Riffing

Some days just feel better than others.  Today, my wife celebrates a birthday.  Unfortunately she is suffering at work.  However I am confident she is feeling pretty good.   It helps that our only child played her little ass off last night on the basketball floor.  She was the smallest one out there and by far had the biggest heart.  Had we lost (which was in question) her efforts were more than enough to provide pride and joy.  She will not always be on the winning side.  But our goal is to provide her the confidence to never fear and give maximum effort.  Oh, and we sure hope she did well on her midterms too.  Guess that should be more a priority.

But really, how much of your 5th grade Social Studies or Science are you using at your job today.  Learning how to overcome obstacles in and out of the classroom are what matters today.  We should also be teaching communication and verbal skills at early ages.  Kids should be able to write a formal letter and deliver a speech to his/her peers.  Practical skills are essential too.  There should be a greater emphasis on economics (both world and home.)  Geography is not taught near enough in my opinion either.  Can you locate Iran on a map if you had to?  How about Alabama?  As the World gets smaller and smaller it is more vital than ever to know your neighbors.  How else can you learn to mistrust them?  

But anyway, where was I??

That attitude and our proximity to the bear they call New York City will, hopefully, put her in a better situation than her two blue collar parents had growing up.  And that ain't a knock on our collective upbringings.  Our folks both did the best they could and themselves put us in a situation to succeed.  We are both here, healthy, striving for a better future for ourselves and child.  A roof is over our head.  Meals are consumed far too frequently.  Occasionally we even get to a concert, or movie, or even vacation.

We will celebrate 15 years of marriage next week.  As anyone who has been married or with someone that long will attest, it ain't easy.  A manual does not exist to help guide you through it all.

The typical marriage may or may not contain:

Career doubt
Home Ownership
Home Repair
Wanting to get the F out of the house
Than having to sell the damn thing
Realizing selling a house means people have to enter your home
Pet Ownership
Pets dying
Pets not able to control the sound of their meow
Pets meowing at all hours
Pets sharing your bed
Pets needing to go out at 2am every night
Cars
Cars breaking down
Kids
Kids growing up
Kids getting mature
Kids getting too cool for you
Money problems
Credit scores
Taxes
Liens
Infidelity
Abuse
In Laws
Health Scares
Road Trips
Body Image problems
Depression
Pain
Losing Friends to death
Losing Friends for whatever reason
Loneliness
Dinner Parties
Foes
Laughter
Tears
Heartache
Heartbreak
Colon exams
Mammograms
Joy
Pride
Hope
Misery
Optimism
Pessimism
Gray Hair
No Hair
Back Hair

Through it all the best you can hope for is happiness.

Today, I am happy.  Happy birthday T and happy anniversary.  Like last nights game it is a struggle.  We appear as small players in a much larger game.  The odds have always been stacked against us.

Here we are many years later and wouldn't you know?  We are still standing.

Catch a show next week?  Sit on the sidelines tomorrow for the game?  Dinner and a movie?  Top Chef Restaurant Wars?  Commute listening to Stern?  Walk through the mall?  Walk the dog?  School concerts?  Chaperone proms?  Attend her graduation(s)?  Her induction into the Hall of Fame?  Trip down the aisle?  Cradle your grandchild?  Retired in Sea Pines?

15 years more, at least.  But never 50.  That's just crazy, right?

The Left-Wing Conservative: The Gun Fetish

In response to demands to reduce gun violence, one of the the few things that the NRA and President Obama appear to agree upon is creating a national registry of mentally ill people.

I think its interesting that this is a point of agreement in what is, to put it mildly, a rather cantankerous debate.

Why it is considered less of an intrusion on civil liberties to track and classify citizens based on what they tell their therapist, rather than limiting or regulating ownership of firearms?  I don't know.

In any event, assuming this proposal goes forward, and is not thrown out by the Supreme Court, what types of mental illness will require reporting?

Will it include fetishes?

This is an important question -- we have to ask -- Does the desire for ownership of a firearm for hunting or self-defense (as protected by the Supreme Court) degrade into merely the desire to own an exciting toy, or even further, into an erotically charged warrior fantasy fetish?

The DSM-VI, the diagnostic manuel for psychotherapists, contains a diagnosis for fetishism as follows: "the use of non-living objects as a stimulus for arousal or satisfaction".  It notes that fetishism is more likely to be diagnosed in men than women, and is accompanied by "recurrent, intense arousing fantasies".

