Saving the world for the rest of us

I’ve figured out what the problem is.  It’s men!

Who starts and perpetuates wars?  Who become terrorists, dedicated to destroying themselves and as many innocent people as they can take with them?  Who shoot little girls in the face because they are scared to death to allow females equal rights and opportunities?  Who tend to be obsessed with violence, particularly violence with guns, in everything from video games, to movies, to what they play on the playground?  Who go on murderous, assault-weapon rampages, killing dozens of innocent people?  Who has to turn everything into a competition, a matter of one-upmanship, of mine-is-bigger-than yours? Who commits rape, incest, and the vast majority of domestic violence?  Who commits most of the crime, period?

In a word, Men!

Not all men, of course.  Indeed, virtually every man I am friends with, am related to, or even, as far as I know, know, does not do any of the above.  But the people who do do the above are, for the most part, other men.  Testosterone-laden men, who have not managed to evolve beyond the aggressive, violent mind-set that may have helped to insure survival back in the bad old days, but now serves only to make the world a place where bad things that do not have to happen, endlessly happen.

So what are we gonna do about these guys?  The “we” being the women of the world, and those non-violent, non-bullying men – in other words, civilized men – who do not fit into the category of Undesirables?  How do we wrest power away from those guys who do not hesitate to resort to violence when things are not going to suit them?  In places like the United Stated, the other Western industrialized nations, women obviously need to make up a larger portion of their countries’ legislative bodies, have more of a voice on what bills are passed.  And we need more female judges who don’t have a problem with handing out stiff punish-ment at sentencing.  You could say, we need to get tough on crime!

For example, why isn’t the automatic penalty for rape chemical castration?  Note that it actually is a possible punishment in several countries, including Australia and New Zealand, and even nine U.S. states, but there is a question as to how often this punishment is meted out.  And indeed, it’s a choice; those convicted of sex crimes, particularly crimes against children, can opt for chemical castration, rather than jail time.  But why on earth should it be a choice?  You rape, you molest children; as far as I’m concerned you’ve lost your right to choose what you’re going to do with that penis.  But since there is absolutely nothing that all men fear more than a loss of their manhood, it’s awfully difficult to get a bunch of, for the most part male, lawmakers, to make that the required punishment for sex crimes.  But for gods’ sake, think how the incidence of rape, of child molestation, would go down, if every man who committed such a crime knew that would be his punishment?  And if the argument is, no then they’d just kill their victims, because the punishment for murder could be less (in their eyes) than that for rape, then let’s  make castration the punishment for rape, even if the victim is also murdered.  In short, you rape, no matter what else you do, you lose the ability to rape again.  And for that matter, you kill somebody, you die!  Despite my basically liberal political tendencies, I am for the death penalty.  Folks, we need to get rid of the Bad Guys!

The gun control controversy is another area where we need to wrest power away from violence-loving men.  All those men out there rushing to buy up as many guns as they can, in desperate fear that they’re about to lose their precious right to own as many, and whatever kinds of, guns as they wish (which as a matter of fact the Second Amendment does not guarantee) need to be reined in.  And we, the civilized people of the world, are the ones who are going to have to do it.  Note that I am not saying a man who like to shoot, who owns a gun, who likes to hunt, is necessarily one of the Bad Guys.  But if he thinks this right of his is more important than maintaining the safety of an entire country, then he goes into the corral with the rest of the Undesirables.

But what do we do with all the guys in that corral?  Send them all to Mars, where they can duke it out amongst themselves?  And of course, the first problem is, how do we get them all into that corral?  When the major problem of your planet is nearly one half of your planet’s reigning species, you’ve got a problem indeed…  

 

Making my voice heard, for all the good it will do

I finally got my letters...well, my emails...off to my congressional representatives on the hot topic of stricter gun laws. It was hard to get myself to do this, even though I wanted to do this, felt it was important to add my voice to those who are clamoring for changes in our gun laws, to at least try to cut down on the all-but-constant murderous rampages by people with guns. We are the least civilized of the civilized nations, because of our continuing tolerance for this kind of violence. We just shake our heads, say what a tragedy, and go on letting the National Rifle Association run this country.

So, yes, I wanted to put in my two cents worth, but it was hard to make myself do that, because it was so damn depressing. The whole topic is depressing. And it's not just the topic of "we need stricter gun laws but there are many people in this country opposed to the very idea;" it is the larger topic of this country's passion for guns, and violence. I have to say that with all the putrid proselytizing we've heard from the NRA in the last few weeks, I'd have to agree with their condemnation of the way we glorify violence -- particularly violence with guns -- in movies (and presumably video games, though I'm hardly an expert on those). When I was at a showing of the film "Lincoln" recently, I saw a trailer for the new movie "Gangster Squad," which would seem to be everything the NRA was condemning: policemen "leaving their badges at home" so they wouldn't be hampered by the law, in their attempts to do away with the bad guys. People being shot with automatic weapons, right and left, and it not appearing to bother anybody in the least. And we have endless movies like that.  What can I say, our culture depresses me.

So yes, we have the big deal Second Amendment that declares that, A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed. But this S.A. says nothing about how many guns one may have, what kinds of guns one may have, how much ammunition, what types of ammunition, whether or not you must register your gun, etc., etc. Surely the government has the right, in order to preserve the safety of its citizens (the first responsibility of a government), to makes rules concerning these aspects of gun ownership. The idea that our much-vaunted freedom means anybody can have as many and whatever kinds of firearms s/he may desire is ludicrous, and it is simple common sense to know that our forefathers did not intend that. They had no way of knowing that this country would become essentially an armed camp, full of automatic and semi-automatic weapons! This is surely one of the disadvantages of slavishly adhering to a document that is 225 years old (the Bill of Rights, of which the S. A. is a part, is 223 years old). The times change, and we need to be able to change with it.

Every time one of these massacres of innocent people by people with guns occurs, and we do nothing but shake our heads, it makes me ashamed to be an American. For here's what gets me: this country is full of people who consider their freedom to have whatever weapons of violence they wish, to be more important than insuring that the kinds of mass shootings we are treated to every few weeks -- or indeed, to the gun violence we are subjected to on our streets and in our homes, every day of the year -- do not occur, or at the very least, are reduced. The selfishness within this country, as well as the anti-government paranoia, never ceases to amaze me.

If you don't like the new law, shoot somebody

I have just been reading on Yahoo news about the shooting of Representative Giffords in Tucson (I don't have access to television news on Saturdays until the 10 p.m. news on the Fox channel). I am just so sick of living in a place where people get pissed off, so grab their guns and go out and shoot a bunch of innocent people. And even more sick of living someplace where this is tolerated -- with just the same old mumblings about "this terrible tragedy," -- including by such people as Sarah Palin, who has actually displayed on her web site, in the cross-hairs of a gun, "targets" of elected officials whose political stands she disagrees with -- with nothing being done to make it less likely that such a thing will be repeated.

The irate sheriff of Pima County is so right when he excoriates the political "vitriol" that is being tossed about in this country, with hatred of those with opposing viewpoints being proclaimed from radio and television shows (and web sites). Then some mentally unbalanced person responds to that message of hate, which he has heard repeated over and over, by grabbing the gun he has no business having, and going off to shoot somebody, preferably several somebodies. And still the gun lobby triumphs, with their stupid insistence that "Guns don't kill people, people do." Yes, but if those wretched people didn't have such ease of access to guns, they wouldn't be able to shoot any 9-year-olds to death, would they? I have to stop; I'm too angry. THIS JUST KEEPS HAPPENING.