We Are The Barbarians

What do you know about the guy in the house across the street?

Seems ok? Kinda quiet? Keeps to himself?

All around the world, there are guys across the street. Most of them are ok.

Some of them aren't.

Only in America can that "quiet guy, who keeps to himself" have military style rifles and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

You get angry? I get angry. Everybody gets angry, now and then. Everybody has a bad day, now and then. Everybody probably has a moment, however brief it may be, when they get mad enough to kill another person.

Only in America can someone take that anger, that grievance, that pissed off attitude, that moment of madness, and easily turn it into a few dozen dead....at a school, or a mall, or a concert, or an office building.

Our nation was settled by the outcasts of Europe. We may not have always gotten their best people.
We are mongrels, for better and for worse, in all of our "exceptionalism."

And, at times, that very fact leads to madness.

This entire argument over which guns are permissible under the Second Amendment is proof of that. Unfortunately, in America, money usually trumps common sense.

We are the barbarians.

Hold On A Minute

We did not become the richest and most powerful nation on earth by being regressive, reactionary, know nothings.

We did it (gasp) by being progressive.

By embracing The New. By embracing Change. By embracing Progress.

Not at first, of course. And certainly not all at once.

But eventually, having exhausted all other possibilities, we usually do the right thing.

Despite all of our flaws, and yes there are a few, Americans are generally an optimistic, progressive people.

Oh, not all of us.

Some of us remain dumb as a post.

And that's the problem: we've been cutting way too much slack for our stupider citizens.

The supposedly "liberal" media sat back and let the Limbaughs, Drudges, Breitbarts, and Fox News' folks of the world get away with lying for too long.

Yes, everybody is entitled to their own opinions. But not to their own imaginary "facts".

And sometimes stupid people need their stupidity pointed out to them, loudly and repeatedly.

Because if you don't, they start to believe all the crap they hear from their "fair and balanced" sources.

And stupid just gets stupider...