Does this sound familiar?

Again, I'm not talking legitimate home defense.

The NRA's famous "Armed Citizen" feature provides scores of stories about how store owners or homeowners used firearms to defend against intruders. Assuming these tales are true, my casual perusal indicated that the armed citizen's weapon of choice is often either a revolver or shotgun (the very weapons law enforcement and security experts recommend for a non-professional). Not a semi-automatic rifle. Not a semi-automatic pistol with a 20 or 30 round clip.*

No, the "recurrent, intense arousing fantasies" read more like the movie "Red Dawn", or the resistance fighter dramas so popular among owners of assault rifles and large capacity magazine weapons.  The Internet is full of their stirring tales of how liberty was won, and is preserved, by ordinary citizens armed with military rifles to stave off encroaching tyranny. And how without and armed "militia", the jackbooted thugs would be swarming over us.

This myth does not hold water, and no matter how much ALLCAPS is used to tell the tale, it just does not comport with history.  Its was professionally trained troops, from America and (Mon Dieu!) France that fought off the British, while the ragtag militias were "weekend warriors". And the democracy movements against tyrants past and in the "Arab Spring" were successful not by armed citizens, but when factions of the military stood honorably against authoritarian abuse.

So the clinging to assault rifles and military style pistols, while breathlessly reciting fantasies of fighting off stormtroopers, has nothing to do with home defense, sportsmanship, or even protecting democracy.

Its about getting your rocks off.

Naughty boys!

NRA's Armed Citizen webpage:

http://www.nraila.org/gun-laws/armed-citizen.aspx

*Despite these examples, the overwhelming evidence is that a gun in the home increases the likelihood of homicide in the home sevenfold:

http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/gunviolence/gunsinthehome

Michael Lind's analysis:

http://www.salon.com/2012/12/17/guns_have_never_saved_us/

The Left-Wing Conservative: "Pixel-Whipping" Gun Control

The absurdity of the gun control discussion following the Newtown massacre continues.

The simple fact that some guns can 1) hold more bullets, 2) fire more bullets faster than others and, therefore, 3) are more dangerous than others, while serving no legitimate self- defense purpose, still cannot be acknowledged.

My Governor, Chris Christie, I am sorry to say, did not step up on this issue.

Full disclosure: I didn't vote for Christie, and only agree with him on a few positions (his view on drug addiction treatment over incarceration is, in my mind, humane and realistic). And I don't complain about his Tony Soprano bullying act for two reasons; First, regardless of my political views I have a soft spot for colorful politicians; and second, if I am honest, if I agreed with him enough to have voted for him I would probably cheer him on.

And like many NJ citizens, I respected how Christie stood up for NJ, and against his own party, when Congress punted on voting for the way-overdue Hurricane Sandy relief.

However, this tough talking, tell-it-like-it-is former US Attorney, while on MSNBC's "Morning Joe", when asked about supporting an assault weapons ban, suddenly went weak in the knees and started talking about what he saw as one of the real causes of gun violence.

Videogames.

He went on about how he and his wife Mary Pat don't allow them in the house, and how kids playing "hours and hours" of violent videogames is desensitizing them to violence, etc.

Shame on him, because as a former prosecutor, he knows better.

The "withdrawn anti-social dork obsessed by violent videogames "archetype is a play on the "withdrawn anti-social dork obsessed by Dungeons & Dragons "archetype of the 1980's, as was the "withdrawn anti-social dork obsessed by horror comics" of the 1950s.

By every measure, there is not an epidemic of violent crime in the US. The violent crime rate has declined consistently over the last twenty years (see links below). What has increased during that time is the 24 hour news cycle, and the reporting of every murder on TV and the Web. So we think its way worse. And we look for a cause. Like videogames. Or mentally ill people.

The gun control issue is not about a culture or epidemic of violence. Its about people intent on committing violence (which, alas, we will always have) having the tools to carry out that violence. And about our unwillingness to limit their tools so adolescent-minded consumers can have a high capacity weapon as an exciting toy.

Instead, we stagger about like the drunk who looks for his keys under the lamppost, rather than where he lost them, because the "light is better there".


Article citing US violent crime stats DECREASE over the past 5 years

Dept of Justice report on violent crime against youth, 1994-2010