by Diane Gee
There is nothing that can show the binary thinking of modern man more a tragedy in the US. Tragedies are tragic in every sense, but somehow American Exceptionalism feeds into some need for a 24/7 media frenzy disproportionate to the reality of what same Exceptionailsm wreaks upon the rest of the World. A hundred killed at a Pakistani wedding? Nary a peep. A thousand born with grotesque birth defects in Fallujia? Meh. But give us a plane flown into a IRS building, a white girl kidnapped, a fertilizer bomb in Oklahoma, and we go rabid. Add any tragedy involving guns? And it becomes a meth frenzy of polarization, leaving absolutely no room for shades of grey in the reactionary public.
We don't have plane debates, fertilizer debates, racial unfairness in missing kid debates, but god damn. We do have gun debates. And? There is nothing more divisive than this subject.
Somewhere between the crazed militia types and the screeching, preaching abolitionists? Sanity and reason are suffocated under the mountain of invective, stereotyping and panic.
I have spent the last week or so defending myself as a leftist who owns a registered handgun. A handgun, which in Michigan required a background check and a waiting period to obtain. It was brought into my household when my husband, then boyfriend, moved in with me. I was fully against it at the time.
That didn't last too long, for shortly thereafter when he was driving over the road, I was the victim of a home invasion attempted rape and murder. That gun, and my ability to remain clear-headed under pressure saved my life. I won't bore you with the gruesome details, the bruises and cuts from his knife, the choke marks on my neck. Later, that same gun saved my husband when he was delivering in a bad part of Chicago when an armed gunman tried to enter his truck. (by then he had bought me a shotgun)
Does this make me a gun-clutcher who "strokes off" my guns in some macho John Wayne fantasy of grandeur as some of the Liberaloids accuse me of? I think not. It makes me a survivor. That gun has sat in its hidey-hole long since, and I hope I never have need to again let it see the light of day. (or the horror of night as it were)
It horrified and amazed me that there were so-called leftists that told me that they would rather no guns were in the hands of any civilian, and that since I was what they saw as an aberration, my death would have been better overall for society than allowing a homeowner the right to protect themselves. I wonder were it not online, they could look at me, look at my son who would never have been born, and told us it was better that the rapist kill me, and "fuck my corpse while the light fades from your fucking eyes, bitch" than for me to have used a gun and lived.
Men like to say, and I emphasize the male of the species, that women rarely defend themselves successfully in this way. I would ask how many of them have sat through rape counseling with women. Or how many women, once they know you have been through it, because you are brave enough to speak publicly about it, talk privately with you and tell you the same tales over and over. Its a statistical fact that once raped you are twice as likely to be raped again. Predators like the fear, smell your fear, get off on your fear. I would say that almost 3/4 of the women I know who have endured more than one attack have fended off the 2nd because they had a gun. They don't report this second event, because of already having experienced the demeaning way in which the system treats us. Because of this, and the fact that I have known many people who have scared off burglars with their guns, but didn't bother calling the cops because the perp was already in the wind, and the cops end up treating us as criminals anymore? I think that the statistics are widely skewed when it comes to the "more likely to accidentally hurt yourself/spouse/child" story. Those statistics only get reported when things go tragically wrong, and are used by a larger group who would love for society to be disarmed.
After my attack, I trained on a range until I was not only adept at handling a weapon, the guys at that gun club had a female member going to the Olympics they wanted me to train under. I was that good. I was working 2 jobs, going to school, had my own home and a couple acres to take care of, and a father dying of Parkinson's. I had to decline.
I am for legislation. I want a background check, a cooling off period, and I will go one further. I think every person who owns a handgun should have to log range time, have a safety course, and be certified before they can purchase one. If you are not comfortable with that weapon, you have no business owning one.
Just like cars. You should earn a license. And cars kill more people every year than guns do.
