Double Standard

I've had some friends post that they are going to fly their American Flags upside down for the foreseeable future because they can't believe what is happening to their country.

For those of you who don't know, flying the American Flag upside down, from a ship, in the days before radio, meant you were in trouble and needed to be rescued.  So my friends think, "Their" county is in trouble.

After all, we've added a bunch of jobs in the last four years.  The stock market has climbed back above 13K.  We averted the, "fiscal cliff" with a little bipartisan cooperation.  GM is still alive, and Bin Laden is dead.  The needless war for oil in Iraq is over.  The needless war in Afghanistan to get Ben Laden is winding down.  Millions more Americans will have access to health care than have ever had before.  The housing market is improving, gas prices have fallen.  And last October, we had our usual, every four year, "regime change" without a shot being fired.

Man, this place is FUCKED up!

After all, some nut ball used a military grade weapon that NO one who is not in the military or law enforcement NEEDS to slaughter 20 six year olds and some teachers in minutes, so the SANE people in government think it's time to talk about changing our gun laws and our gun culture.

Oh HELL no!  It's violent movies/video games/TV!  It can't possibly be the fact than anyone who can pass a background check, even if they are crazy, or crazy people who have access to already, legally purchased guns, have better access to assault weapons than to mental health care!  That's it!

In the 50's, they blamed juvenile delinquency on comic books.

We will not eliminate assault weapons from our society in my life time.  Probably not in my children's lifetime.  But it took a long time to give women the vote, pass civil rights legislation, do something about our rivers that would catch on fire and our air that you couldn't breath.  It took a long time to end child labor, and company stores and other abuses of big corporations.  But you have to start somewhere.  And now is the time to start.

We need to change a culture that leads people to believe as they grow up, that they can't be safe unless they possess such fire power.  And that is just wrong.

It's my country too, and I'm going to take it back from the folks who don't read newspapers.  The paranoid, and the just plain stupid.

And by the way?  If I had shown up flying my American Flag upside down, while carrying an assault rifle to a speech given by, "W" while he was invading Iraq on false pretenses, much more false than President Obama's birth certificate, what would you have called me?

I bet it wouldn't have been, "Patriot".