Violence

Protest and Dissent

/ cigarman501 / 5 Comments

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men – not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular” ― Edward R. Murrow, 1953(?)

I’m waiting for the sun to show its presence. Something has my puppies all “ah twitter.” Something has me the same way but at least I’m not outside barking into the darkness. Instead, I am sitting in the dark here pondering the upcoming No Kings Protest.

I’ve spent too much time on social media reading about “the battle lines being drawn.” Name calling from both sides. Motivations being dissected. No, I’m not getting paid. Soros has offered me nothing, I protest to support our democracy for free. I’m not a Marxist, a communist, or an anarchist. I’m not a terrorist. I’m just worried.

I can’t believe I feel motivated to protest. A balding, achy kneed, seventy-five-year-old considering making a sign and joining the protest. I’m a “Boomer” and according to social media, I should be supporting the other side.

My brother is questioning my sanity, I am sure. He believes the present turmoil and concerns about a dictatorship is “much to do with nothing.”  According to him, we have too many checks in our system. I hope he is correct but believe we can take nothing for granted, especially our democracy.

I am a product of a period of protest. Born in 1950, I was unaware of the social change that Bob Dylan sang about in 1962, and I guess my answers are still blowing in the wind. The protests of the Sixties and Seventies shaped me in ways I was unaware of until my later adult life.

Despite calls for nonviolent protests, the Sixties and Seventies were fraught with a fire that even fire hoses couldn’t extinguish. I hope the protests from this Saturday are not violent, but I fear there will be agitators from both sides. I fear one side has begun to stoke the fire to oppose and hopes it will lead to confrontation. We must avoid our base instincts to retaliate while we defend our democracy.

I don’t hate America. I’m not willing to “move to those countries” more in line with my beliefs as more conservative “friends” have suggested. My beliefs align with what is written in our Constitution and its Amendments and not with a tinpot, want-to-be autocrat.

Portland frogs, naked bike riders, and serenading ICE facilities with jazz bands dressed in animal costumes have brought a breath of creativity to the protests in cities invaded by ICE and National Guard. Unfortunately, there has been enough violence to make large-scale protest worrisome.

I have been accused of not caring about crime in blue cities. This is not true. I care about crime anywhere and quite deeply.

I care about hastily trained ICE agents using undue force and friends who support it and attempt to justify it with the ends justify the means. You cannot justify women and children being drug from cars, beaten, even shot.

I care about National Guard troops who are not properly trained in policing. I remember “four killed in Ohio.” I worry that they will be forced to be trained in domestic urban warfare and ordered to use their training.

We, as a nation, have a rich history in dissent and protest. We were born, as a nation, from dissent and protest, some quite violent. The Revolutionary War, sometimes referred to as our first civil war, was quite violent and began due to protest and dissent.

There were people then, as there are now, who believed our dissent and protest was unintelligent and ignorant. They believe it is misplaced. I guess there are always two sides to any protest.

I worry that we are sliding down a slope toward dictatorship and oligarchy…or have hit the rock bottom and are already there. It seems that I face people who are okay with, if not welcoming, a change in our system of government and willing to accept an autocrat.

Our legislative branch seems to have surrendered as well as a third of our voting population. I am not willing. I’m not against change but I am not for illegally circumventing the checks put into place by the authors of our Constitution.

I trust our President, not at all. Nor do I trust his advisors, his cabinet members, the Supreme Court, and our Legislative branch. It hurts me to say it, I don’t trust those who voted for him, including family and friends.

I worry too, that for every person who thinks as I do, there are good folks…well intentioned folks, who believe otherwise. Folks who want change for the sake of change. Folks who will pay for that change, as will I. I don’t hate them. I feel sorry for them and worry about what they are willing to do to me and my family.

There is plenty wrong with our leaders, not our system of government. Our leaders are the problem. We have leaders who are dedicated to the people and leaders who are only dedicated to themselves and their party. It appears one side, the wrong side, has taken control.

Protest seems to be the only avenue available. “There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

I believe I have come to that time.

“A Fact of Life…it is Hopeless”

/ cigarman501 / 7 Comments

“‘I don’t like that this is a fact of life . . . but if you are psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets.” – JD Vance

People who read this will be surprised. They might even be concerned. Knowing my left leaning self I’m a bit surprised. I agree with JD Vance. I agree more with what he was accused of saying rather than what he actually said. I believe school shootings, along with all other shootings, are a fact of life and there is no going back. We are what we are…which is a very violent culture.