So yes, I believe in legislated personal protection handguns. When confronted with this, my story and evidence and the logic behind it? Some become so polarized that they tell me rape is just a tool to win an argument because I am some sort of mentally ill gun stroker. Take this exchange:
As a former pacifist of sorts, I understand the "sanctity of human life" theory behind de-escalating the ability of humans to kill one another. I want that too. But I live here on the mean streets of reality, not in some gated community or guarded artists sanctuary. I live in reality where my killers life was not more "sanctitive" than mine. I should, as the good guy die, so that the criminal may live, thus proving to all my unborn children that may never thereafter gasp oxygen and blink unto the world that the Mom they never had was one of the good ones?
I asked of these men, "If an intruder was to come into your home with a gun and a knife, leave the gun on the table, and walk to the bedroom to carve up your wife or child, would you pick that gun up and stop them? Or would you remain true to your religious anti-violent fervor and watch them die?"
They never answer that direct question. They divert and say that would never happen to them. Thats the thing about crime, the thing about USer's in general. We are so detached, nothing is real until it happens to you personally... that is, unless it serves their POLITICAL purposes. Hence, going back to my 1st point, why so little outcry in the MSM or the Liberaloid circles when war crime after war crime is committed daily. So little outcry when black on black crime is epidemic, and cop on black crime is worse. I am unsurprised that there are no statistic of the number of black citizens shot to death by our police state every year, yet its not uncommon to read weekly how another was shot 28 times, or in the back.
Which leads me to my next point. We live in the reality that exists, not the reality we wish existed. It is a violent world. The fact that our Revolution was born of violence and that guns have been long part of our culture may be part and parcel of our reality, yet we cannot undo it. The fact that Predatory Capitalism is the basis of our Society shares even greater blame. But it is what it is. Like alcohol and drugs, prohibition only leaves more incentive for a criminal in black market profiteering. There are so many guns in the US right now, even were they to cease making them and all the "good citizens" give theirs up? Gun crime would stay unaffected. I live in a violent world, and as such need protection.
As the old saying goes? "Never bring a knife to a gun fight."
I am told I am unenlightened - that guns make giving in to our rage and impotence all too easy. My old partner used to say that the socioeconomic stressors were creating human time bombs. Both statements, save the unenlightened part, are true.
But we are treating the open wound with a band aid, we arguing how many teeth are in the sharks mouth while it is about to swallow us. We are missing the point.
If we do not address the root illness that causes humans to be full of rage and impotence, people will find ever new ways to explode. We will become like suicide bombers in the Warsaw-ghetto like conditions of Gaza, with nothing left to loose. Only our enemy is invisible, unattainable, ever the man behind the curtain, with layers and layers of defense at his disposal.
PART TWO: REVOLUTION OR DELUSION
If you show a leftist a portrait in history, of a woman holding a gun as a French Revolutionary, a fighter against Pinochet, a comrade of Che or Fidel, a defender of Chavez, you will hear nothing but glorification, respect, laud to their bravery. If you speak to the same Leftist about being armed in defense against a rising fascist state? They will speak of Gandhi and tell you that non-violence is the only way.
Or perhaps, they will speak of your paranoia and delusion. They would never do that to us here, and we must not provoke them. The thing is? We have been peacefully protesting, and the militarized police, aided by Homeland Security have been acting violently against us. They are using drones. They are wearing fatigues. Obama has a kill list. We have NDAA saying they can take us without cause or trial and keep us as long as they wish. The Unitary Executive of Bush brought us the fourth estate as potential enemy. The court challenge to Obama's Unitary Executive will not deny that is so. One need only to look at the nightly evidence in Occupy to see that we have no free speech or Right of Assembly. Look deeper and see the internet kill switch bypassed Congress by executive Order, and the felonizing federally of protesting anywhere where a SS agent may or may not be present, with or without your knowledge. We don't even have free speech. Hold a sign, get tackled by 2 cops and a horse.
