The Elephant in the Room

By
Guy Fawkes
– January 13, 2011Posted in: "The OC", Beth Krom, Fresh Juice, liberty, Native Americans

I promised myself that I would refrain from making a post on the Tucson tragedy.

So much for restraint.

That bastion of integrity and wholesomeness known as Irvine Mayor Pro Tem/Great Park Executive Board member Beth Krom spouted off in a letter to the editor in the Register this past week lecturing us on decency and civility.  She goes to link the heated rheotric to this weekend’s murders in Tucson.

Never let a good corpse rest

“Whether the shooter in Saturday’s assault was mentally unstable is not the central question. Removing him from the street will not address the underlying interests of those who have driven the conflict and chaos that has made America more fractured over the past few years. When we allow political pundits who rely on ignorance and disinformation to gain credibility by virtue of their media overexposure we should not act surprised when their words incite hatred and aggression.”

It doesn’t surprise me that Beth Krom would make that ridiculous link and exploit this tragedy to in order to make a political statement.  After all, this is the same woman that exploited her own son’s death in a campaign fundrasing letter when she ran for Congress this past year.   So why would anyone expect anything less from her and the Great Park/Irvine PR machine of Boss Agran?

Having voluntarily shut myself off from the news cycle this past week,  it doesn’t take an degree from the Columbia School of Journalism to offer a summary of what is being reported.   It’s Glenn Beck fault, it’s Sarah Palin’s fault, it’s Barack Obama’s fault, it’s Lady Gaga’s fault.   I really can’t stand Sponge Bob,  can we blame him too?  How about Dog the Bounty Hunter?

What I find objectionable is that both liberals and conservatives play this theatrical zero sum game of blaming each other while our freedoms and liberties are being eroded before our very eyes.  Just today, a story was released that the California Supreme Court said it was OK for law enforcement to search a person’s cell phone messages without a warrant.  Where’s the outrage, people?  Obviously no where to be found.  Instead, we’d rather talk about the rhetoric of Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh or Mike Malloy or Rachel Maddow than this erosion of civil liberties and freedoms.  It is the path of least resistance that we are so apt to take.

We are a society that is hell bent on keeping the American Empire’s war machine fueled while we kill off people that get in the way of our path and agendas.  Look at the Empires of yore.  The Roman Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Ming Dynasty.  All of these empires collapsed and helped bankrupt their people in the process.  Oh yes, these countries did manage to survive but there was a huge social cost that they paid for their expansionist and interventionist mindset in their own homeland.

While liberals and conservatives alike lament over the killing of a child and accuse one another of “blood libel” because of their inane rhetoric,  we continue to avoid engaging in an honest dialogue about the proverbial elephants in the room.  Elephants like the continued stigma of mental illness and what we can do to better understand the signs and symptoms of it.  Contrary to popular belief,  mental illness knows no political party or philosophy.   It can strike a person like Patrick Kennedy or Oliver North without warning.   No, let’s talk about that later because a child died!  And how many children and adults killed themselves because they did not get a proper diagnosis for mental illness?  Where are your tears for these people?  I’m sure Obamacare or single payer healthcare will cure all of that, right?

Or how about the piss poor treatment of other people in our own homeland that we have left for dead in places like Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota?  You want to talk about your virtue and civility.  Where is your virtue and civility when you have helped rob these people of their culture, dignity and way of life and left them for dead in poverty and squalor?    People there are slowly dying in a wasteland that our own government created so we can be the biggest badass on the block.  Where are the crocodile tears for the natives, the ones we eminent domained out of their rightful home?

Oh, nevermind them.  They’re just savages.  Somewhere in the picture, the Not Me ghost from the Family Circus comic strip rears its ugly head as these so called compassionate liberals and conservatives stick their heads in the sand and ignore another elephant in the room.  We’ll just blame the previous generation and hope that this problem will go away.

You think the Europeans would have learned something from the Native Americans before they eradicated their culture, religion and livliehood.  Caring for the land and showing empathy for one another without being coerced to do so.  In the worldviews of the tolerant Anonster and his knee-jerk apologists for our government (with a notable exception of Vern, Duane and Gabirel), we’ll just throw a few crumbs of government cheese, a bottle of Jack Daniels and processed foodstuffs from the USDA at places like Pine Ridge Indian Reservation so that these whining victims will shut up and remain thankful to their reservation masters for the good that our guv’ment does.  We’ll just pull something from Salon, Slate or National Review to show you how good we are!

In their minds, our government has all of the answers and letting people become independent, self reliant and self sufficient would be abominable idea.  All we have to do is offer a pathetic “sorry” for our past misdeeds so we can show that we care and we’ll all hold hands with Joker like smiles singing “It’s a Small World.”   And just like that, the squalor and devastation will magically disappear from places like Pine Ridge and mental illness will be eradicated forever because we will all comply with the mob mindset of the day.  That might happen if you believed that the Lucky Charms mascot was real.

And they have the gall to call me a dreamer?  Trust the government or link me as an accomplice to murder?   If I’m not being nice, I’m being disrespectful to the death of a child?  As a parent of a 9 year old,  I am  appalled when politicians use children, be it their own or someone else’s,  for their own selfish gain and agenda.   It may not be the actual act of murder, but is certainly not an excusable act.  But hey, let’s all be nice here!  We don’t want a pandemic of murders here in America.

“Oh we can change government from the inside, don’t you know,” the compliant apologists say.   Let’s have a candlelight vigil and show the world how peaceful and tolerant we are! Or if you don’t like it, SHUT UP!!!!!! Frankly, I don’t give a rat’s ass if you agree with me.  I’d rather be around a bunch of people that disagreed with me and had some passionate beliefs rather than around a bunch of know nothings that nod their heads in agreement for no reason whatsoever.

Maybe Malcolm X was right.  All of this finger pointing and the hysterical theatrics of feigned empathy (“I care more than you.  Nyahhh!!!!”) is another example of the chickens coming home to roost.

Where the hell is Hirota when you need him?

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