!, So it’s my fault, huh?”
Him:
“You are the fault of my life,
and sometimes it has an earthquake.”

Gerrymandered expression is mandatory
to be loved by all, then and now.
But
I’m old, bold, cold, told and unsold,
so who cares?

11 March 2018

<><><><><><><><>

Abortion: White Panic Over Demographic Dilution

A September 6, 2017 report by the PBS Newshour (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/white-christians-now-minority-u-s-population-survey-says) states that “White Christians are now a minority of the U.S. population,” at 43%. My op-ed stream-of-rant reaction (perhaps impolite?) to this now established demographic fact follows.

One motivation for US conservatives’ opposition to abortion – “a woman’s right to choose” – as stated by demographer Ben Wattenberg (after the 1970s in his increasingly neoconservative later years), and cited by Jane Elliott (the wonderful educator) in her anti-racism teachings, is that white supremacists’ great fear is over demographic dilution.

American conservatives’ opposition to abortion is not primarily concerned with preventing Blacks, minorities and the poor from procreating too many (and “too costly” to the public purse) non-white babies, but in fact to prevent white women from producing too few white babies.

This was exactly the policy of the Nazi regime in Germany, when bounties were paid for high fertility by acceptably white – “Aryan” – women. The fertility rate of Whites (in Europe, in the U.S.A., in South Africa, in Israel with its captive and concentration-encamped Palestine) is the lowest of all ethnicities/races. Generally speaking, the poorer and darker people are, and the closer to the equator they live or come from, the more children they are likely to have produced and/or have in their families. There is a worldwide darkening of the complexion of humanity underway.

Were there not immigration into the wealthy and comfortable Northern European nations, which we used to think of as “pure white,” they would be losing population in coming decades (if not already). There is a direct INVERSE correlation between an ethnic/racial segment of a national population having greater educational attainment and financial security, and a higher standard of living (a higher level of their nation’s Human Development Index, as tallied by the U.N.), and their fertility rate. The education and emancipation of poor Third World women – teaching them to read, and giving them means of gaining independent income – is the best way to reduce runaway fertility and stabilize “overpopulation.” That is why Whites have the lowest fertility rate as compared with darker and poorer people.

So, Northern Europe, the U.S.A. and other wealthy White enclaves are seeing their share of the population drop (proportionally in their nations). This is due to higher competing fertility more so than by “invasive immigration” by non-whites and foreigners of different type from that of the nativists.

In one sense the Nazi policy was kinder than that of tight-fisted US conservatives today, in that the Nazis provided good maternal medical care nationally to their favored “Aryan” portion of the German population (from 1933 till the war destroyed domestic life in Germany).

Jane Elliott’s basic point is that US white supremacist panic about demographic dilution is what lies behind American political anti-abortion. The pseudo-moralistic religiosity camouflage layered over this “pro-life movement” is just to hide its racist foundation. This religious put-on is easily revealed as a fraud by the complete lack of concern by “moral majority” and “tea party” type nativist-racists about any real threats to women and girls by good-old-boy Roy Moore type child molesters, and other sexual harassers of women, like Donald Trump and many other men in power, especially if white and “conservative.”

Do you imagine the Republicans and their base (indeed) supporters would now be yawning, instead of incensed, over the Stormy Daniels ’Castoff Porn Star Lover Of The President’ affair if it was Barack Obama (or even serial masher Horny Billy the C) she was calling out instead of Trump?

<><><><><><><>

VERSION #2

Abortion: White Panic Over Demographic Dilution
17 May 2019

What is behind the bigotry masquerading as sanctimonious religiosity fervently opposed to abortion in the United States?One motivation for US conservatives’ opposition to abortion – “a woman’s right to choose” – as stated by demographer Ben Wattenberg (in his increasingly neoconservative later years, after the 1970s), and cited by the wonderful educator, Jane Elliott (“White Fear” https://youtu.be/0k3yCG7PHzg), in her anti-racism teachings, is that white supremacists’ great fear is over demographic dilution.

American conservatives’ opposition to abortion is not primarily concerned with preventing Blacks, Latinos, minorities and the poor from procreating too many — and “too costly” to the public purse — non-white babies, but in fact to prevent white women from producing too few white babies. 60% of the 1.6 million abortions annually in the United States are for white women.

The banning of abortion was exactly the policy of the Nazi regime in Germany, when bounties were paid for high fertility by acceptably white – “Aryan” – women. The fertility rate of Whites in Europe, in the U.S.A., in South Africa, and in Israel with its captive and concentration-encamped Palestine, is the lowest of all ethnicities/races. Generally speaking, the poorer and darker people are, and the closer to the equator they live or come from, the more children they are likely to have produced and/or have in their families. There is a worldwide darkening of the complexion of humanity underway.

Were there not immigration into the wealthy and comfortable Northern European nations, which we used to think of as “pure white,” they would be losing population in coming decades, if not already. There is a direct INVERSE correlation between an ethnic/racial segment of a national population having greater educational attainment and financial security with a higher standard of living (a higher level of their nation’s Human Development Index, as tallied by the U.N.), with respect to their fertility rate. That is why Whites have the lowest fertility rate as compared with darker and poorer people.

