First Reaction: Goldfinger

Ooh!  I saw that movie!

(I honestly didn't realize decompression was such a problem in public high schools.)

Discussing Iran

Snagged from Tumblr:

  Wait... are any Americans aware that the CIA overthrew the democratically-elected Premier of Iran in 1953 because he wouldn't concede to Western oil demands... and how the coup was the reason for the Shah's return to power, the Iranian Revolution, and the resulting fundamentalist dictatorship... like, America literally dissolved Iranian democracy and no one knows about it?

 No. No we don’t know about it.

Americans aren’t told this shit.

 The only thing we’re taught about any Middle Eastern country in school is that 1) the region exists 2) it’s where The War is happening and 3) Muslim people live there. That’s it. Maybe if you’re lucky you’ll get into the Hammurabi Code and some early Babylonian stuff but American schools seem to think that if it happened outside Europe and before the colonial period, or makes America look bad and isn’t about A Very Watered Down Version of What Slavery Was, it’s not important.

 Info on this is almost notoriously hard to find. It’s not in any texts on American and Russian involvement in the Middle East during the Cold War that I can find. You have to specifically look for a book about the Shah’s return to power, and even then you’d be hard pressed to find a book like that at your local bookstore. Once you get into some higher level college courses you might know about it, but the people who can afford those are more likely to already be indoctrinated into a certain Way of Thinking (read: they’re racist as shit) by the time they get there. And it’s almost like you have to know about it beforehand if you want to find information on it.

 The only reason I knew about it is because there’s a thirty second summary of the event in Persepolis. Those thirty seconds flipped my entire worldview.

 “All the Shah’s Men” by Stephen Kinzer is a good, accessible text for people who want to know more about this.

I had to explain literally this to one of my co-workers, who is so fuckin racist against Middle Eastern people it’s insane.

She’s 60. She never heard of this.

I was explaining this and how, during the Reagan years, we funded Osama Bin Laden to fight against Russia, leading to the destruction of much of the infrastructure in the region. One of the plant workers came in to get his badge fixed. He works in the quality control lab. He served 15 years active duty in the Army. Super smart guy, has a masters in chemistry and another masters in biology, raises saltwater fish in his spare time for sale, has the saltwater aquarium setup of the gods.  Raises rare corals too, some of which he donates to be used in re-seeding reefs around the world, but that’s a side tangent.

And he listened for a minute, then nodded and said “Yeah. I was there during that. I helped train people to fight. They wanted us to help them build schools and hospitals, after, but we were only interested in them as cannon fodder. Left the whole area in ruins. I wasn’t surprised when they hated us for it later. Told people then it would happen. We let them know then that they were only valuable to America as expendable bodies. Why wouldn’t they resent us for that?

And she just looked floored.

“So…” She started, after a few minutes. “What do you think of Trump?”

“I hate him. He’s a coward and he’s going to get good people killed.” He didn’t even blink.

She looked back and forth between us for a second, and then asked how I knew all this.

“I research things.” I said. “Google is great.” He nodded enthusiastically.

And she just sat there for a second and then said, really quietly, “I didn’t know.”

She lived through it.

American schools don’t teach you any of this sort of thing.

First Reaction: Background Checks

Well sure.  That's easy.  The second part is entirely untrue.

First Reaction: Ideological Groups

Conservatives think that this is a Liberal/Conservative issue.

Icarus and the Bingo Headache

"Can we please focus on the issue of mental illness instead of the left dragging us back to gun grabbing?"

That was the first one. And I knew that for the next several days that that's all it would be: one group of friends posting all the same old memes supporting the killer's right to own a gun a particular interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, the other group of friends posting all the same old memes supporting the victims' right to live decrying a deadly lapse in policy concerning a public health and safety issue.  Nothing new.  We saw them all the last time, and the time before that, and the time before that, and... well, you know.  Endless supposedly clever arguments explaining why the other side was just stupid. And I suddenly felt tired.

And I decided not to participate.

I participated.  A little. 

Honestly, I wish I could be as eloquent as Jim Wright, who wrote a twelve thirteen part series on the subject. (I sent the link to the first one to a couple of friends, but I don't know if they read through the whole series.)  I respect my friend Todd, who decided to dive right into the melee, but I spent little time reading the content of his debates. The straw man arguments, false equivalencies, and the ad hominems drive me up the wall. I have to admire Todd for sticking with it.