Why should I believe there is an answer? No matter which side you chose to blame, no matter what we believe to be the problem, we had ample time to change the trajectory of violent crime against others. We haven’t. If anything, the rhetoric of hate speech has ramped up.

Well, in truth, violent crime is down overall, but gun deaths are still high, and we still have young people dying. Many die from each other’s hands on street corners but that is different in my thinking than sending your child to school and wondering if you will see them again.

Honestly, the drop in violent crime is probably as much due to happenstance than anything we are actually doing. Cynical? Oh yes.

Before I retired from teaching, I took part in “active shooter” drills.  I shouldn’t…but will admit I didn’t take them as seriously as I should have. It could never happen here. That three quarter inches of sheetrock will protect us as well as getting under a desk will protect us from a tornado or nuclear bomb. I would certainly take it more seriously now…as seriously as life and death…especially with two school age grand babies.

The bodies of this latest horror had barely grown cold, but the arguments had begun. Even the comments, “It’s too early to debate politics and school shootings,” made my stomach turn. If we wait more than a couple of days, the argument will be too late to debate. It is too late. If we couldn’t do anything significant after Sandy Hook, why would we now?

Fingers point to too many guns, easy access, mental health issues, bullying, violent video games, transgenderism, poor parenting, God being removed from schools. The FBI, and local law enforcement are scrutinized and blamed…or accused of being part of a plot to take all of our guns. Some are legitimate but what have we done to fix it? Little.

We use the same arguments and blame used the last time children and teacher’s bodies were torn asunder. The same arguments that have been used for the past quarter century. No, nothing will change until we change ourselves but that isn’t happening. We would rather debate death like our favorite football team’s next game and offer little more than thoughts and prayers.

Despite my best efforts to remain hopeful, I have grown cynical of the world I live in.  Hope seems to be the new buzz word for the political party I will vote for in November. In the state where I reside, I might as well stay home because the state will be red by a landslide. So much for my hopefulness.

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The featured image I used was Mitchell Gaudet’s ‘Shooting Gallery Exhibition’ which focuses on the issue of gun violence and gun culture across the U.S.

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On a more hopeful note, I was born Southern fried in the renderings of fried fatback. Short essays and recipes from the South. Download or purchase it in paperback. “Food For Thought” by Don Miller. http://tinyurl.com/yrt7bee2

1968 Sucked

/ cigarman501 / 1 Comment

“Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.” Lyndon Johnson

The Democratic Convention begins tonight. Every four years, the Democratic Convention reminds me of the year 1968. It is the way my brain works and I have quit trying to fight it. It is one of the pig trails I travel in my head. That being said, 1968 sucked but at least this year’s convention, Richard Daley isn’t the mayor and in charge of security.

Vietnam protests joined Civil Rights protests, walkouts, sit ins, hostage taking along with the riots that saw Chicago policemen in battle gear wading into crowds and beating Vietnam War protesters and news correspondents, this was during the 1968 Democratic Convention and played out during August on our television sets. As the 2024 Democratic Convention kicks off, I’m again reminded of the clusterf*ck that was 1968.

1968 began badly and quickly got worse. The Battle of Khe Sahn and the Tet Offensive played out on the nightly news in January. The USS Pueblo was seized by the North Koreans. The only good thing to happen in January was the debut of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.

February saw three students from Orangeburg, SC murdered by highway patrolmen during a Civil Rights protest at an area bowling alley. Thirty-one were wounded, many shot in the back, many with riot guns. A much larger protest at Howard University was without student murders but lasted much longer.

Maybe the best thing to come from February was a Walter Cronkite special after he had visited the front lines in Viet Nam after the TET Offensive.  The special ended with the now legendary personal commentary from Cronkite declaring that the war was unwinnable, and that the best option was to negotiate for an end to the battle. That analysis would famously lead Lyndon Johnson, watching the broadcast, to declare “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.” Later, in March, Johnson would face the nation and reveal, “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”

Also in March, My Lai, the massacre of Vietnamese civilians that would not become public until November of 1969.