The education and emancipation of poor Third World women – teaching them to read, and giving them means of gaining independent income – are the best ways to reduce runaway fertility and stabilize “overpopulation.” Demographic economists calculate that a stabilized world population of 2 to 4 billion people could live with comfortable standards of living in a stable world economy of much greater equality, and which was in balance with Nature; at present there are over 7.7 billion people on our planet. (The idea of reducing world population by 50% or more in 3 to 4 generations, is contentious and involved, and reserved for another essay in the future — maybe.)

So, Northern Europe, the U.S.A. and other wealthy White enclaves are seeing their share of the population drop, proportionally in their nations. This is due to higher competing fertility more so than by unregulated “invasive immigration” by non-whites and foreigners of different type from that of the nativists.

In one sense the Nazi policy was kinder than that of tight-fisted US conservatives today, in that the Nazis provided good maternal medical care nationally to their favored “Aryan” portion of the German population, from 1933 till the war destroyed domestic life in Germany, by 1945.

Jane Elliott’s basic point is that US white supremacist panic about demographic dilution is what lies behind American political anti-abortion. The pseudo-moralistic religiosity camouflage layered over this “pro-life movement” is just to hide its racist foundation. This religious put-on is easily revealed as a fraud by the complete lack of concern by “moral majority” and “tea party” type nativist-racists:

about childhood poverty and malnutrition, and the abandonment by government of poor children to abysmal “education;”

about white nativist enthusiasm for, instead of their repulsion at, the snuffing out of “precious life” by the brisk police execution of black, brown, mentally challenged, and alternatively sexual people disfavored by Bibleist Bigotry, and arbitrarily assigned as athwart the law; and also the favoring of the legalized lynching known as “capital punishment;”

and about hollow Christianity’s utter lack of concern for any real threats to women and girls by good-old-boy Roy Moore type child molesters, and other sexual harassers of women, like Donald Trump and many other men in power, especially if White (or on the Supreme Court) and “conservative.”

This White nativist Bible-thumping Christian (sic) fear of demographic dilution has two components:

1. “White Christians are now a minority of the U.S. population,” at 43% (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/white-christians-now-minority-u-s-population-survey-says), and

2. Between 1950 and 1970, the fractional White population dropped from its highest proportion since 1700 (about 90%) to nearly 88%. The fractional Black population rose from 10% to 11%; and the fractional Hispanic population grew at an accelerating pace — more than doubling — from 2.1% to over 4.4%. During the 40 years between 1970 and 2010, the fractional White population dropped significantly from 88% to 72%. The fractional Black population rose modestly from 11% to 12.6%; and the fractional Hispanic population zoomed from 4.4% to 16.3% (almost quadrupling proportionately). In the year 2000, the fractional Black and fractional Hispanic populations were essentially equal (12.3% and 12.5%, respectively), and subsequently the fractional Hispanic population became larger, and continues growing faster.

The trends shown above are what fuel US white supremacy, both in sentiment and in political action. The growth of the US Hispanic population is driven overwhelmingly by a higher fertility rate, less so by immigration. White people, worldwide, are the richest “racial” population, and they have the lowest fertility rate (more money, less kids). “Darker” and poorer populations have higher fertility rates.

Trumpism (which includes anti-abortionism for white people too), the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and the former apartheid by and for white South Africa were/are wars against demographic dilution, perpetrated by the wealthy white low ‘fertiles’ (WWLFs) against poor dark high ‘fertiles’, (PDHFs). These “heart of whiteness” wars against demographic dilution are also wars for exclusionary capital hoarding (“race capitalism”).

Also, these wars are the echoes of the slave-owning White fears of the 17th through 19th centuries (over slave revolts), and the fears by the European imperialism of the 18th through 20th centuries (enacted through colonial wars). There is tremendous resistance among the world’s people to tolerate each other and share the Earth, for doing so would tumble capitalism, authoritarianism, patriarchy and religion.

While there is certainly a strong component of a “war on women” in anti-abortionism, to cover for chauvinist male insecurity that seeks idiotic reassurance by possessing and dominating women, the deeper wellspring of American anti-abortionism is the White supremacist fear of demographic dilution.

<><><><><><><>

Also at Counter Punch:

Abortion: White Panic Over Demographic Dilution?
20 May 2019
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/05/20/abortion-white-panic-over-demographic-dilution/

<><><><><><><>

CORRECTION:

I was mistaken to say 1.6M abortions/year are performed in the U.S. The actual number is hard to pin down; from several sources I find that abortions/year reported to the CDC amount to about 650,000 in recent years, BUT not all states report abortions within their state to the CDC, California and Florida (high abortion states) being among them, and the unreported (to the CDC) number is about 180,000+. So, accounting for that, one site claims “the estimated number of U.S. abortions in 2015 closer to 826,199.” The wikipedia article on abortion states “1.1 million in 2011.” So it seems the actual number is in the range of 800,000 to 900,000.

<><><><><><><>