We Are All Here, Now

Perhaps it has escaped your notice, but American society has pretty much collapsed.

It most likely has escaped your notice, because when you wake up in the morning, the lights work, the birds are singing, you go to work, you put gas in your car, you buy groceries, and it all seems... normal.

There are no troops in the streets. No one is driving around shouting out their car windows about revolution. Masses of people are not standing guard over barricades.

But if you step back from the minutiae of your life, the picture becomes clearer.

There is a doddering, selfish madman in The White House, enriching himself and his "friends." Congress is impotent, run by a party that supported the madman and now seems embarrassed by it, but can't break free of his Svengali-like idiocy. And the Supreme Court is run by Conservatives who are not interested in maintaining the integrity of the Constitution, but opening the door to fascism.

All the while, the engine of this destruction of Constitutional order, the White Christian Fascist movement that is woven into the fabric of our nation, is promulgating the removal of rights from anyone who is not a white, Christian, cisgendered male. Voting, birth control, abortion, gender-affirming care, and any kind of program meant to support the poor and indigent, these are slowly being erased as quickly as can be managed, only to be thwarted by a judicial system which, below the level of the Supreme Court, still seems interested in applying rules equally (with some exceptions).

We are all here, now.

If you're not seeing it, that's your privilege at work. Or, perhaps, it's because you are working so hard just to survive, you don't notice and have no time to think about it. Or, further still, maybe this is what you wanted, even as you profess "This isn't what I voted for!" Whatever the reason, it's here. We're here. There are charlatans, liars, thieves, and proto-Nazis wandering the halls of a building where Abraham Lincoln worked to hold the Union together, where Teddy Roosevelt fought the trusts and established our national parks system, where FDR brought a country back from the brink of disaster during the Depression and then fought a two-front war to end the threat of Fascism, and John F. Kennedy launched our nation on a trip to the Moon. Part of that hallowed building has already been physically destroyed.

Everything happening now enrages us. You see it poured into the text boxes of apps and websites to be posted on every variety of social media forum, from text to video. We are furious. We are anxious. We are petrified. We are panicked. We are confused. We are hoping, beyond hope, that someone comes to fix it all.

I'm sorry. It doesn't work that way.

True, there are organizations fighting every day, mainly in the courts, sometimes in the political arena, to stop the madness. They are, however, only working against those things that are happening now or have happened. They are not preventative. Nothing it seems, prevents this "administration" from moving on to the next set of outrages, as if the plan is to simply overwhelm us with a tidal wave of despair.

Honestly, and you're not going to like this, it's time to stop being outraged.

I'm not saying don't be angry. I'm not even saying to accept this as our fate.

What I'm saying, is that outrage is energy wasted. Outrage poured onto the Internet is energy diluted. Frustration, arguments, bickering, and the like, with other people we do not know, who may not even be people at this point, is not what is needed to meet the current crisis. We can continue endlessly - and we will - to rehash how we got here, but the essence is, that we are here. The question now is: What are we going to do about it?

This isn't just about elections, and who votes and doesn't, and who voted for what, when. None of that matters now. The fact is the forces that have expended decades planning and slowly executing their vision of an American run by white cisgendered men are within striking distance of their goal. They have created an atmosphere where people believe there is little be done, that voting changes nothing, that to rise and speak out means losing everything they own, and that they know what's best for everyone, even though it is quite clear through their dogma, that they think only of themselves and their "race" and religious proclivities.

These people profane the Christian religion, even as they pound pulpits and proclaim themselves arbiters of God's word. These people look down from their piles of money and contemptuously tell us to "work harder," even as they game the system to ensure that no matter how hard we do work, we cannot get ahead, falling even further behind. They proclaim the superiority of a "race" that is a figment of their imagination, built up by the perversion of science to fit a white narrative over the last two centuries. We are being ruled by the dregs of society, and we are allowing it.

You can tell yourself that all we have to do is win a few more elections, spend our money wisely, show up in the streets every so often to make sure they understand we aren't going to put up with this, and everything will be "normal" again.

We don't want "normal" again.

"Normal" is how we got here. "Normal" is white people on top, and everyone else scattered below, fighting to survive, picking up our scraps, and having to expend quantities of energy so vast, to get the simplest rights applied to them, as they should have been from the beginning. "Normal" is not having to think about who the people we elect are, because after every election, the country seems to keep running. "Normal" is, your cause doesn't impact me, why should I care? "Normal" is refusing to see the big picture of how the planet, life on it, and the processes of time and space affect it, and realize we are damaging it. "Normal" is trying to buttonhole people, force them into convenient categories, instead of accepting them as they are, even if we don't understand what that means. "Normal" is handing your ability to think rationally for yourself over to a machine that has no intellect, no passion, no feeling, and doesn't understand the simplest concepts of what it means to be human.

"Normal" is the set of chains we apply to ourselves while telling ourselves we have free will.

Nothing is "normal" anymore. Nothing, really, should be "normal" anymore. What it should be is equitable. What it should be is livable. What it should be is establishing community. What it should be is tolerable. What it should be is harmonious. What it should be is sharing and caring for each other.