The Populace rises when it is weakened to the point of it being intolerable. In that condition, no one takes on the powerful state, ever. It is always the protectors of the status quo, the elite class that start the class war. They always start the violence to strike fear in anyone brave enough to object to our condition. People take the abuse, try and capitulate, get beaten, tazed, jailed, and tortured... always seeking change without dying. And every time? The elites end up killing us if we continue our quest for fair treatment.
It is not delusional to think the Class war is coming. The Class War is already in full-force against us, and is being waged in disproportional response to the peaceful ways in which we have objected. Its not coming, my friends, it is here.
I've had former special ops friends warn me. "If you were any actual challenge to the status quo? Response will be so swift and brutal you wouldn't know what hit you. They have plans for all that. They'd smoke you all in a heartbeat."
This is why they love to ply us with the horrors of "terrorists." For what is a terrorist but one that must use guerrilla tactics against a much stronger foe - exactly what we did against the British, who complained we would not line up and fight fair. Revolutions are always David and Goliath, or they would just be called wars.
I replied to my special ops friend that eventually the kids they hire would not want to kill their own, and that they are vastly outnumbered by people who know the lay of the land, have everything and nothing to lose and are armed. He said they know that and it gives them nightmares every night.
The thing that would serve them best, the thing they cannot manipulate the "right" into doing is take away our guns. This latest episode has been perfect for them, as perfect as 9/11 and perhaps as manipulated. They need the Left to do this, just as they need another Obama win to keep the liberaloids at bay while they continue massacring our rights. The Liberaloids will be the tool of our own demise, should they win the gun debate.
I'm not going to get on the train to glory. I won't step into a cattle car. I will take some of them with me, even as I lose my life, should it come to that.
The second amendment is not an archaic notion. It was created because men gained money and power, and bought armies to protect their money and power. It is more relevant today than ever before in our short history.
CONCLUSION:
There are no innocents in times of war. There are participants, and those who enable the status quo by silent acquiescence. There is a third type though. Those who feel they are on the moral side, yet use all their words and power to keep actual Revolution from happening.
Dualistic thinking are the things of childhood. As I child I spake as a child; of peace and roses and higher ground. It is the world to which I still aspire. Yet as an adult, one must see the facets of reality that speaks of never having equity or peace or human rights without a fight. The Elites will not be moved by our non-violence. They already prove that daily. The Elites will not be threatened by a working class they need for labor to back down; they no longer need our labor.
I am not delusional in the protection of my home or my country in being armed. I am being pragmatic and thoughtful. Guns are weapons of death. I realize that fully. I realize too that people use these tools to wreak havoc on the denizens of this planet from human to fauna. Mostly I realize that beyond guns, environmental destruction, pollution, factory farming, over fishing and global warming may make all our petty arguments moot. We need a systemic reboot with education and emphasis on cooperation to save ourselves. We need to kill predatory capitalism and the killing of the human soul and psyche that creates. We need revolution.
Dreamers dream, poets wax of utopia.
And Revolutionaries make the dreams of utopia come true. With our blood on the line so that they may continue to dream and rhyme.
Damn me if you must, oh Liberaloids; just as the right damns me for wanting a Socialist World Revolution. But in the end? You may end up glad its me standing armed between you and your death. Your children my gaze upon my picture as you do of history's other fighters. Or I may just end up obscure and dead. Either way, if this tragedy is fodder for you to help us lose this war? You are deluded and dualistic to the point of no return.
My path is righteous, and I shall sleep the sleep of the Goddesses.
There is nothing that can show the binary thinking of modern man more a tragedy in the US. Tragedies are tragic in every sense, but somehow American Exceptionalism feeds into some need for a 24/7 media frenzy disproportionate to the reality of what same Exceptionailsm wreaks upon the rest of the World. A hundred killed at a Pakistani wedding? Nary a peep. A thousand born with grotesque birth defects in Fallujia? Meh. But give us a plane flown into a IRS building, a white girl kidnapped, a fertilizer bomb in Oklahoma, and we go rabid. Add any tragedy involving guns? And it becomes a meth frenzy of polarization, leaving absolutely no room for shades of grey in the reactionary public.
