More on our country from the only viable, mostly-untainted point of access -- the foreign press:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24142085
My reaction?
Well, sure, I mean:
If someone doesn't get their Uber Grande Triple Mocha Espresso with Caramel Monkeybutt Sauce and Cupid's Arrow and Heart Design in their Whipped Cream just right, then, in 'Merica, that customer should have the right to pump a couple of magazines of steel-jacketed rounds and dum-dums into the bastard barista who ruined their day, week, and life, right?
Goddam right, boys and girls.
Next, we'll pick up that NRA-backed class project, writing to our representatives to keep the Second Amendment -- well, the first part of it anyway -- holy and carved in stone.
But first, it's time for the pledge of allegiance....
* * *
Sarcasm aside:
I remember reading the account of a stunned person learning of the recent Navy Yard tragedy, saying something on the order of we've got to to get at this thing in America [that causes such events].
Perhaps "this thing" is any number of situations suffering slashed budgets during the Great Recession, and before -- all the way back to then-Governor Reagan turning out the mentally ill into the streets.
Today, of course, we have come a long way. Officials in Nevada, for example, are now under investigation for having dumped the mentally ill for years into surrounding states via one-way bus tickets.
In some cases, patients were told to call 911 on arrival at their destination. Most were given no instructions. No arrangements were made for patient care at their various destinations.
Of course, there is no way we can identify and treat all of the ills churned up by a society as routinely beserk and bizarre as our own.
There is simply not enough money or staff ot time or energy to identify all the points of injustice, prejudice, racism, mental illness, stressed living conditions based on economic upheavals, and on and on.
There is also not enough willingness or caring to get involved, to ask some uncomfortable questions, to really get to know the people around you, and other tiresome chores.
Relating to people, our mask to theirs, is the only good, safe way to go in America anymore. Everyone knows that.
And no one knows why this impersonal violence continues.
Whoops. Sarcasm again. My bad -- so shoot me.
Uh -- never mind. Hold that thought. It's an expression, for crying out loud.
