You know I don’t usually get into conspiracy theories, but some connections are just too convenient.
First, you build a medical/pharmaceutical industry that successfully pushes the notion that every little sorrow, nervous twitch, or bit of restlessness is a “disease” that needs to be treated with psychoactive drugs. Then you go on a holy crusade to take guns away from the “mentally ill” (and all the bobbleheads who haven’t thought about the implications repeat “good idea, good idea, good idea”).
So with the consent of the ignorant, complacent, well-programmed, and the devious slimeballs who take advantage of all of the above, any one of the millions who’ve been propagandized into taking one of those psychoactive drugs can become a candidate for losing his or her gun rights. No due process, no nothin’. (Added: Well, maybe the opinion of an authoritarian, anti-gun counselor or shrink.)
It’s just too-too perfect. Politically elegant.
The people who are so eager to grab the guns (you will not be surprised) don’t much care whose guns they take in the process. Because after all, the point isn’t preserving rights, it’s taking rights from one and all. Grab the guns from the “wrong” guy? But there are no wrong guys when it comes to taking away firearms!
Oh yeah, and it helps if you also set up “medical privacy” systems that centralize your health-care data and share it willy-nilly with “authorities.”
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Now as this trend takes hold, how many gun owners who might actually benefit by some of those drugs will avoid getting help because they fear the cop-knock on the door? We know that some murders have been committed because drugs exacerbated the problems they were supposed to help. How many other acts of violence may be committed because somebody who might have been helped by drugs goes over the edge?
And how many gun owners who would never dream that their depression, anxiety, or ADHD constitutes a “mental illness” will remain blissfully ignorant until
Authoritah comes for them?
And how many of those gun owners will have, in fact, supported the laws to “take guns out of the hands of the mentally ill”? But wait! Not me! You were only supposed to take some dangerous wacko’s guns! Sorry, guy. You’re the dangerous wacko now, dontcha know?
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On a more personal note
The long winter that’s clutched the NW and strangled my spirit goes on. We did have an incredible, better-than-summer weekend at the end of March. But since then we’ve had some of our rainiest, blowiest days. And days. And days. And did I mention, days? That glorious weekend feels like long ago.
I can’t cheer up no matter what stories I tell myself.* I can’t warm up no matter how many layers and jackets I wear. My friend Jill is in the final stages of dying of cancer, which seems incomprehensible, outrageous, and unfair for a person of such grace and goodness. She won’t let anyone visit, which I understand intellectually, but not emotionally.
But there are a few rays of sunshine, even if not the atmospheric kind or the need-a-miracle-for-my-friend kind.
On Tuesday, longing for something good to happen but not knowing how to bring it about, I stopped by the local Chinese restaurant and discovered they were having a buffet.
Though I arrived at the very end, there was still a fair bit to choose from, including some of my favorites (mmmm, cashew chicken). So I indulged.
While I was eating, the nice lady who owns the place went over to the steam tables, filled a go-box brim-full, and brought it over to me. She did the same for several other diners.
It was probably food she’d have had to throw out, anyway. But I’ve never had a restaurant do that. When I got home and opened the box, I noticed that everything she’s given me was something I’d had on my plate; she noticed and chose what she knew I liked. I was very touched.
Not to mention very well-filled with delicious food for my last two lunches.
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I’ve also decided to gift myself with 10 sessions of structural integration (aka Rolfing). Turns out there’s a practitioner in the nearby berg I jokingly refer to as The Big City.
Financially, I can’t afford to do this. Mentally and physically, I can’t afford not to. Rolfing is very powerful and good body-work is also, at its best, good mind-work. I’m hoping that it will help kick-start me out of this gloom and lassitude.
I’ll probably give some progress reports along the way.
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* But I’m not taking any medication for the blahs, therefore (NOTE TO AUTHORITIES) I must be sane.
How can people know that the state is a powerful club, yet still believe it to be omni-benevolent?
Why do people continue to believe the government exists to help them when the phrase, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you” is known as an irony to one and all?
How can anyone think their health-care system will improve once it’s operated by the kind of people who run the DMV?
Why will some people glibly answer that question with, “Get a better job!” In this economy? You kidding?
Would I eat my dogs if things got really bad?
If I died and nobody noticed, would the dogs eat me?
Well, of course they would, but the real question is would I then be remembered forever as “Claire? Oh yeah, she’s the one got eaten by her dogs”? (For the record, I’m not the slightest bit bothered by the prospect of my dogs eating me, but I’m horrified at the thought of being remembered that way.)
