EDITORIAL
The world didn't end; maybe society will
David A. Lombardo
It's Saturday morning; I intentionally waited until after B'Ak'Tun 13 passed to write the newsletter. What would be the point of spending all that time only to have the world end before anyone could read it?
I passed the time to midnight by watching old episodes of Southland, smoking a cigar and having a scotch. If you're a bachelor, bereft of both female companionship and faithful golden retriever, what better way to go out in a ball of fire or whatever Mayan-predicted end was going to consume the planet?
Meanwhile, those less fatalistic denizens of our doomed orb who were keeping up with the news and social media were being treated to uber-liberal rants in the aftermath of the horrific shooting that killed 20 children and six adults at a school in Newtown, Conn.
Social media, long the fertile ground in which the socially inept can plant their seeds of paranoia, lived up to its reputation with posts such as:
"Gun Control will exist when some nutjob chooses to exercise their 2nd amendment rights at NRA headquarters instead of a school or theater."
"If you belong to the NRA then you should have to shoot your kids."
"Murder every NRA member"
One expects such comments from socially deviant miscreants, left or right, but one would hope the mainstream media would be objective.
CNN, the very people that rant about Fox News having an agenda, aired a Piers Morgan interview with Larry Pratt, executive director of the Gun Owners of America. "You're an unbelievably stupid man, aren't you," Morgan said. Morgan is a horse's ass and if truth were a beacon of light, CNN wouldn't have the candlepower to illuminate the neather region of a pony.
The mainstream media also took the NRA to task for remaining silent in the aftermath of Newtown, demanding an apology and admission they were responsible. At the same time airing every left wing, whack job rant against the organization or calling for the confiscation of all firearms and the elimination of the Second Amendment.
Unlike liberals who, in the words of Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, "Never let a good crisis go to waste," the NRA initially withheld comment about Newtown out of respect for the families of the victims. It is that liberal mentality that most succinctly underscores the difference between the liberal and the conservative.
Liberals from the Messiah down began chanting the mantra "guns are evil" while conservatives offered productive ideas such as having armed guards in schools. You know, like at the White House, the State capitol, Chicago's city hall, sporting events, rock concerts and pretty much everywhere else important people gather but certainly not children.
Liberals mocked the idea of actually trying to protect schools with armed, trained guards even as the Messiah unleashed his four horsemen of the apocalypse: Biden, McCarthy, Lautenberg, and Feinstein.
"Assault weapon ban, large capacity magazine ban, gun show ban," they chanted while their horses trampled the Second Amendment and made shards of the truth that none of those have the least effect on deterring bad guys. As NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre said, "...the thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."
To a liberal, the very concept that any individual should have the right to self-defense with a firearm is anathema to liberal ideology. When forced to allow concealed carry the liberal mind will look for any way possible to derail the process.
Take a few moments to read New York's concealed carry application; take a few more if you live in Illinois and are wondering what your new concealed carry law might be. Seriously, read the whole 16 page thing including the part where the applicant has to bring their personal income tax return for the previous tax year and daily bank deposit slips and corresponding bank statements for the six months preceding the date of the interview (Photocopies will not be accepted). Only to a liberal Loon like New York City's Mayor Bloomberg could that make sense.
After waiting a respectable time LaPierre did appear and he let go with both barrels saying laws that established gun-free school zones have had the effect of telling "every insane killer in America that schools are the safest place to inflict maximum mayhem with minimum risk." LaPierre said America has left its schoolchildren "utterly defenseless -- and the monsters and the predators of the world know it and exploit it."
LaPierre also targeted the press saying, "...the next Adam Lanza" is 'waiting in the wings' and argued that copycat killers are encouraged by "a national media machine that rewards them with wall-to-wall attention and a sense of identity that they crave."
One of his most insightful comments was to the video game industry and Hollywood movie studios for films such as "American Psycho" and "Natural Born Killers." I have said for years that the media lives on the billions of dollars in advertising generated by convincing advertisers that the subliminal message of advertising shapes and lures the viewer into compliance. Yet that same, disingenuous group claims that violent programming and video games have no effect whatsoever.
The mainstream press must have been at Starbucks and missed a few stories such as the Harrold Independent School District in Harrold, Texas where there is a policy allowing teachers and other employees to carry concealed weapons on campus.
"We don't have money for a security guard, but this is a better solution," Superintendent David Thweatt said. "A shooter could take out a guard or officer with a visible, holstered weapon, but our teachers have master's degrees, are older and have had extensive training. And their guns are hidden. We can protect our children." "Concealed carry is allowed in Utah schools too and at least five other states are now looking into similar policies.
The double latte macchiato must not have been finished in time for the press to publish the story about how Nick Meli, a concealed carry holder in Portland, Oregon, effectively curtailed an active shooter in a Portland Mall without having to fire a shot.
Oh yes, thank God for the objective journalism of CNN, MSNBC and other pillars of the journalistic community. If journalism, the third estate of Tocqueville's American experiment in democracy, is the public's watchdog, we'll have lived through the Mayan's end of the world only to watch the end of society.
