Rummaging Through My Personality

I've talked a bit about this before. So it should not come as any great shock to those who have hung out and read my shit for some time.

I was born way late.

I mean in human history. Even by creationist standards of six thousand + or - a few hundred years. But way, way late when it comes to real history, as in fourteen billion years. That is late dude.

What do I mean by this? (It's always best to ask and not assume.)

See, if I was one of the first hominids who traipsed across the grasslands of Africa, the so-called Savannah, walking upright, showing off for all the world my new-found not-knuckled-dragginess for all to see, there would be plenty of accomplishments I could list that alas are well beyond me now.

I could have concluded and enunciated to my fellow hominids that it would probably be better to shit downstream than up when the lady hominids are washing out the carved out bowls we use to eat from. I could point out that I realized that that star over there on the horizon always seems to move across the heavens starting in the dry season, and then migrates much like the water buffalo, across the plains.

See, I could discover new stuff, as a non-professional person and be pretty darn sure that I was the first person who thought that new thing. Today? Well, I am just as sure that every seemingly unique idea that pops into my busy head, is in fact an old idea thought of by someone else, perhaps thousands of years before I gasped and screamed "what a ride!" as my mother screamed her final push to "get this damn thing out of me!"

Well, another appearing "unique thing" I thought of the other day, is this. I'm probably the luckiest generation alive today.

Let that sink in.

I think it's true.

Why? Oh deliciously you can't wait for the answer can you?

Simply this:

The state of the world is such that I think my generation may be the last whose composites will in fact mostly live to die of old age. I'm not sure that that will happen much in the future.

Yes, yes, I'm more than aware that probably each generation at some point, feels that the world is going to "hell in a hand basket," (oh do please enlighten me on the genesis of that phrase.) I recognize that life never turns out as we thought, we get disappointed (where are the hover boards?) at the lack of discovery of important stuff like teleportation, and travel to distant stars. We realize that we wasted so many hours, days, months and years chasing false prophets, false dreams, and false truth.

And the world continues to spin, and the next generation will make the same claims.

But, I'm not so sure.

There have always been nativist movements in this country, sometimes quite large. There have always been bigots and racists and wrong-thinking dopes on every subject known to man.

I was recently reading Susan Sontag's essay on "What's Happening in America?" and on her "Trip to Hanoi" and I was struck by the sameness of the arguments, the insipid stupidity of the usual rabble of misfits we call Americans. We marched against the war, and working-class masculine bastions of dumb, ranted at us to "love it or leave it." We did neither. They are back at it today, this time, inviting all people of color, or liberal persuasion to do the same.

Nothing changes.

But things do change.

We communicate at a rate that would have boggled our minds even in the 60's. We are aware of everything everywhere, every time. Idiots gather on websites and chat rooms to discover that they are not as mad as they thought, since others share their insanity. Somehow, if you accumulate enough numbers your insanity turns to brilliant analysis. Multiply that by a few thousand and you see that we have a crowd of crazy people who can work together for the first time to destroy the world.

And they seem pretty much about doing just that.

And we are all getting quite frightened.

I used to be okay with the crazy, since I could bask in the knowledge that the people who say such insane things have families and forever more they will be the embarrassment of those who come after them.

I found perfect delight in saying, "I hope you live to have your grandchildren condemn you for . . . ."

But it may literally be true now.

Truly, I don't much give a damn. The planet will or will not be destroyed by fools, and I'll be dead anyway. Not my problem. But I grieve for those who come after.

We have a mass shooting now every day. EVERY DAY. And we do nothing. We do nothing because we are too busy, too sedated by toys, drugs, alcohol and what passes for entertainment. We say we care, but we ain't in the streets.

The Democrats call for "sane gun safety regulations", the Republicans can only complain about mental health failures and jihadists. But NOTHING can stand in the way of the most important right ever given to a human being--the pseudo-"right" to have as much weaponry as you can afford. The folks who claim they are drowning in taxes and can't possible spend another cent on feeding the poor, can spend between $1-3000.00 bucks for the latest assaulty-lookin penis enhancer.

Bullshit.

Nobody in history ever thought the 2nd Amendment was about this. Until the NRA decided that teaching gun safety, the point of their existence, when shortsighted when there was so much money to be made if only they could convince stupid people that guns meant safety and more guns meant more safety.

We have more guns than any nation on earth. We are not the safest, in fact studies prove clearly that countries with more guns have more deaths from guns.

But I'm not here to make the arguments. They have been made countless times before. The Right is gleeful at this last attack, since the names of two of the perpetrators are Middle Eastern, and they can turn this into a diatribe against the President for not being "tough enough on Islamic Jihadists." Democrats, as I said, will moan about the fact that 95% of all people agree with some controls. But nobody will do a thing.

I'm just sick at heart.

How are you feeling these days?

Am I weird? Well I guess that depends doesn't it?