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| (from "Furious Diaper") |
1.) Let's start with gun control. Right now the big thing they've been debating back and forth is gun control and sure, I agree with that. Background checks doesn't seem like a bad idea. But all the spin they're throwing into it, that this will be a victory for the victims of Newtown and Aurora and Arizona and everywhere else, it's all just bullshit.
Guns didn't kill people there, just like they didn't kill people in Columbine. Just like it wasn't the gun manufacturers who stormed the beach at Normandy. People kill people. And in the case of Newtown and Aurora and Columbine and Virginia Tech and all that shit, it was disaffected kids with hints of mental issues.
My problem with the way we're attacking this is there's this huge myth that controlling guns will stop these massacres from happening. Nevermind the cop who went crazy and started shooting folks in L.A. before his shootout up by Big Bear, the real enemy is guns. Wake up. Especially fellow liberals, instead of freaking out about guns this was the time to start bringing up our nation's abysmal treatment of mental illness. This was when you could open a real dialogue about how in general our society likes to push mental illness aside, sweep it under the rug like a herd of elk pushing the sick one out of the pack and hoping maybe it gets picked off by a bear.
More people were killed by cars than by guns last year. Do we pass sweeping bills raising penalties for drunk driving and speeding, other traffic infractions? No. Because this has become another distraction from the very real problems facing our nation. At the forefront is that our citizenry is getting crazier and nobody seems to want to do a damn thing about it. Bath salts didn't make Rudy Eugene eat Ron Poppo's leathery face - in fact he hadn't even taken Bath Salts (and BTW, bath salts are just those weird pseudo-drugs bored stoner kids without access to real drugs buy at head shops) but this harmless Ecstasy-like drug was given out as the cause by the Miami Fraternal Order of Police because nobody wants to admit that a severely mentally-ill man might just take to eating another man's face.
Here's the basic wrap-up - wasting time and money on gun controls and thinking it will do anything to make our society any less prone to massacres is like wasting the billions of dollars we do on fighting drug dealers and thinking it'll solve our drug problem. Supply-side never works - whether talking drugs, guns, or economics. We have to confront the fact that in our modern age alienation and mental health issues are more prevalent than ever. Though it IS much simpler to just pass tighter gun controls and when massacres happen with stolen guns or machetes or poisoned water fountains with some poor deranged loner kid just wanting to exact a group suicide, at least Obama can say he passed gun control laws.
2.) Which leads me to political issue #2: Gay Marriage.
It's absurd that this should still be an issue. I in all honesty don't understand it. There's simply no valid reason why gay marriage isn't legal. Let's look at a few of the "anti" arguments:
- "It's against the bible."So is being rich (eye of the needle passage). If we're talking Old Testament we should stone fat people and your wife can claim a child if she simply lays on top of the servant girl you impregnated while the servant gives birth. Oh yeah, and divorce is against the teachings of the bible as well.
- "It ruins the state of marriage." Hello, divorce. The divorce rate hovers at times near 50, 60% in our nation - that is ruining the state of marriage. If we don't legalize gay marriage, the only logical thing to do is to outlaw divorce too. Wait, straight white rich people get divorced a lot. Yeah, that won't work.
- "It'll make my son gay if he sees other gay people." I've seen a lot of gay people. I respect them. I support them. But the idea of touching another dude's dingus, much less his culero, is fucking gross. This isn't a "learned behavior". It's not a choice. As Richard Pryor said, "Y'ever seen a man's asshole? Nobody chooses that."
This is stupid. Gay marriage will add more stability to our fragile society by officially recognizing unions that are already strong and happening, will add money to our struggling coffers (have you ever seen a gay wedding? They go all out), and is just the right thing to do as respectful, decent human beings.