We don't have plane debates, fertilizer debates, racial unfairness in missing kid debates, but god damn. We do have gun debates. And? There is nothing more divisive than this subject.
Somewhere between the crazed militia types and the screeching, preaching abolitionists? Sanity and reason are suffocated under the mountain of invective, stereotyping and panic.
I have spent the last week or so defending myself as a leftist who owns a registered handgun. A handgun, which in Michigan required a background check and a waiting period to obtain. It was brought into my household when my husband, then boyfriend, moved in with me. I was fully against it at the time.
That didn't last too long, for shortly thereafter when he was driving over the road, I was the victim of a home invasion attempted rape and murder. That gun, and my ability to remain clear-headed under pressure saved my life. I won't bore you with the gruesome details, the bruises and cuts from his knife, the choke marks on my neck. Later, that same gun saved my husband when he was delivering in a bad part of Chicago when an armed gunman tried to enter his truck. (by then he had bought me a shotgun)
Does this make me a gun-clutcher who "strokes off" my guns in some macho John Wayne fantasy of grandeur as some of the Liberaloids accuse me of? I think not. It makes me a survivor. That gun has sat in its hidey-hole long since, and I hope I never have need to again let it see the light of day. (or the horror of night as it were)
It horrified and amazed me that there were so-called leftists that told me that they would rather no guns were in the hands of any civilian, and that since I was what they saw as an aberration, my death would have been better overall for society than allowing a homeowner the right to protect themselves. I wonder were it not online, they could look at me, look at my son who would never have been born, and told us it was better that the rapist kill me, and "fuck my corpse while the light fades from your fucking eyes, bitch" than for me to have used a gun and lived.
Men like to say, and I emphasize the male of the species, that women rarely defend themselves successfully in this way. I would ask how many of them have sat through rape counseling with women. Or how many women, once they know you have been through it, because you are brave enough to speak publicly about it, talk privately with you and tell you the same tales over and over. Its a statistical fact that once raped you are twice as likely to be raped again. Predators like the fear, smell your fear, get off on your fear. I would say that almost 3/4 of the women I know who have endured more than one attack have fended off the 2nd because they had a gun. They don't report this second event, because of already having experienced the demeaning way in which the system treats us. Because of this, and the fact that I have known many people who have scared off burglars with their guns, but didn't bother calling the cops because the perp was already in the wind, and the cops end up treating us as criminals anymore? I think that the statistics are widely skewed when it comes to the "more likely to accidentally hurt yourself/spouse/child" story. Those statistics only get reported when things go tragically wrong, and are used by a larger group who would love for society to be disarmed.
After my attack, I trained on a range until I was not only adept at handling a weapon, the guys at that gun club had a female member going to the Olympics they wanted me to train under. I was that good. I was working 2 jobs, going to school, had my own home and a couple acres to take care of, and a father dying of Parkinson's. I had to decline.
I am for legislation. I want a background check, a cooling off period, and I will go one further. I think every person who owns a handgun should have to log range time, have a safety course, and be certified before they can purchase one. If you are not comfortable with that weapon, you have no business owning one.
Just like cars. You should earn a license. And cars kill more people every year than guns do.
So yes, I believe in legislated personal protection handguns. When confronted with this, my story and evidence and the logic behind it? Some become so polarized that they tell me rape is just a tool to win an argument because I am some sort of mentally ill gun stroker. Take this exchange:
"You're obviously a petty tyrant who will use any device (including being a near-rape victim) as a tool of emotional manipulation. "
I'm sorry. My LIFE and PAIN make you feel manipulated? My reality? My honesty about the physical and emotional scars I carry bother you? My survival and its story are merely tools to manipulate you? Golly, and here I thought they were experiences I endured. All along, I went through all this just to manipulate you?