Hands down, the absolute most exasperatingly stupid straw man argument (and yes, I see it over and over and over in a variety of forms) is that "the left" (whoever that is) "blames the gun" for whatever the current tragedy happens to be.  Which is silly because I left my gun on the porch and... Tomi Lahren tried that argument via Twitter Sunday morning, prompting another twittererer, to respond, "She takes absurdo reductam to positively Icarusian heights."

Icarusian is my new favorite word.

Glancing at Todd's  discussions, it seemed to me that the straw man he had to deal with most was that "they want to take away our guns."   I actually responded to that myself on a few people's posts with the seat belt cartoon.   Todd took the time to try and explain actual real life positions to his various brick walls.  Of course, no one was convincing anyone.  I saw that he was getting a lot of ad hominem comments involving the word liberal or some variation thereof.

"You really are true life dummy. Owning a gun is a right. While driving cars is a privilege. You liberals are so fucking stupid. You should google United States Constitution, Bill of Rights on your government phone. Maybe you can learn something. Doubt it. But worth a try."

Personally, I don't understand what this issue has to do with being liberal, as it has nothing I can see to do with New Deal/Keynesian economics or equal treatment under the law regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, or national origin. I also don't understand why one has to be on the left to regard public health and safety to be a critical issue.  But I digress.

Oh, he also got a death threat, which he forwarded to the FBI.  That was fun.

Let's see... other things on the list. There's the fantasy that they, or their designated other, such as a teacher, is somehow the hero in an action movie.  

There's the failure to notice that this is a uniquely American problem, which undercuts the idea that this is all the fault of video games or rap music or movies and TV (they have those things in other countries too.) Or that the problem is a godless society (which statistically would make Japan one of the most godly nations on earth, and the US one of the most ungodly.)

A while back, I found Gun Nut Bingo.  I teased my friend Jason with it.

When I noticed that Hannah was having a discussion with someone who said something similar to the second block, N column, I had to post it on her wall as well.  I told her I had gotten eight so far, but they didn't line up.  She replied, "BINGO!  I got the whole first row.  What do I win?"

"Oh, wait. It's a headache, isn't it? I got a headache."

Yep.  That's all you win. Thanks for playing.

We Call BS

We haven’t already had a moment of silence in the House of Representatives, so I would like to have another one. Thank you.

Every single person up here today, all these people should be home grieving. But instead we are up here standing together because if all our government and President can do is send thoughts and prayers, then it’s time for victims to be the change that we need to see. Since the time of the Founding Fathers and since they added the Second Amendment to the Constitution, our guns have developed at a rate that leaves me dizzy. The guns have changed but our laws have not.

We certainly do not understand why it should be harder to make plans with friends on weekends than to buy an automatic or semi-automatic weapon. In Florida, to buy a gun you do not need a permit, you do not need a gun license, and once you buy it you do not need to register it. You do not need a permit to carry a concealed rifle or shotgun. You can buy as many guns as you want at one time.

I read something very powerful to me today. It was from the point of view of a teacher. And I quote: When adults tell me I have the right to own a gun, all I can hear is my right to own a gun outweighs your student’s right to live. All I hear is mine, mine, mine, mine.

Instead of worrying about our AP Gov chapter 16 test, we have to be studying our notes to make sure that our arguments based on politics and political history are watertight. The students at this school have been having debates on guns for what feels like our entire lives. AP Gov had about three debates this year. Some discussions on the subject even occurred during the shooting while students were hiding in the closets. The people involved right now, those who were there, those posting, those tweeting, those doing interviews and talking to people, are being listened to for what feels like the very first time on this topic that has come up over 1,000 times in the past four years alone.

I found out today there’s a website shootingtracker.com. Nothing in the title suggests that it is exclusively tracking the USA’s shootings and yet does it need to address that? Because Australia had one mass shooting in 1999 in Port Arthur (and after the) massacre introduced gun safety, and it hasn’t had one since. Japan has never had a mass shooting. Canada has had three and the UK had one and they both introduced gun control and yet here we are, with websites dedicated to reporting these tragedies so that they can be formulated into statistics for your convenience.

I watched an interview this morning and noticed that one of the questions was, do you think your children will have to go through other school shooter drills? And our response is that our neighbors will not have to go through other school shooter drills. When we’ve had our say with the government – and maybe the adults have gotten used to saying ‘it is what it is,’ but if us students have learned anything, it’s that if you don’t study, you will fail. And in this case if you actively do nothing, people continually end up dead, so it’s time to start doing something.