In April and June, we lost Martin and Bobby to assassins’ bullets and American cities burned. A shootout between Black Panthers and Oakland police would result in several arrests and deaths. A double explosion in downtown Richmond, Indiana kills forty-one and injures one hundred and fifty. It was due to a natural gas leak.

The United States wasn’t alone in our discontent.  Social unrest seemed to grip the world.  Movements sprang up worldwide as protests were registered in over two dozen countries.  Here at home, in addition to our Vietnam War and Civil Rights movements there were the Anti-nuclear movement, Environmental movement, Hippie movement, Women’s liberation movement, Chicano movement, and Red Power movement. All staged protests. 

One would hope the violence that played out on our black and white TVs during the Democratic Convention would be the end of it all. It wasn’t. There were continued protests and shootouts but just like in 1968, I’ve had enough.

In October, In Mexico City, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, two black Americans competing in the Olympic 200-meter run, raise their arms in a black power salute after winning, respectively, the gold and bronze medals for 1st and 3rd place. They were sent home and not to a hero’s welcome by the Silent Majority being courted by Richard Nixon. Nixon would win the Silent Majority and with them, the election in November creating more problems during the new decade.

Some historians believed 1968 saw the greatest wave of social unrest the United States had experienced since the Civil War.  Of course, that was before 2020 and the beginning of 2021.  I don’t know what historians will determin about these, there is so much misinformation to sift through I doubt a consensus will be reached during the remainder of my lifetime.

Despite the terrible year of 1968, I was a high school senior and college freshman in 1968. I was more interested in chasing the elusive American female and drinking beer at The Cellar, than what was going on with Viet Nam protests and the Civil Rights movements. That would change when I did my best to flunk out of college and luckily failed at that endeavor by the skin of my teeth. Viet Nam suddenly became a real possibility, but I managed to right my ship.

As a social studies major, the late Sixties and Seventies became a focus of my personnel studies. The world changed in 1968 and laid the groundwork for what was to come. I believe many of our present problems are a manifestation of that tumultuous year. Here is hoping that despite expected protests, the 2024 Democratic Convention is peaceful.

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Don Miller’s latest offering is “Food for Thought”, a cookbook that is more than a cookbook. This book along with others may be ordered at https://author.amazon.com/home?authorId=amzn1.amazonauthor.author.v1.va7gjnpr6ccslobr6eec3vbdag

Culture of the Gun

/ cigarman501 / 8 Comments

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” – attributed to Albert Einstein

As a retired teacher I have suffered over the deaths at Uvalde…and Columbine…and Sandy Hook…and…so many more. Late in my career I participated in “active shooter” drills and helped to produce strategies to counter an attack. We locked our doors even though the only thing between us and an active shooter was a five-eighth piece of sheet rock.

Since the brutal deaths of nineteen students and two teachers in a Texas school, barely a week after the shooting of six, one killed, in a California church, and ten killed in a New York grocery store many have opinions on what needs to be done to ensure the safety of our children and ourselves.

Most of the reactions follow a familiar path, “thoughts and prayers”, media outcries for change, pro-gun rights folks debate anti-gun rights folks including deflection, time passes with nothing happening except more guns are bought until the furor dies, and we are again shocked with the next mass shooting. The debate begins again and honestly…we don’t seem to be as shocked as we once were.

I’ve seen suggestions from arming teachers, my least favorite out of myriads of least favorites, to we must “harden the targets.” That sounds like something from a war zone or a “sh!th@le” country. All ignore the underlying issue. A culture that embraces violence over diplomacy and access to weapons to execute that violence.

Another suggests “evil exists, and laws will not change that.” The next time a highway patrolman pulls me for speeding I think I’ll try that one out. No, I’m not equating speeding to murder, but the comment has me wondering why we have laws at all. Are laws just for honest people?

Let me be fair. It is not just about school, church, or supermarket shootings. It is the drive by in LA, or gang violence in Chicago or Baltimore, or the drunken good ole boy who decides to William Tell a PBR can off his friend’s head and misses a bit low with his hunting rifle.

It’s about four students wounded while walking to their prom. It is about gunfire due to road rage and looking cross eyed at the wrong person. It’s about good old boys strapping AR-15s to their back when they get a coffee at the local coffee shop. It is about a lack of empathy and ignoring the sanctity of life in favor of an amendment.