As a former pacifist of sorts, I understand the "sanctity of human life" theory behind de-escalating the ability of humans to kill one another. I want that too. But I live here on the mean streets of reality, not in some gated community or guarded artists sanctuary. I live in reality where my killers life was not more "sanctitive" than mine. I should, as the good guy die, so that the criminal may live, thus proving to all my unborn children that may never thereafter gasp oxygen and blink unto the world that the Mom they never had was one of the good ones?
I asked of these men, "If an intruder was to come into your home with a gun and a knife, leave the gun on the table, and walk to the bedroom to carve up your wife or child, would you pick that gun up and stop them? Or would you remain true to your religious anti-violent fervor and watch them die?"
They never answer that direct question. They divert and say that would never happen to them. Thats the thing about crime, the thing about USer's in general. We are so detached, nothing is real until it happens to you personally... that is, unless it serves their POLITICAL purposes. Hence, going back to my 1st point, why so little outcry in the MSM or the Liberaloid circles when war crime after war crime is committed daily. So little outcry when black on black crime is epidemic, and cop on black crime is worse. I am unsurprised that there are no statistic of the number of black citizens shot to death by our police state every year, yet its not uncommon to read weekly how another was shot 28 times, or in the back.
Which leads me to my next point. We live in the reality that exists, not the reality we wish existed. It is a violent world. The fact that our Revolution was born of violence and that guns have been long part of our culture may be part and parcel of our reality, yet we cannot undo it. The fact that Predatory Capitalism is the basis of our Society shares even greater blame. But it is what it is. Like alcohol and drugs, prohibition only leaves more incentive for a criminal in black market profiteering. There are so many guns in the US right now, even were they to cease making them and all the "good citizens" give theirs up? Gun crime would stay unaffected. I live in a violent world, and as such need protection.
As the old saying goes? "Never bring a knife to a gun fight."
I am told I am unenlightened - that guns make giving in to our rage and impotence all too easy. My old partner used to say that the socioeconomic stressors were creating human time bombs. Both statements, save the unenlightened part, are true.
But we are treating the open wound with a band aid, we arguing how many teeth are in the sharks mouth while it is about to swallow us. We are missing the point.
If we do not address the root illness that causes humans to be full of rage and impotence, people will find ever new ways to explode. We will become like suicide bombers in the Warsaw-ghetto like conditions of Gaza, with nothing left to loose. Only our enemy is invisible, unattainable, ever the man behind the curtain, with layers and layers of defense at his disposal.
PART TWO: REVOLUTION OR DELUSION
If you show a leftist a portrait in history, of a woman holding a gun as a French Revolutionary, a fighter against Pinochet, a comrade of Che or Fidel, a defender of Chavez, you will hear nothing but glorification, respect, laud to their bravery. If you speak to the same Leftist about being armed in defense against a rising fascist state? They will speak of Gandhi and tell you that non-violence is the only way.
Or perhaps, they will speak of your paranoia and delusion. They would never do that to us here, and we must not provoke them. The thing is? We have been peacefully protesting, and the militarized police, aided by Homeland Security have been acting violently against us. They are using drones. They are wearing fatigues. Obama has a kill list. We have NDAA saying they can take us without cause or trial and keep us as long as they wish. The Unitary Executive of Bush brought us the fourth estate as potential enemy. The court challenge to Obama's Unitary Executive will not deny that is so. One need only to look at the nightly evidence in Occupy to see that we have no free speech or Right of Assembly. Look deeper and see the internet kill switch bypassed Congress by executive Order, and the felonizing federally of protesting anywhere where a SS agent may or may not be present, with or without your knowledge. We don't even have free speech. Hold a sign, get tackled by 2 cops and a horse.
The Populace rises when it is weakened to the point of it being intolerable. In that condition, no one takes on the powerful state, ever. It is always the protectors of the status quo, the elite class that start the class war. They always start the violence to strike fear in anyone brave enough to object to our condition. People take the abuse, try and capitulate, get beaten, tazed, jailed, and tortured... always seeking change without dying. And every time? The elites end up killing us if we continue our quest for fair treatment.
