I do not watch the news (and no, not even Fox News). I stay away from these 24-hour factories of perfectly useless information because they have a way of sensationalizing their product such that one ends up believing the hype. What I’ve noticed by doing so is that 95% of what they deem newsworthy is definitely not. 4% of it is barely newsworthy and certainly will have no bearing on my everyday life. Which leaves the 1%.
Ah yes, the 1%, made famous by a group of unwashed, entitled jerks in makeshift camps (I had typed makeshit, which is actually precisely what these camps were). The 1% of news that actually is pertinent to my life. Yet even then they manage to make a mess of it, marketing it with such ferocity and frequency, it sears trails in the brain resulting in information overload and fatigue.
Friday, 14 December, 2012. Newtown, Connecticut. A ‘crazed’ gunman—and boy, don’t we hope he was crazy!—forced his way into the so-called Gun-Free zone of an elementary school and slaughtered the most innocent of victims possible. No one could protect those children from the onslaught of this asshole, not the teachers responsible for the kids’ safety and certainly not a piece of paper (the law).
As I was at the gym tonight, I found myself in the unfortunate circumstance of forced watching—volumeless—the usual suspects: CNN, NBC, MSNBC, and FOX. These networks and their smarmy hosts had descended on the small town in CT, snagging at anyone who wanted a few minutes of fame: tell us what you know, even if you don’t know anything. And everyone, believing of course that being on television is THE BEST THING EVER! obliges, including relatives of the murdered children!
Every so often, they would feature the pictures of the murdered children with their ages (6! 7!) highlighting the sorrow of a life snuffed out way, way too young. Interspersed with these grim, lump-inducing pictures, these media vultures leveled the info that this or that senator had rescinded his previous stance on Guns (“No one needs an Assault Weapon to go hunting!”) in seeming courageous defiance of the NRA! Some courage, some defiance. We have come a long way since ‘give me freedom or give me death.’
All at once I was overcome with an intense feeling of loathing for these media scum. Oh! You could just sense the gloating, the almost orgasmic delight—with the appropriate somber mask in place of course—that children had died so that their political agenda would finally (finally!) be pushed through: Assault Weapons Ban, Y’ALL!
I was so overcome with this feeling of scorn, that I fired off several tweets of invective. Yes, in America, that is what now passes as a display of indignation, 140 characters of hard-hitting snark. Useless, and like most of the citizenry, completely ineffective. As is this blog post. No one will listen, and even if they do and especially even if they agree, a barely noticeable nod will appear and vanish like the morning dew. Life goes on, Monday Night Football reappears to take up a place of honor in our mental lives.
I realized that in two months, the names and faces of these precious children will fade from national memory. Their parts have been played, and Obama—I will not call that phony, reprobate cast about President, as an ineffective measure of the derision I hold for that shitbird—and his liberal ilk will have rammed down our collective throats another completely ineffective piece of legislation (“We did something!”) aimed at … what, exactly? The last time this was tried in 1994, absolutely nothing came of it. Let me repeat that for the hard-of-understanding: nothing came of it. Zilch, nada, zip, zero, NOTHING.
Laws do not deter criminal behavior. This is something we all know and if you were the victim, what you have experienced. Like so-called Airport Security, it’s Kabuki theater, meaningless, a storm in a tea cup. If these sorts of bans worked, the United Kingdom would be the safest place, but don’t look up the actual statistics unless you want to be shocked—if that is still possible. Because since their ban, “gun crime” has bloomed quite nicely, thank you very much.
I could go on talking about the statistics and the empirical results of these sorts of legislation and their utter uselessness, but that is not what matters any longer. No, in America, we have become a nation of thirteen-year-old girls. Emotion reigns supreme, it overshadows all thought, all action. It overshadows entertainment, political discourse and every facet of life. We have become a nation of entitled thirteen-year-olds thinking feeling for today only.
Thirteen-year-old girls form cliques, a herd of conformist titterers. Go against the wishes of the herd and suffer the consequences of ostracism and exile, as screed after teenage-angst-filled screed is directed at the unfortunate trespasser in the form of endless snark, petitions signed to rid the trespasser of their jobs, aided and abetted by the Mainstream Media. Since their ‘parents’ are also thirteen, lack education and understanding and therefore wisdom, no guidance or discipline is forthcoming from that quarter. When the feelings get overwhelming, clique members seek comfort in distraction. Like 13-year-old girls, we don’t produce, we consume and voraciously so.
Even so-called Conservatives are 13-year-olds; slightly plainer and certainly pudgier 13-year-olds, sure, and as such not members of the ‘elite’ (elitist?) Cheerleading squad fawned over in the Leftist corner of the cafeteria. While not members of that particular group, this doesn’t prevent the Conservative brand of 13-year-old girls from forming their own less shiny facsimile of that group all the while daydreaming of being just as popular, pimples and crooked teeth notwithstanding (wouldn’t it be so cool if the media was on our side?!)
Conservatives may not be as flighty, but they are still 13. Which means emotion over substance, knee-jerk, thoughtless reactions (honestly, the woman’s body rejects the rapist’s baby?!). No sir, Conservatives are just as bad. I have read it somewhere that Social Conservatives are Third Wave Feminists who don’t believe in abortion and thinking about it, there is truth to this put-down. If you’re a Conservative and that statement stings, it does so for a very good reason.
So who’s in charge of this once-might nation? The depressing answer is no one. The ship of state is adrift in a sea of irrelevancy: the things that should matter don’t, even if we could determine what was relevant.What a mess!
An enchanting magic trick, once learned, will become prosaic and disappointing. Before I arrived its shores, America used to be my magic trick, but now I can see where the magician hid the string of dirty handkerchiefs and I am no longer enchanted.