In 2020, gun violence became the leading cause of youth death’s surpassing automobile accidents. Most were suicides. According to the Pew Research Center, in 2020, 54% of all gun-related deaths in the U.S. were suicides (24,292), while 43% were murders (19,384). The numbers came from the CDC and were backed by other sources. According to CNN, personal safety tops the list of reasons why American gun owners say they own a firearm, yet 63% of US gun-related deaths are self-inflicted.

It is a fact that it took a finger to pull the trigger, the gun didn’t do it on its own, and these Pew and CDC statistics do not reflect accidental gun deaths or where guns were a contributing factor but not the cause of death. It is also true that we live in a gun rich environment. Five percent of the world’s population owns 44-46% of the world’s civilian firearms depending on the study you might be reading. According to a recent CNN study, we own more guns than we have people, one hundred-twenty guns per one hundred people.

According to a Scientific American study in 2015, assaults with a firearm were 6.8 times more common in states that had the most guns, compared to the least. More than a dozen studies have revealed that if you had a gun at home, you were twice as likely to be killed as someone who didn’t.

Research from the Harvard School of Public Health tells us that states with higher gun ownership levels have higher rates of homicide. Data even tells us that where gun shops or gun dealers open for business, killings go up. There are always exceptions to the rule, but some politicians would have you ignore the overall data and quote the exceptions rather than the rule.

In an article by Fortune Magazine published by Yahoo, Gun rights groups spent $15.8 million on lobbying last year, compared to just $2.9 million in lobbying from gun control groups. Beyond lobbying, gun groups have contributed $50.5 million to federal candidates and party committees between 1989 and 2022, with the vast majority going to Republicans. They spent especially heavily in the 2020 election, with $16.6 million in outside spending.

Oh, but the Second Amendment…. I’m not going to debate it except to say that one side always ignores two words, “well regulated.”

Will there be a change after Buffalo and Uvalde? If history repeats, why would I expect there would be change. I don’t believe I am an overly cynical person but why would I expect change? Guns are as much a part of our culture as mom, apple pie, and Chevrolet. Other than exchanging duck and cover drills for active shooter drills little has changed.

Our history is rife with violence, mostly involving a gun. Our country was born from violence and expanded using violence. Do we have a greater propensity for violence than other countries? I don’t know but other countries have done a better job of curbing theirs.

We have violent games, violent movies glorifying the gun and the heroic figure welding it. I’m just as guilty. Several of my novels include violence…gun violence but the good guy with the gun always saved the day…unlike real life. 

When I read my comic books, Zane Grey, or Louis Lamoure, I knew it was fiction. James Arness or John Wayne wasn’t really gunning them down in the streets. After I became a history student, I found out their fiction was…based on fiction. There were few gunfights in the streets and the Gunfight at the OK Corral lasted about thirty seconds. My novels are no different.

Other cultures have violent games, movies, and literature, but they don’t have real-life violence like we do here. Maybe we should work to keep guns out of the hands of the violent. Maybe we should look at the underlying issues that lead to violence and attempt to correct them.

It is mental illness. I believe someone who goes out and kills nineteen children is mentally ill…but that doesn’t give him a free pass. Other countries with much lower murder rates have mental illnesses too. Could it have something to do with our health system? Maybe we should work to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill.

It is parenting. Probably but why? Single parent homes? Parents having to work multiple jobs leaving their children to their own devices. Cycles of poverty? We don’t seem to care much once a child is born.

Criminals will always find a way…yes probably. Why are we not cutting off access at the source? Gunmakers and smugglers? Everything is done after the murder instead of trying to prevent it. Could it be gunmakers and politicians are making too much money off the sale of legal and illegal firearms?

Maryland was one of the outliers in the Pew study. Strict gun laws but a higher number of gun deaths. Sixty-five percent of the guns used in violence in Maryland that could be traced came from other states with laxer gun laws. I don’t know the numbers but the same can be said about Chicago, I’m sure. Just something to ponder.

Cain killed Abel with a rock. Yep, if the Bible is to be believed. I would rather confront a killer walking around with a bag of rocks than a bag of thirty round magazines and a rifle or pistol to put them in.