3.) You know, this really does harken in part back to the whole civil rights movement. And if Hollywood has shown us anything over the last year, it's that we're not in a post-racial America. From LINCOLN to DJANGO UNCHAINED and now 42, Hollywood is out to remind our nation how hideously racist we've been in the past and to teach a younger generation to throw off the shackles of parents who publicly and proudly called Obama a nigger (see: most of the South). The best scene in the movie is when a young bright-eyed kid goes to a Dodgers game to see his hero play, Pee-Wee, and then starts yelling "nigger go home" after his fat, white trash father yells the same when Jackie Robinson takes the field. But when the kid sees Pee-Wee put his arm around Robinson's shoulders, he suddenly feels ashamed of himself. I still see and hear racism all the time - both front and center and hidden. But someday there will be movies about the gay rights movement where an American audience will see evil, ugly white trash yelling "Get out of here faggot" and feel ashamed. I look forward to the children of these homophobes feeling real disrespect for their discontent bigoted parents. On the other hand, the Dodgers aren't exactly doing great things these days.
4.) Saw something about a brawl breaking out in the Dodgers/Padres game. All sorts of folks are saying they're ashamed, that it's an embarrassment, all this bullshit but I think the opposite. I think that baseball's a leftover of a time long gone past. Yes, I enjoyed watching playoff games - at least flipping between that and stuff that was interesting. But what we forget is that the great history of baseball is filled with bench-clearing brawls. Made it interesting. One of the best parts of 42 was when Jackie's teammates fought a racist pitcher for beaning him. The truth is, this used to be a nation of tough men and hearty women. Even more, our sports have always been a representation of our nation - including the fact that we can accept and even rise to the fact that chaos is a very real part of life. Therefore sports need some chaos, some madness, for us to fight through, prove our mettle, and continue on. It shows a team has the fighting spirit which, for a perennially-dogged L.A. Dodgers club certainly hasn't been shown on the diamond. Speaking of L.A. sports
5.) Kobe! The man's out with a torn ACL. Yes they're at least over 50% for the year. And they're getting close to clinching a playoff spot. But with possibly the best roster in modern basketball, it's atrocious that it should even be a question. I mean they went through 2 coaches at the beginning of the season, spent absurd amounts of money, and now with their star out who knows if this neo-All-Star team will even make the post-season. Crazy. Though if they start heading downhill, and lacking a Kobe, it will allow me to test my Lakers theory - how many people spend hundreds of dollars on tickets to the Staples Center just to see Jack Nicholson get riled up courtside? Does anybody remember the whole Kobe rape thing? Well L.A. has a new one to focus on:
6.) Audrie Pott. This is just - it's just disturbing in the worst way. For those of you who haven't heard about it, this beautiful young girl was at a party when a couple guys sexually assaulted her. One of them snapped a picture and sent it around. Teenage years are already tough enough, especially for girls who have to walk the tightrope between being deemed a prude or being deemed a slut - and sometimes both. Anyway, she hanged herself because the picture wouldn't go away and everybody she knew knew her shame. I'll just say this now, if that had been my daughter, those boys should consider themselves lucky if they went to jail. But yes, this is being prosecuted. The disturbing thing is this isn't a new occurrence - a nearly parallel incident happened in Canada, other cases of football players raping a passed out girl and snapping a picture they sent around happened last year, so on. This savagery is the most base of human behavior. There really is nothing more depraved than not only raping a girl but then being proud enough of it that you take pictures and show them to your friends. And considering the resilience of teenagers and the desire to just bury shame deep, one can only surmise that shit like this happens a lot more than we'd expect.
This is something we need to address as a nation. Yes it's cyber-bullying, and we've supposedly been cracking down on bullying, but in reality this should be classified as something new cyber-sexual assault. A federal offense compounded by very real human rights violations. Should be enforced with requisite castration. Fuck this worthless crusade on guns, fuck trying to vote out ignorance, and fuck people who get worked up over a little tussle at a ball game or Kobe Bryant's anterior cruciate. We as a people like to point to physical things as the sole truth (except in the case of the bible, where physical proveable things are often the enemy), the enforceable actionable enemy. But maybe instead of getting bamboozled by the shine and the sparkle we need to look at the real problems with America - that is, the state of the American head. It's more fucked up than it's been in years and, seemingly, teeters even closer to the edge.
Until then, we'll be a nation that placates our horrors with a combination of superficial solutions and simply turning a blind eye. And spends our time and attention worrying about the torn ligament of a wealthy athlete while pushing aside the desperate pleas of a helpless young girl.
Happy Monday.
- Ryan
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