I am surprised that the gun debate has gone as far as it has. Obama is actually showing a little backbone on the issue and citizen groups are flexing unexpected muscles. Even some of the folks at Fox news are giving way to a tide of reasonableness and looking, at least at this moment and on this issue, like rational human beings with a functioning brain. NRA leadership is being portrayed as loopy extremists and a good many people, even gun lovers, are having to admit that Wayne Lapierre is likely bat-shit crazy and truly paranoid to the point of needing some medical attention.
But it looks like the reality of an American political system sold to the highest bidder is about to reassert itself. Republicans in the Senate will filibuster any weapons bill and thus derail any exercise of democracy that threatens the profit center of weapons manufacturers. The true curiosity is, what happens next?
Of course, in all probability, nothing happens next. Rational gun control dies on the vine of a corrupt government. Dozens of people continue to get killed every week by gun violence. And a large percentage of those killed and murdered continue to be children. But there must be a small chance that something will start to happen. After all, every change in society starts as a barely noticed footnote to that day's headlines. Perhaps, this time around, Americans will realize that their collective desire for a rational gun policy has been thwarted by a corrupt government. Not in some vague, the government is always corrupt, kind of way. Rather in a These-Fourteen-Senators-and-T/Party Representatives-bought-off-by-the-gun-lobby kind of way. Focused. Angry. Infuriated.
Infuriated, that is the key. At some point people are going to get angry. Not just irritated. Spitting mad. Furious. The kind of fury that takes to the streets. The kind of public fury that every politician of every type in the whole world dreads. The fury that has the Chinese government moving carefully so as not to put a dent in the improving life of their billion + citizens. The kind of fury that has North Korea's idiot savant of a "leader" talking war to keep his people from seeing the real enemy. (On the one hand I loathe this clown, on the other I fully realize that our government is doing the exact same thing to us.) The kind of fury the Ayatollahs tap into to topple tyrants, and that will some day turn on them as well.
The kind of fury it takes to bring down a corrupted government.
That kind of fury is like a forest fire. Once it gets going there is no real way to stop it. We have realized that is the way nature works. Fire is a natural part of renewal. Without it the forest decays, smothered in the detritus of past generations. The generation currently in power (mine) has left a pile of debris that includes the worship of greed, crony capitalism that loves nothing but profit, selfishness, an addiction to violence and war, and a religious fanaticism pounded into us in our youth (late 1940s and 1950s Leave it to Beaver morality) that we never quite managed to shake off. Our society is being choked to death by it.
Granting civil rights for gay people, ending the drug war, realizing only the rich profit from laws passed, sickened by the violence of the gun culture, tired of war, knowing the environment is changing, embracing and not fearing multiculturalism, understanding that a free society must be a just society, admitting that "our god" is probably not "the god", these are all struggling to grow out from under the pile of trash that is our current society / government. That trash pile needs to be burned away.
Maybe it starts by burning down the careers of politicians spitting in the face of Americans at the command of the gun lords.
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