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How come pot growing was so much simpler before Washington v*ted to make it legal?
Why don’t people get that, if you’re going to have “public policy” at all, this is the principle on which it must stand: “I think the burden of proof in public policy should fall on those who seek power rather than those who seek liberty; in short, there should be a presumption in favor of liberty.” — Art Carden (Which may also be the most brilliantly succinct statement of minarchist principles ever uttered.)
Young goldendoodle saves pregnant woman and her unborn baby. (H/T ML) Also, while this “news” isn’t new, it’s a nice v*te of confidence for bully breed dogs. (One of my neighbors has the most gorgeous, most sweet pit bull/American bulldog mix — aka aka Bullypit or Colorado bulldog. I could fall in love.)
“Why I’m getting rid of most of my stuff.” By the inimitable (and slightly crazy) James Altucher. (I can identify. I’ve been in an accumulating mode since buying this house; after a couple of years of that, I find myself wanting to “travel light” again.)
One bit of bad (but not unexpected) news: the great film critic Roger Ebert has died. His love and knowledge of movies enriched the lives of millions of movie fans — and millions of non-fans, for that matter.
You’d think — you really would — that if you were in a place where a man had just shot a cop and the cops were setting up a siege (which would ultimately end with more shooting and a house going up in flames), you’d see immediately that something dangerous was going on. And you might logically take action to avoid the area.
But nope. Happens that a friend and I were driving down a street yesterday where a cop had just been shot. Squad cars were zooming in. Lights were flashing. Yada yada.
When my friend remarked, “Something big must be happening,” I shrugged, “Or they’re just busting another tweaker.” Because I’ve seen the surround-house-with-screaming-squad-cars routine repeatedly in my neighborhood. And that’s always what it is.
The last one I watched (before yesterday) was just across the street from my house. And (typically) the guy who got all that coply attention was a harmless neighbor who was back home the next day. He had just happened to fall victim to the latest spend-a-week-rounding-up-the-dopers-to-make-news-and-get-funding spree.
So my friend and I continued going about our business within sight of the siege and, frankly, I didn’t even pay attention to it when we came out of the store we were in, even though it was undoubtedly heating up at that moment.
Of course we and the other shoppers weren’t likely to have been in any danger (though the way some cops shoot, you never know). That’s not my point.
What struck me when I read the news this morning was how inured we we become to overkill. When we see masses of cops descending on a house, people getting thrown to the ground in a parking lot, or little girls getting their pubes poked at the airport we just think that’s the way it is. Ho hum. Life in the Land of the Free.
So not only do we become numbly accepting of what ought to be unacceptable, but when genuinely deadly danger is right in front of us, we might not recognize it because it looks so much like everyday overkill.
Re-reading Atlas Shrugged for the umptieth time (but the first time in 10 years) has inspired that dangerous activity: thinking.
One part of the book that still holds up for me is Francisco’s money speech. That’s despite it being a speech. In the middle of a novel. It’s short, it’s brilliant, and it serves a plot-related purpose. I especially like this part:
Not having a TV has led to complete, catastrophic cultural isolation. As an example of this savage, self-caused social disconnect: I never learned to pronounce the name “Duchovny.” And now I cannot tell you whether the name “Kutcher” is sounded like more “crutch-er” or “cooch-er.”
It’s a tragedy of unfathomable proportions.
After first giving up the telescreen, I even had to forego watching great commercials. Since they are among the great creative gems of our time, it was nearly an unbearable loss.
Somehow I soldiered on. Eventually the miracle of YouTube brought the Budweiser clydesdales — and those wonderful Dalmatians — back into my life.
Still, slow, iffy ‘Net connections continue to deny me the right to watch entire shows like “Real Housewives of Peoria, Illinois,” “Who Cares Who Survives?” “Celebrities Who Die After Rehab,” and “Count the Marriages of the Kardashians.”
About 10 years after giving up television, I spent a snowbound night in a motel room in Utah, just me, a pizza, and a TV set. From that I was able to observe that nothing much had changed. Everything had just gotten more jumpy. The same shows but with “smash cuts” and lotso FX. Later I watched some HBO series on DVD and noticed that all barriers against vulgar language had fallen. That was about it.
Now it’s getting close to 20 years sans TV. Thanks to website links, I’m able to catch bits and snips of news and commentary. While I still await hearing some talking head reveal the correct pronunciation of Kutcher, I have finally noticed one real, serious difference between what was in The Box in 1993 and what’s there now: “news” is noise. “Commentary” on the news is ill-informed morons shouting at each other.