They nailed a man to a cross for saying those things roughly two thousand years ago.

They are trying to chain us all up and imprison us for saying them now.

When are we going to stop them?

What are we willing to do to stop them?

That's the question you have to ask. It's not just voting at the ballot box or with your wallet or with your attention. No, it goes beyond that, because we let it. We let the barbarians into our hallowed halls of government and now they are destroying it, the thing that grants us everything. The rights we take for granted. They money in our pockets. The education we receive. The exploration we desire. The health we depend on. The help and support we need to survive in bad times and when we decide we can no longer work. All this is being destroyed. Physically, socially, psychologically, take you pick, but everything you know as "normal" is slowly being undermined and buried. When they are done, it will be gone, and we will have the Devil's own time getting it all back.

If this seems gloomy, if this seems like the seeds of doom, that's because it is. Take it any way you like, but yes, our country is coming apart at the seams, and the vast majority of us either see it and can't bring ourselves to do anything, or don't want to, or are frightened by the prospects of having to do anything about it. It's not 2026, really; it's more like 1775. The Redcoats are here. They are quartering themselves in people's homes without a by-your-leave, they are arresting people on the flimsiest pretense, they are marching through the streets letting people know they are there and making sure that the populace is frightened. And in quiet lanes and back rooms in taverns, and barns in the countryside, people gather and say "Enough!"

So, when are we going to say "Enough!"?

When are we going to accept that everything our nation was founded upon - and yes, there are problems with that founding - is being torn down after 250 years by a selfish, arrogant, stupid, incompetent man and his horde of ingratiating, venal sycophants? When is the outrage over this destruction going to go from the timidity of social media posts, to the full-throated roar of bodies massed in the street every day? When are we going to stand up, en masse, and make it clear, not just that we're upset, but that we want these people gone? When are we going to challenge their power over us, because government derives its power from the consent of the governed, and I, for one, do not consent.

Note, that if we're going to fight back, we do this together. Whatever differences may run through us, they need to be put aside. As the cartoon said in pre-revolutionary America, "Join Or Die." We join as one and reestablish and reconsecrate our rights as citizens, or we are put to the grinding wheel to become grist for the whims of billionaires. Make you choice. Make it soon. There may be little time left.

The Case Against The Second Amendment

There is one, and only one, flaw in all attempts at the imposition of normal control on guns & gun ownership: the Second Amendment. It is the fly in the ointment that degrades any reasonable discussion into shouting pedantry and veiled threats. It is at once the crux of the issue and the thing that bars any movement in any direction. Its semantics have been decompiled, deconstructed, dismissed, and devalued, and in the end, its shadow still lies endlessly across the peace of our nation.

I am reticent to touch it; it is like a clinging, clutching vine that no amount of cutting and trimming may successfully dislodge. As part of our Constitution, I am honor-bound to defend it, but so am I also required to see that its precepts are properly followed. That's where the problem lies: the intersection of the then, from whence it was spawned, and the now, wherein we must live with it two centuries later, in a world radically different from the one the Founding Fathers lived in at the time of its conception.

You and I may speak of clauses and commas, intent and introspection, but at the end of it, the Second Amendment is an enigma, both plain to see but bounded in mystery, a monolith that rises among us and programs us to fear and to fight. The amendment itself is plain enough, despite what we take to be a crude & confusing wording. At its simplest, it means that government may not take away all rights for citizens to maintain arms; the caveat is -- and this part is often glossed over -- that the reason for this particular allowance, above any other, is that States must be allowed to maintain the necessary strength to form militias.

Look at the world and the circumstance that led to it. The United States was a swaddled, newborn nation, had just fought a war of independence, and was heavily indebted to others to supply the necessary firepower for us to gain that independence. Having so gained it, those who agitated for revolution were now faced with a difficult task: pry that independence from under the thumbs of any potential adversary. At the moment, with no large standing naval forces, land forces that were demobilizing to a greater degree after the war's conclusion, and a nation still not fully constructed in law, The United States was in a precarious and vulnerable position, should Great Britain or any other sovereign nation choose to make a play for it.

This leads, inevitably, to finding ways to secure a nation from foreign threat that allowed for quick mobilization of forces in the advent of attack, and placing such forces in close proximity to every possible entry point on a significant landmass. And doing so, possibly without a strong central government to coordinate defense. The answer was obvious: State militias, built up of citizen soldiers brandishing their own weapons, fighting for their own ground, concentrated in cities and town near possible invasion points. When rallied, such militias would be the first line of defense, hopefully able to hold an invading force at bay long enough, for Federal government to coordinate the fight and bring larger forces to bear.

So when the Bill of Rights was crafted, it seemed appropriate to codify this necessity. After all, the British were not keen on an armed citizenry in their midst, and were wont to strip the average Colonial of weapons if they thought that would protect them from exposure to attack. Having just lived through that war, and having seen how hard it was to gather sufficient forces quickly to counter British thrusts, it made sense to the Founding Fathers to enshrine the principle of home defense in the newly-minted Constitution, not simply as an organizing principle, but as a warning to other nations: we will defend ourselves and if you seek a fight, you shall have it.