Along the same lines, “We’ve taken God out of … fill in the blank.” There are many countries who aren’t considered “Christian Countries” who have much lower gun homicide rates. Research Shinto Japan and while you are at it research their gun laws. Japan has a very violent history at times. Somehow, they decided to overcome it as did other less Christian countries.

It does seem we have lost our appreciation for the sanctity of life…all life. Our hatred for others leads us to violence. Disagreement has become life threatening. Some Christians will say it is because we have become Godless, I will say that some Christians have driven me from organized religion because they are Jesus-less. If you can’t appreciate the Earth and the people who live on it, I want no part of you.

I don’t expect any of this will change anyone’s mind about guns…or violence…or mental illness and I don’t believe any effective change will occur. Gun violence is too engrained in our culture, and we pass it on to our children. I fear it is who we are.

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For clarification, Albert Einstein had many thoughtful quotes, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results” was not one of them. The quote, or a similar quote, first appeared in an Al-Anon article in 1981. There is no evidence Einstein ever said it.

Research cited

What the data says about gun deaths in the U.S.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/26/world/us-gun-culture-world-comparison-intl-cmd/index.html?fbclid=IwAR2vEhlMbsPbVhwBEXTyXtC6iUkx2VAkGf37uCdLzyMABlHEDSPSANOacV0

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/lobbying-gun-rights-groups-hit-152634408.html

Thoughts and Prayers….

/ cigarman501 / 14 Comments

PESSIMISM WARNING! I hate to pee in your Cheerios, but nothing will change. Another mass shooting, another school shooting.  It is just who we are. We are a toxic brew of violent nature, toxic masculinity, with a gun and target rich environment.

We are first in mass shootings, first in gun deaths, nearly half in suicides, and domestic abuse. More than any county of the “civilized” world, not at war. But nothing will change. We make it about anything other than intelligent gun control or an in-depth study of our violent culture and how we perpetuate it.

We don’t want to spend money on education to lift people, we would rather spend it on prisons or shift school money to private schools. We would rather erect a wall than take a serious look at our own culture and its motivations and the dangers from within.

It must be about mental illness, and it is, even though we’ve made it easier for the mentally ill to possess guns. We put the killer under a microscope, scrutinize and debate race, or religion or immigration. If we can’t hang the murderer on one of those excuses, we make it about politics or gun free zones or sanctuary cities or Mars ascending into Venus…when it should be about our culture…the culture of the gun. We offer our thoughts and prayers.

I consider myself a spiritual man, if not, a religious one, but our thoughts and prayers are wearing thin especially when it involves the same kind of kids and schools, I taught and coached in for forty-four years. The thinness is because I believe nothing will change. It is too much a part of our culture. We are a violent group, some with Bibles in one hand, rifles in the other. “Thou Shalt not Kill” should have an addendum. Thou Shalt not Kill unless it abridges my right to purchase and use an AR-15 or any other gun.

I probably shouldn’t be focused on the AR-15…although there is a good reason. From Aurora to Stoneman Douglas High and beyond, it seems to be the weapon of choice, whether due to popularity or ease of use, I don’t know. I don’t know what was used in our latest murder de jour, but I know we’ve weaponized ourselves with all sorts of arms. I have two handguns and a shotgun myself…and a rock, car, butter knife and a fork.

There seems to be something about our manhood that goes hand in hand with a handgun or rifle…and the violent tendencies we hold dear. Do they make a perfume “Ode de Gunpowder?” I’ll write about women just as soon as there is a female mass shooter. Why are our males more violent than females? They are not, women just like to inflict pain over a longer period…. Sorry.

Our country was forged on violence…from the very beginning and we glorify it. From an “Eye for an Eye,” to the cult of the warrior in the many wars we have fought, to the dubious history of the Western gunfighter. Our video games, television programs, and movies glorify violence, and they have an effect. It is still about the Alpha male with the gun in one hand and the adoring, scantily clad female secured with the other. At least we’ve added movies with scantily clad, female superheroes. Hum…sex, and gunpowder….

So, as pessimistic as it sounds, I don’t think we will ever change. I believe we will continue to lead in categories we say we don’t want to lead in and continue to offer our thoughts and prayers instead of taking a meaningful look at our culture and what our culture breeds. Because we won’t take a meaningful look, I expect the violence to increase…but I’m not sending any more thoughts and prayers.