Joel gave a perfect example the other day. I’d heard of Rachel Maddow and even though I assumed I’d disagree with her on a fair number of issues, I’d also assumed she’d be intelligent and have some gravitas. I mean, otherwise, how would anybody ever be taken seriously as a commentator? But nope. Just a big, noisy ego with no brain behind it. Just showing off. Throwing tantrums like a two-year-old, and just as meaningless as a two-year-old’s. Just like Bill O’Reilly on the “right” and a bunch of her fellows (Piers Morgan, you listening?) on the “left.”
You’ll have to forgive me for being naive. If you regularly watch news and commentary you know all this. You probably already know that the only real TV commentary on issues is being delivered by comedians like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.
I didn’t. I knew, of course, that there were ranters; there’ve been ranters and ravers as long as there’s been a medium to host them and an audience to be buffaloed.
What I didn’t know is that the shouters and whiners and don’t-let-anybody-else-get-a-word-in people had taken over. That they now are the news and commentary.
Maybe in a way it’s a good thing. The calm authority of the Murrows, Cronkites, and Sevareids of old was always an illusion, anyway. The news media leaders of past generations were always just members of the elite, delivering a pre-packaged message designed to keep We the Little People in line. Maybe the Maddows and O’Reillys represent a useful democratization of the media. Maybe their ignorantly loud opinionating (like drunken uncles at a holiday table) helpfully rips away the curtain of legitimacy to reveal what’s really going on in the world of Authoritah.
But just before viewing that Maddow clip, I was reading Atlas Shrugged and thinking how cartoonishly absurd Rand’s whining, sloganeering villains sounded. Rand presents her bad guys as people who’ve given up thinking, who can only parrot slogans, make self-righteous demands, and ultimately devour the brains of their betters. People who have no inner selves, but only a parasitic existance.
I thought how badly Rand overstated her case, how foolishly broadly she drew her villains. Then I went back and listened to Maddow and O’Reilly and Morgan et al. again.
A lot of people have my email address these days (unlike in the past when I still imagined a private life was compatible with being on the Internet). Most of those who have it are good people. Many are good friends.
Many also help by sending me news links. And it really has been helpful; there are days when nearly everything I post comes from such emails. Or when one of those emails leads to some productive train of thought.
But enough. If you’ve been sending me links to bad news, please stop.
I don’t need to know about the latest creepy surveillance technology revealed by whistleblowers and ignored by the public. Knowing that Barack “Bush” Obama has just slaughtered another two dozen innocents with a drone doesn’t empower me in any way to live better or be more free. It does not make me a better person or a better writer to learn that thugs have handcuffed, beaten, tased, or shot yet another hapless victim to death.
BUT!, someone will surely exclaim, That’s irresponsible! Ignorance is the problem. Information is power. Pretending that these horrors don’t exist doesn’t make them go away; it just enables tyranny. ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is …’“
Well fine. To each his own. You want to wallow in news, I totally understand because I, too, have a long history of doing such wallowing. I’ll probably (to my self-disgust) wallow again in the not-too-distant future. As long as I earn my living by writing, the temptation to know stuff will arise again and again. I surely can’t blame anybody for being a news junkie when I’m one myself, and a twice-thrice-quintuplely fallen news junkie, at that.
Still. Stop sending me bad news.
It’s not a matter of wanting to be ignorant. Not one of us hereabouts is ignorant in that sense. You know it. I know it. We already all know more than we want to know about the times we live in and the nature of the Beast that wishes to rule us all.
It’s just this: If somebody’s got smallpox, you don’t have to creep up close and count every lesion on his face to understand how sick he is. If somebody’s got bubonic plague, it’s hardly a good idea to assume you need to get right next to her with a ruler so you can gauge the exact size of the buboes.
And that’s what we’re doing with all this horrible news. So do what you like. But please-and-thank-you stop sending it to me. Because I have enough trouble with addiction to that sh*t without anybody offering me another dose.
Or to put it in a more intellectual way, here’s Rolf Dobelli from his invaluable “read twice and call me in the morning” essay, Avoid News:
Most people believe that having more information helps them make better decisions. News organizations support this belief. Hell, it’s in their interest. Will accumulating facts help you understand the world? Sadly, no. The relationship is actually inverted. The more “news factoids” you digest, the less of the big picture you will understand.
No evidence exists to indicate that information junkies are better decision makers. …
Reading news to understand the world is worse than not reading anything. What’s best: cut yourself off from daily news consumption entirely. Read books and thoughtful journals instead of gulping down flashing headlines.