As men of The Enlightenment, the Founding Fathers knew that their work, like the world, would not remain static, but would need to be reshaped to meet the challenges of new times and new technologies. The Constitution was meant to be altered as circumstance warranted, when conditions called for a new approach to the organization and functioning of the country. Secretly, they must have sensed that by not dealing with the issue of slavery, that alteration would have to come sooner rather than later, to make up for their lack of courage at the time. So, the document was formed, it was built to be amendable, and the very first amendments were made as a first set of guiding principles to be shaped. That freedom of speech, press, and worship should be the first guiding principle should come as no surprise; in line with that, the second being the right to maintain arms should not shock us either. Having established freedom and liberty for all, it was important to ensure its defense.

Now, we look upstream from the 1780's and 1790's to the start of the 21st Century, and we see that a necessity of the previous era is no longer such at our current point in time. The United States of America is the sole, preeminent superpower on Earth. Our arsenal of weapons, our standing ground,  sea, and air forces, our bases strewn across the face of the globe, make us unrivaled and unmatched. What was true in Lincoln's time, for he foresaw it even then, is clearly true now: no foreign power could take a drink from any river in our nation, nor trod one foot upon it, save where they could eliminate every single American at a stroke, a formidable and seemingly insurmountable task.

Where does that leave the Second Amendment? Dying. It dies of necessity, decaying through the inevitable shift of our nation from shaky confederation to powerful unity. Two world wars armed us, and every conflict since has honed us. Thus, an amendment born of necessity for defense, now lies withering on the vine of liberty. It is kept feebly alive by a faction among us who still believe in inevitable tyranny, though they believe it preparing to strike from within and not from without. They are certain that their government will soon be battering down their doors and marching in to strip them of their only defense. These are not the hunters and sportsmen we are talking about; these are people who see shadows on every street and eyes peering around every corner.

Our nation is supreme in its ability to defend itself; for that purpose, the Second Amendment is now obsolete. Does that of necessity mean we should not be able to bear arms? No. What it does mean is that unfettered, unregulated access to weapons is now a greater threat to us than all our "enemies." Like a seemingly mighty tree, our outward appearance is of strength, but the core is slowly rotting away, chewed up by the increasing frequency and devastation caused by the carnage of military grade weapons in the hands of people who have no business having them. They have these weapons, because the Second Amendment has been elevated to the status of a Commandment by a minority of Americans who feel threatened by their own government. Tapping the power of their sycophantic paranoia to wield legislative power on a national scale, unchecked and unopposed by rational Americans, they leave us all vulnerable to the vagaries of those unwilling or unable to control their rage.

Now, however, perhaps the slumbering mass of Americans awoke, stirred from its torpor by the horror of one person slaughtering innocent children in a school. We may be forgiven for momentary skepticism, because why should it have taken this horrific moment to finally change the direction of the narrative, given the number of such horrible events before now? We cannot belabor that point, though; we must now work on focusing the outrage and ire of the American citizenry over this into a laser-like beam, scouring our nation of the forces that would continue to plant the seeds of slaughter in our midst while turning their back on the carnage such a crop reaps.

The Second Amendment no longer does what it was intended to do. We must now have the courage to fix it.

A Date Which Fades From Memory

Seventy years later and so few remain who woke to that tropical Sunday morning in the Territory of Hawaii, prepared for just another leisurely day in the sunshine. As men drowsily stirred, splashed faces with water, and stood in line for chow or assembled for the morning colors, most did not realize that their destiny was about to be writ in blood and cordite and shrapnel and smoke. On that morning, the subtle hints of the pending attack could not rouse a sleeping giant to readiness. A submarine being sunk, a large radar blip, the drone of planes where they did not normally assemble... it was not enough.

As bands struck up the anthems and flags were drawn to poles to be raised, the long, isolationist idyll of America was shattered by the snarling of aircraft engines, the howl of diving planes, the staccato bursts of machine gun and cannon fire, and the body-flexing crump of explosions as bombs and torpedoes found their mark. The seemingly invincible United States, "master" of two oceans, was caught napping in its island paradise. Ships were torn apart and capsized. Planes were wrecked. Buildings and men and women immolated, wreathed in fire. The Japanese nation, dismissed by many as near-sighted toy-makers, has pulled off a stunning coup, catching America flat-footed and wrecking the powerful United States Navy within the confines of its own "safe" harbor.

Know Your Rights

An interesting thing happened this morning: a candidate for public office was revealed to have a very incomplete knowledge of the Constitution. During a debate with her rival Chris Coons, Delaware Senate Candidate Christine O'Donnell, darling of The Tea Party, was perplexed by the idea that the separation of Church and State was explicitly spelled out in the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." It apparently came as something of a shock to her. She was further knocked off her game by a question about whether she would repeal the 14th, 16th, or 17th Amendments, confessing: "I'm sorry, I didn't bring my Constitution with me."

To be part of a party that claims the present administration is subverting the Constitution, and wanting desperately to "restore" it, wouldn't it be nice to know exactly what's in it?