We are going to be the kids you read about in textbooks. Not because we’re going to be another statistic about mass shooting in America, but because, just as David said, we are going to be the last mass shooting. Just like Tinker v. Des Moines, we are going to change the law. That’s going to be Marjory Stoneman Douglas in that textbook and it’s going to be due to the tireless effort of the school board, the faculty members, the family members and most of all the students. The students who are dead, the students still in the hospital, the student now suffering PTSD, the students who had panic attacks during the vigil because the helicopters would not leave us alone, hovering over the school for 24 hours a day.

There is one tweet I would like to call attention to. So many signs that the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed, even expelled for bad and erratic behavior. Neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities again and again. We did, time and time again. Since he was in middle school, it was no surprise to anyone who knew him to hear that he was the shooter. Those talking about how we should have not ostracized him, you didn’t know this kid. OK, we did. We know that they are claiming mental health issues, and I am not a psychologist, but we need to pay attention to the fact that this was not just a mental health issue. He would not have harmed that many students with a knife.

And how about we stop blaming the victims for something that was the student’s fault, the fault of the people who let him buy the guns in the first place, those at the gun shows, the people who encouraged him to buy accessories for his guns to make them fully automatic, the people who didn’t take them away from him when they knew he expressed homicidal tendencies, and I am not talking about the FBI. I’m talking about the people he lived with. I’m talking about the neighbors who saw him outside holding guns.

If the President wants to come up to me and tell me to my face that it was a terrible tragedy and how it should never have happened and maintain telling us how nothing is going to be done about it, I’m going to happily ask him how much money he received from the National Rifle Association.

You want to know something? It doesn’t matter, because I already know. Thirty million dollars. And divided by the number of gunshot victims in the United States in the one and one-half months in 2018 alone, that comes out to being $5,800. Is that how much these people are worth to you, Trump? If you don’t do anything to prevent this from continuing to occur, that number of gunshot victims will go up and the number that they are worth will go down. And we will be worthless to you.

To every politician who is taking donations from the NRA, shame on you.

If your money was as threatened as us, would your first thought be, how is this going to reflect on my campaign? Which should I choose? Or would you choose us, and if you answered us, will you act like it for once? You know what would be a good way to act like it? I have an example of how to not act like it. In February of 2017, one year ago, President Trump repealed an Obama-era regulation that would have made it easier to block the sale of firearms to people with certain mental illnesses.

From the interactions that I had with the shooter before the shooting and from the information that I currently know about him, I don’t really know if he was mentally ill. I wrote this before I heard what Delaney said. Delaney said he was diagnosed. I don’t need a psychologist and I don’t need to be a psychologist to know that repealing that regulation was a really dumb idea.

Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa was the sole sponsor on this bill that stops the FBI from performing background checks on people adjudicated to be mentally ill and now he’s stating for the record, ‘Well, it’s a shame the FBI isn’t doing background checks on these mentally ill people.’ Well, duh. You took that opportunity away last year.

The people in the government who were voted into power are lying to us. And us kids seem to be the only ones who notice and our parents to call BS.

Companies trying to make caricatures of the teenagers these days, saying that all we are self-involved and trend-obsessed and they hush us into submission when our message doesn’t reach the ears of the nation, we are prepared to call BS.

Politicians who sit in their gilded House and Senate seats funded by the NRA telling us nothing could have been done to prevent this, we call BS.

They say tougher guns laws do not decrease gun violence. We call BS.

They say a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun. We call BS.

They say guns are just tools like knives and are as dangerous as cars. We call BS.

They say no laws could have prevented the hundreds of senseless tragedies that have occurred. We call BS.

That us kids don’t know what we’re talking about, that we’re too young to understand how the government works. We call BS.

If you agree, register to vote. Contact your local congresspeople. Give them a piece of your mind.

—	Marjory Stoneman Douglas student and survivor EMMA GONZALEZ, turning the tide during a gun control rally in Florida Saturday. The NRA is going to get done in by a high school student who has had enough of their BS.

William Browder Testimony

My brother directed me to this video last summer. I just realized that I hadn't posted it here, and after being made aware of today's Senate hearing, I realized that it was something I didn't want to lose.
Please take the time to listen; it's very important that we all understand this.