Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Denial Ain't Just a River in Egypt

People believe what the want to believe and facts don't matter! I see the proof this over and over again, usually with people who are considered 'conservative'. Sure, there are some radical 'liberal' and 'progressive' people who do the same thing but is more of a conservative trait. Progressives are usually defined as being far more open-minded than conservatives.
I live in a very, very right-wing region of the country where a majority are far more aligned politically with Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona than Barrack Obama, or Hillary Clinton. People where I live are religious, anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-gun control and generally racist (black or white), though most officially deny the racist bit. About the only things they seem to be 'for' are 'our southern heritage' ('states rights', Confederate flags), white supremacy (in fact, if not so stated) and war for the slightest perceived reason and hang its consequences. (Maybe it's all that Confederate heritage stuff coming out and boiling to the surface?)
Occasionally I engage in commentary on various news stories of interest to me. Recently I did so on a story on a local murder/suicide in our community where the subject of gun control came up. I am for, as all rational people ought to be, the reasonable control of access to guns. I am not a radical on the matter, and in fact I own several guns myself. There are certain people however, who in my opinion, should not be allowed to have a gun. Such a person was the main actor in our recent local murder/suicide. I was roundly attacked of course for my mention of gun access control, and all facts I pointed out were simply ignored and skipped over - all as I had expected.
The shooter was a man who had been recently arrested for domestic violence and 'terroristic threats' against his wife. If there was ever a type of person who ought to be disarmed, it was this man. Yet this man apparently still had every right to possess and use firearms, which he did with deadly effect by killing his estranged wife and then himself, leaving several children to fend for themselves - and become wards of the state I imagine. You might say 'good riddance' about the killer, but I don't think you can say it about his victims. In fact, they were victims in more ways than one, since the the authorities failed - it sure seems to me - in their sworn duty to protect them from the threatened violence - threats which were officially recorded well ahead of time by said authorities!
Sadly, unfortunately, this is a story heard all too often in our times.  Somehow the gun lobby using our sacred 'Second Amendment' has successfully subverted almost any sensible gun control or gun access legislation in the United States - all in the interests of  more profits for the gun industry apparently.  They have created near hysteria, and, hang the cost in tragedy, misery, lives and money to the rest of the country so long as their profits keep increasing. Such is the 'American Way' and the Capitalist system!
The gun lobby has so successfully propagandized and frightened so many fearful people, and created so many millions more, who will now run out and buy up ever more stockpile mountains of firearms and ammunition at the slightest suggestion of any meaningful gun access legislation. They have so frightened, and/or defeated any legislator who dares suggest gun acess control they are essentially now writing themselves blank legislative checks. All this in the face of about 70% of the population of the United States who support reasonable gun access control. It is a topsy-turvy situation, which the rest of the civilized world is watching with amazement, wonder and horror.
Gun deaths are now forecast to exceed traffic deaths in the United States in 2015.
And, no matter how many facts, statistics or evidence you present to the totally convinced Second Amendment people, that sensible gun access control laws work, save lives and money, protect more people, and so on and on and on, they are so propagandized that nothing penetrates. In the face of raw facts and statistics, they dissemble, obfuscate and deny, or present straw men arguments. They are CONVINCED - and nothing else matters! There is no reason or sanity there, just raw opinion, which overrules everything else. It all reminds me a great deal of a bumper sticker I once saw about Christianity:


Yep. A lot of those are some of the same folks all right!