Tuesday, April 09, 2013

RIVERDANCE With Blood

Can B-Ho get any sleazier? He's turned the concept of "waving the bloody shirt" into a Broadway musical, complete with props he carries with him.  All he needs is exploding blood bags and a catchy closing number —paging Adele!

Oh wait...did I offend anyone with that last crack? Before you answer, let's talk about victims. As Americans, as human beings, our collective hearts bleed for victims, whether from violent crimes or tsunamis or school bus accidents. Because of that compassion, we allow victims a special voice within our culture. We listen to victims because their loss gives special poignancy to their words.

I was in New York City right after 9-11, and I sat in bars in lower Manhattan and listened to people who had lost friends, relatives, spouses, children. Some of those people called for immediate, bloody reaction in the United States...I just nodded my head and bought the drinks. If you were to ask those same people today whether they still called for detention camps for Muslims and Star Chamber trials, they would be mortified. In fact, I doubt they even remember those words so many years back in dark Manhattan bars.

Yes, the words of victims have special poignancy, but what they don't have is any special truth. Grief drives us to look toward the heavens and demand an answer from any nearby Deity. Grief drives us to demand a solution to the fundamental insoluble problem, which is that the world is as it is. Bad things happen, often to good people, and grief drives us to...do something.

To me there is no greater sin...and I use the word "sin" specifically...than harnessing grief to serve a crass political agenda. This from Reason:
In Obama's telling, only "powerful interests that are very good at confusing the subject, that are good at amplifying conflict and extremes, that are good at drowning out rational debate, good at ginning up irrational fears." That's pretty rich, coming from a man who claims that massacres like the one that took 26 lives at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, last December have become "routine," who falsely asserts that the man responsible for those murders used a "fully automatic weapon," and who in response to that horrible event pushes policies that could not possibly have prevented it, while citing the grief and outrage it generated as if they were arguments for the same gun control policies he has supported all along.
Remember, Michael Bloomberg created a "SWAT team" for gun control, just waiting for something to happen to so he could drive home the same old agenda. He just needed the blood.

When I was in high school, my brother — 2 years younger than me — died of brain cancer. It took a year for him to die, and what little I know of grace I learned from him in that singularly horrible year. In the wake of his death, my family, staggered by grief, simply self-destructed...I played my own part in that self-destruction, driven by an anger...no, that's not strong enough...driven by a fury — to hate...God, my parents, the people around me, the sons-of-bitch doctors who failed to keep my brother alive. Funny, but after more than half a century if you ask me what I think about doctors, before my brain even has a chance to turn on 17-year-old Michael will erupt with, "I hate those sons of bitches!"

I grieved and I hated and more than anything else in the universe I wanted to...do something, even if that something I was doing was obviously destroying the world around me. But grief does that to a person. And that is why even though we share the pain of those who grieve, we cannot allow ourselves to build, or rebuild, the world around them.

Doing something is an anathema to intelligent action; it allows us to believe that somehow feeling supersedes thinking, that the public expression of emotion, as cathartic as it might be, is grounds for reshaping our entire country into something the Founders never intended.

One more personal piece of data...when I was in college in Florida, I was dirt poor and lived in an ancient, decaying trailer park in a 1952 Spartan travel trailer, the ones with Studebaker roll-down windows and a porthole in the door. The residents of the trailer park would make a good reality show...the mandatory hooker, a murderer who got off on a technicality, a rodeo cowgirl who kept her horse at a farm across the road, and a "hack" writer — the first professional, e.g., a guy who got paid for it, writer I'd ever met. Each month he'd get a request list from his agent in New York for "2 western stories, make the heroes like John Wayne," or "4 short-short science fiction stories, one with evil aliens," stuff like that. And Bill would sit at his manual typewriter and bang them out like clockwork.

In his spare time, he drank too much — natch! — and studied history. He had an old reel-to-reel tape recorder, and sometimes when I was over at his trailer helping him imbibe he'd play me tapes of speeches. His favorites were Hitler, whom he had fought against and hated..."just listen to the cadence, Michael. Forget the words. Listen to the power. He sold a whole country with that voice. With emotion, not reason." Bill's long gone, but the lesson remans the same.

23 comments:

DamDoc said...

yep.. listen to the cadence... the longer this drags on, and the more egredious the speaches, the more people NEED to feel their anger. There can be no excuse to stay home in 2014. Until then, this onslaught will persist, incrementally taking more and more of our freedoms. Hopefully the result will be a long memory with regard to who has perpetrated this on us, and we will take no quarter. I am so tired of screaming at the media spewing devices as the insanity of where we are gets spun.

Anonymous said...

Great piece, Michael. Re the Hitler connection: one might point out that the anti-gun swine are using the same mechanism on us that Hitler used on the Jews: He's trying to marginalize us, turn us into ubermench (subhumans) so that our destruction is not a moral affront to humanity but simply an extermination of vermin, with no investment of intellect or emotion necessary.
That's not to call O Hitler, but it is to make the point that all totalitarian genocidalists play the same tricks.

DamDoc said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
gunman42782 said...

Very good article Michael. Great point.

2Savage said...

MB,
Perhaps the most insightful piece you've ever written. It perfectly encapsulates the political theater we are currently witnessing and may all soon be the victims of.

Our urge to do something/anything, to strike out immediately after a tragedy is hardwired into our DNA. It's a component of our flight or fight mechanism. Anger, fear, rage and revenge are all extremely useful tools when you're literally in the jaws of a grizzly and those emotions drive and intensify that needed adrenalin dump.

However, having survived the grizzly's attack and while nursing our wounds, thoughtful contemplation likely suggests better and more thoughtful methods of future action.

