Never Let Chaos and Ignorance Go To Waste

Unbelievable.

The curse of living more than a few decades is that one can recall a time when 15 year old kids could ride motor scooters and small motorcycles, with .22 rifles strapped on board, out to 117th av in Dade County to shoot rats among the appliances people dumped there.

We didn't even wear helmets.  I'd wear a helmet now in that situation, if one was readily available.   There are a number of things which one could do which one cannot do now without permission or official oversight of some kind.  And there are numerous activities which pretty much went out the window along the way.

It is a different world.  I've heard various explanations for it, but none of them seem all that solid.  What is clear is that freedom is not what it was, and the general attitude toward life, liberty and pursuit of happiness has changed a great deal.

The Boston bombings have brought out reactions that leave me in utter disbelief.  There are actors who are using Boston to somehow show that the 2nd amendment has to go.   There are news organizations which openly hope the culprit is a white male, ant-government radical.  

I guess all the speculation and hopes that whoever did this falls under a category which will serve a particular political agenda is to be expected since logic, decency, and reverence have long been forgotten in the world of news and politics.

Some hope for the usual Islamic fanatic terrorist.  I'm somewhat disgusted by all of it.  It is stupid to make assumptions until you know.  It is sleazy to use it to paint your philosophical and political foes in a bad light.  Especially since all we know is that someone or ones planted bombs and killed.

The fact that people can, with a straight face, claim that the answer here is more government and taxes (Barney Frank), or that the right to bear arms is the evil, or that somehow it must be one of "them radical constitutionalists"  ...I give up.

When believing that a government ought to adhere to its written guidelines casts one as a domestic terrorist, something is definitely off kilter.  I am largely anti-government, in the sense that I think less of it would be better, and that too many laws are detrimental to people.   It is a big jump to lump that thinking together with violence.  Quite the opposite.  I'm opposed to use of force unless for self defense, or defense of innocent others.  

Lately, I read and see things all the time which label many of my beliefs as somehow threatening and worthy of watch lists or whatever.  But then those same people ignore the fact that Mao, Stalin, Castro, and most other communist dictators killed massive numbers of their own people to avoid any possible opposing viewpoints and factions.  No, those people view totalitarian states with envy and awe.  Useful idiots, and presumptive elites.  They never think of themselves as peons obeying without question.  They see themselves as enlightened guidance counselors.

I would gladly be a "citizen of the world" if not for the fact that most of the world is more racist than the USA, much of the world consists of religious states-theocracies. and much of it is philosophically, culturally much cruder and crueler.  I'll hold off.  For now, I'm a citizen of the US, although it seems as if I was dropped in some bad imitation of the US.

The complete love of authority is what probably shocks me the most.  How people can be so willing to place control of so much in the hands of so few amazes me.  I certainly do not trust an unchecked police force, military or legislature.  It is not coincidence that "career public servants" tend to come out far better, financially, than the job supposedly pays.

Really, though?  Hoping the culprit is white and opposed to the abuses of the king?   Damn.  It is a pandemic which makes the flu look pleasant.  There may be no free land left.  Where do those who don't fit well in a world patrolled by hall monitors go?