calimary
calimary's JournalWelcome to DU, runtel.
Thanks so much for this. Our Skittles just responded with one of my favorite things about DU: "Someone's always here." The truth of that reminder has certainly gotten me through a few things, particularly when my mom died.
You're not a stranger here. And your input, experience, and sense of humor can buoy us all up. This whole thread, supporting our SummerSnow with such empathy and kindness, is one of the great examples. Glad you're here. We all get into it here, and get the vapors and yell and curse and fight. But it also shows how deeply we care. Our "better angels" are among the best there is.
One of the grieving dads from Parkland Florida this morning, Fred Guttenberg, had another GREAT one.
Heartbreaking. But great.
His 14-year-old daughter can now be found underneath her own gravestone, as a direct result of last Wednesday's hideous school shooting. Her dad called it being "hunted." "Those kids were hunted. In their school." He said that on "Morning Joe" this morning, on MSNBC. I wrote it down to make sure I got it accurately.
Referring to this mass murder as a hunt. MOST intriguing, strategically. Starting to depict the whole idea of preventable and premeditated mass murder like a school shooting as a hunt - can start crapping all over the talking point about how some gunners who describe themselves as hunting enthusiasts simply must use an AR-15 to hunt.
It sure was. And in this case, the hunter wasn't interested in hunting for food. He wanted to hunt to kill.
Indeed. The way they made us watch "Red Asphalt" in driver's ed class.
The way they make young DUI offenders go to emergency rooms and morgues and talk to staffers there, to see and/or hear what REALLY happens to DUI accident victims.
Indeed! Don't forget about that group - long ignored and poorly served in Puerto Rico.
That would be hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico. And trump threw a few rolls of paper towels at them and called that "serving their needs".
Indeed! As I watched the coverage yesterday, with all those students and parents and friends rallying for change, I couldn't help thinking - precious few of those kids are gonna be voting for you, republi-CONS! They're gonna want to know how much money you've taken from the NRA and how much you're working for the NRA and not for THEM. They're not gonna forget. And most of them, being of high school age, are at or approaching voting age. That's another whole new crop of new voters who WON'T be voting GOP!
That's a good one, too.
Your point is a good one, though, Wounded Bear. The gun nuts probably will react that way.
Which brings me to my next ploy. They LIKE being called "Deplorables", 'eh? Okaaaaaaaayyyyyy...then what does that say about THEM?
They're proud of their massacre machines? Regard them as badges of courage? Well, then, what does that say about THEM?
That takes me to the Rude Pundit's latest piece:
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2018/02/lets-call-extremist-gun-owners-what.html
I think His Rudeness has a SPECTACULAR point. I think he's spot-on correct. I think it's getting into sickness territory when one's such a freakin' paranoiac that he (or she, but it's mostly male, as I've observed) simply MUST collect and stockpile massacre machines. There's something deeply wrong, twisted, maladjusted, anti-social, warped, deranged, and rather psychopathic about that.
Seems to me the only jerks who want mass-murder weapons somehow have come to believe that they want 'em handy - because they expect to USE them. Against the black helicopters or whatever-the-fuck else it is that Alex Jones's verbal diarrhea is spouting at the moment. Alex Jones is a freakin' menace to society. And all he's doing is creating more menaces to society.
WOW! What a great piece!
Thanks for posting about it here, volstork.
Sounds like a MUST-Read to me.
Thanks so much for making this point, shockey80.
These massacre machines are so vile that even one of my gun-lover friends hates them and wants them banned. Seriously! I NEVER thought I'd hear that from this particular person. She pointed out that the talking point about AR-15s being good for hunting is complete bullshit. Because it tears up the target. If you think you can use it to hunt your dinner that night, the prey will be shredded to smithereens and there'll be little if anything left of it to eat.
The AR-15 has NO business in ANY civilian hands. And NO civilian has any sort of divine "right" to own one. It's a war weapon. Designed for the military to use IN COMBAT. Even the average cop isn't armed like that.
That's another good one.
And it also happens to be true.
GUNS are the top weapons of choice for domestic terrorists.
Yep. Look how harmless that sounds. Oh, Sports! Yay sports! We all love sports, right?
How bad could it be?
Exactly. Makes it sound innocuous. Harmless. Nothin' to it! It's SPORTS! They cobbled together "sports" and "rifle," and suddenly, the whole idea of a rifle is sanded down, buffed and polished, and painted red-white-&-blue, or maybe a pretty pink - with sparkles! There's nothing horrifying or death-causing or blood-spilling or mothers-in-mourning or gory or heart aching. Sports! Fun-fun-fun! See how the perception management works?
And there's NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING fun or sporting or harmless about it. We can't smear it with actual blood, which it deserves. So we use our words, instead, and smear it all over the theater of the mind.
Thank you. And YOU are thinking about this stuff. And coming up with your own ways with words.
And that's THE MOST IMPORTANT THING here.
The most important thing of all.
I think that's what we all need to be doing, a lot more. And a lot more aggressively.
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Gender: FemaleHome country: USA
Current location: Oregon
Member since: 2001
Number of posts: 81,194