Unfortunately, in the current political environment, thoughtful contemplation is less likely than the aforementioned grizzly attack.

One of our Founding Fathers (Washington?) suggested a one year "cooling off" period for any legislation not of an emergency nature. Realizing the wisdom of this advice, our current crop of politicians intentionally ignore it in the hopes of furthering their political agendas to the everlasting detriment of our Republic.

George said...

Michael well written. Simply stated...well written. Thank-you for your words of experience and wisdom.

The battle is already won, we must decide what side to stand on, God Bless.

Haendler said...

Damdoc,
I agree with your comments, one clarification, Ubermensch is Superman or Beyond Man. The word you were looking for is untermensch, subhuman.

mzevenb said...

I have never commented on one of MB's posts before but this was a great one. I follow the blog religiously. Keep up the good work.

ELIMN8U said...

Standing and Applauding....Great article!

Kevin said...

A good piece there got the point home.I have to add that was not politics yesterday by our Der Leader but sure sounded like one and a pepperally to boot by the sounds of the crowd.No healing with this guy.Sad.

Anonymous said...

Very powerful, thank you for the perspective. This needs to be published where more can read it.

Bill said...

Michael, powerful stuff. So sorry about your brother. We will keep up the fight in Texas.

Bill

Anonymous said...

Mr. Bane,

Thank you for sharing your personal story about your family and brother. Thank you for doing this here for everyone.

Please don't stop fighting, we all need to continue fighting O-zero and his horrible administration.

Rob Leahy said...

Well said!

Anonymous said...

Michael, I've been reading your ramblings for a good long time, and I can say with all honesty, this is your best. I can only hope a few members of Congress are exposed to your thoughts. As others have said, thank you.

Anonymous said...

Well done. Bravo.

Anonymous said...

Another outstanding piece Michael.

It's clear to me that the gun-grabbers think they have all the support they need - and are willing to go to whatever ends necessary to accomplish their goals. The Brady Campaign even admitted - at last - that their goal was the total confiscation of ALL firearms.

Sandy Hook has become their battle cry - as clearly as if it were "Remember the Alamo!" or "Remember Pearl Harbor!". And that's why the full-court press is on, complete with lie after lie, human props, crocodile tears from BHO, Sandy Hook survivor relatives on '60 Minutes' in a heartfelt interview, etc, etc. The only thing missing is the Movie of The Week.

What irks me is they seem to think that the rest of us don't "feel their pain" (to borrow a phrase). NO ONE could NOT be moved by what happened there that day - but it's hardly become "routine." And to say so is despicable. For the survivors to cling to the thought that eleven children escaped while (insert killer's name here) was reloading is proof of just how delusional they are to think that by limiting mag capacity, "X" number of children can therefore be saved. What about the number of older homeowners, single mothers, or home alone teenagers who might be saved in the coming years by having the "force multiplier" of a 30-rd magazine against several home invaders bent on rape and ruin - and God knows what other mayhem? And why is it SO difficult to grasp the concept that anything they "do" will only affect law-abiding gun owners, since criminals and the mentally ill are by definition NOT going to cooperate?

I realize it's difficult to recover from the loss of family members. I still mourn the loss of my (then) 72 yr old father in 2004 - but I don't expect the nation as a whole to "do something" about heart disease. And OBVIOUSLY the deaths of so many children IN ANY FASHION is tragic beyond belief - but so are any number of things which occur on a daily basis. Like young men & women dying in a war not of their making for a nation whose survival has nothing to do with the security of our own - and I've seen THAT twice in my lifetime, and had a front row seat the first time.

I've said it before Michael - and I'll say it again. This CANNOT end well for our community. It may "blow over" if the GOP sticks to their guns in the House (and retains the House in 2014) - but the damage, I fear, has been done.
We're just one more mass shooting away from full confiscation - with no apologies - so long as BHO retains the WH. And after that?
You tell me.

Gunny

Papershotshells said...

Wolf Bane,

A great piece, one of the best that I have read from you.

So sorry for the loss of your brother. Even though my brother and I are often at odds, I can't imagine him not being here to spar with.

He's only 2 years my junior and I hope to have many more years to hunt, shoot and argue with him.

Keep up the fight. We here in the (semi) free states are behind you 100%

Flash Powder Hal said...

And BHO used OUR Air Force One to fly the Sandy Hook parents to help his dog-n-pony show too.
How much did that cost us?

Anonymous said...

Anti gunners in Canada have been playing the "relatives of victims as demonstration tokens" card for years. I believe the term of art corpse dancer has been used.

cf Montreal Massacre

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Polytechnique_massacre

RSR

king said...

Rockin' cadence and emotion, WB. We're thankful for your vigilance and dedication on our behalf. I wonder how we might be able to change the strategy from defending our 2A rights to asserting them instead?

After all we've been defending them for 50 yrs. The only bright spot in that time has been when we've asserted them with specific agenda and legislation e.g 49 states w/ concealed and/or open carry. Isn't now the time to bring the flank by pressing for National Right to Carry?
Best
King

john said...

Thanks for your post.

Why do we let our enemies own the debate? Where is our parade of prevented domestic/child abuse victims, of elderly non-victim shop keepers, of citizens who defended their loved ones and others?

Yes, we won't be able to fly them to DC on AirForceOne (at whose expense?), nor will many congress-folk agree to meet with them. There will be no live coverage of photo-ops... but the dark message of our enemies seems to have very little countering it.

Their calls for "think of the children!" should be met with "yes, we need to think of the children; all of them !"

Anonymous said...

"Don't just Do something,stand there" is the best advice for politicians that I can think of.
Of course,the won't take it.


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