It is not delusional to think the Class war is coming. The Class War is already in full-force against us, and is being waged in disproportional response to the peaceful ways in which we have objected. Its not coming, my friends, it is here.
I've had former special ops friends warn me. "If you were any actual challenge to the status quo? Response will be so swift and brutal you wouldn't know what hit you. They have plans for all that. They'd smoke you all in a heartbeat."
This is why they love to ply us with the horrors of "terrorists." For what is a terrorist but one that must use guerrilla tactics against a much stronger foe - exactly what we did against the British, who complained we would not line up and fight fair. Revolutions are always David and Goliath, or they would just be called wars.
I replied to my special ops friend that eventually the kids they hire would not want to kill their own, and that they are vastly outnumbered by people who know the lay of the land, have everything and nothing to lose and are armed. He said they know that and it gives them nightmares every night.
The thing that would serve them best, the thing they cannot manipulate the "right" into doing is take away our guns. This latest episode has been perfect for them, as perfect as 9/11 and perhaps as manipulated. They need the Left to do this, just as they need another Obama win to keep the liberaloids at bay while they continue massacring our rights. The Liberaloids will be the tool of our own demise, should they win the gun debate.
I'm not going to get on the train to glory. I won't step into a cattle car. I will take some of them with me, even as I lose my life, should it come to that.
The second amendment is not an archaic notion. It was created because men gained money and power, and bought armies to protect their money and power. It is more relevant today than ever before in our short history.
"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any bands of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States" (Noah Webster in 'An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution', 1787, a pamphlet aimed at swaying Pennsylvania toward ratification, in Paul Ford, ed., Pamphlets on the Constitution of the United States, at 56(New York, 1888))
"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms, and be taught alike especially when young, how to use them." (Richard Henry Lee, 1788, Initiator of the Declaration of Independence, and member of the first Senate, which passed the Bill of Rights, Walter Bennett, ed., Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republican, at 21,22,124 (Univ. of Alabama Press,1975)..)
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." (Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers at 184-8)
"And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms....The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants" (Thomas Jefferson in a letter to William S. Smith in 1787. Taken from Jefferson, On Democracy 20, S. Padover ed., 1939)
"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined" (Patrick Henry, 3 J. Elliot, Debates in the Several State Conventions 45, 2d ed. Philadelphia, 1836)
"The strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." -- (Thomas Jefferson)
CONCLUSION:
There are no innocents in times of war. There are participants, and those who enable the status quo by silent acquiescence. There is a third type though. Those who feel they are on the moral side, yet use all their words and power to keep actual Revolution from happening.
Dualistic thinking are the things of childhood. As I child I spake as a child; of peace and roses and higher ground. It is the world to which I still aspire. Yet as an adult, one must see the facets of reality that speaks of never having equity or peace or human rights without a fight. The Elites will not be moved by our non-violence. They already prove that daily. The Elites will not be threatened by a working class they need for labor to back down; they no longer need our labor.
I am not delusional in the protection of my home or my country in being armed. I am being pragmatic and thoughtful. Guns are weapons of death. I realize that fully. I realize too that people use these tools to wreak havoc on the denizens of this planet from human to fauna. Mostly I realize that beyond guns, environmental destruction, pollution, factory farming, over fishing and global warming may make all our petty arguments moot. We need a systemic reboot with education and emphasis on cooperation to save ourselves. We need to kill predatory capitalism and the killing of the human soul and psyche that creates. We need revolution.
Dreamers dream, poets wax of utopia.
And Revolutionaries make the dreams of utopia come true. With our blood on the line so that they may continue to dream and rhyme.
Damn me if you must, oh Liberaloids; just as the right damns me for wanting a Socialist World Revolution. But in the end? You may end up glad its me standing armed between you and your death. Your children my gaze upon my picture as you do of history's other fighters. Or I may just end up obscure and dead. Either way, if this tragedy is fodder for you to help us lose this war? You are deluded and dualistic to the point of no return.
My path is righteous, and I shall sleep the sleep of the Goddesses.
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