whistler
The issue of guns or not-guns has been running all my life. People go into a rage over gun riddance and people go into a rage over having guns. I'm so bored of it, it wears me out to see it still going on, louder than ever, never coming to a solution, like usual. Every time the tv features a mass shooting, gun shops sell out all over the country. Somebody who sees tv a few hours every other week sees the gun featured in cop shows and movies and all kinds of tv shows. Cop shows get more uptight and killer-minded every year. I don't think an American movie is made without a gun popping up somewhere. European films use guns frequently. In countries where people don't kill each other and themselves so much, I rarely see a gun in a film unless it has to do with military. I don't even like to see American films anymore, unless independent, for all the guns and explosions. Explosions characterize American films; loud bangs and billowing flames are more required than tits-n-ass. I dislike most about American films when the whisper scene is making me turn the volume up, I can't turn the volume down fast enough for the next predictable thing, a loud explosion and billowing orange flame. I use subtitles watching American films so I can read the whisper scene while turning the volume down for the blast of noise to follow.
whistler
Someone I know, who went to Montana and Alaska to kill big animals with a bow, exhibits a passion for ridding all Americans of their guns. He has been in high blood-pressure frustration for decades that he can't do anything about making other people stop owning guns. Then he had a debilitating stroke. Every time I saw him before, he looked like he was going to blow a gasket in front of me. He could quote statistics from now til tomorrow and make a flawless case, but nobody listened. He was about controlling everybody but himself, failed at controlling anybody and failed himself by putting so much attention on fixing everybody else. Somebody who made his life a commercial and ended up a forgotten jingle. This is another reason I don't go into the coffee shop anymore. Now that the wrong people have been weeded out and only the right people go there, I'll sit peacefully having my coffee and hear over my shoulder, So GOOD to see ya! You needta, you oughta, you gotta, you should! I sit reeling with insistent demands bouncing around in my head, one after the other, as fast as chatter can go. I pretend the best I'm able, "Yeah, I'll do that," though not very well, thinking, Who is paying you? Is this volunteer? Is being a commercial your purpose in life? Go into advertising, make big bucks, leave me out of it.
whistler
All my life, the question of whether or not the death penalty has popped up as an issue in the news periodically. In fifth grade we were required to write a paragraph to explain why or why not the death penalty. It didn't matter what kids in school thought about it then like it doesn't matter what anybody thinks about it now. It never gets settled as an issue and goes on being a question for kids in school like it's something to take seriously. Whether or not the gun, continues as an issue that never is resolved. And the war on the American people, aka the war on drugs, is never resolved to the point that the war on drugs accelerates the drug business. In earlier years, I believed the guff around varieties of issues, believed the purpose was to settle them, come to agreement, smooth out the rough place. That wasn't it. I was taught democracy like there was something to it in everyday life. The black kids in school and the Mexicans were everyday life evidence to me democracy was white only. I was listening to the black station in high school years where I could hear Slim Harpo, Muddy Waters, Big Maybelle, Bo Diddley, music I could not hear on the white station. I was aware of social differences, how black people were kept down by white people's belief in white superiority. Insufferably arrogant people toward the rest of humanity.
whistler
We had the civil rights movement and civil rights became law, the trade-off for getting rid of Kennedy. Though it didn't change anything about racism. Racism was swept under the rug of denial, black faces included on tv, and racism failed to change. Obedient press and television glossed it over, never addressing the impolite issue, which continued underground on both sides and grew. The Reagan (John Birch Society) Revolution launched hate radio and tv demonizing black people by way of code to angry white men who spend too much time in front of the television. The right-wing armchair militia is the source of the American white terrorist who shoots up schools, churches and movie theaters. In this time, wars are acts of terrorism, hitting by surprise, killing randomly, going for as many mushrooms as possible. I call this civil war. Thus I say we are in civil war. This has been the purpose of the Reagan Revolution and it is accomplished. At least all the preaching of hate in the name of God has brought racism to the surface now, where it can be assessed as it is and be dealt with out in the open, the only place it can be worked out. Mustn't forget the most ignorant of them all, whether or not climate change. It's really bad when the obvious is up for question. In America, we don't settle issues. They just go on, underground, subjects not to talk about at the country club. Only radicals speak of such issues. And they go on talking.
whistler by whistler
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