It sure is a scary time for men

Posted on October 10, 2018 by The Old Wolf

At least, according to the thermonuclear bowel evacuation currently disgracing the Oval Office. (Yeah, I’m talkin’ ’bout you, Donny).

He had no problem mocking Dr. Christine Blasey Ford for her “unfounded allegations.” He has no problem claiming that George Soros is paying all these democratic protesters (read: Women) to protest. He has no problem apologizing to Brett Kavanaugh for the anguish he was subjected to during the orchestrated circus the GOP called a hearing and investigation. And he has no problem saying that this is a “scary time for men,” worried that they might be unjustly accused and their lives ruined on a whim.

Well, isn’t that just special?

The damage inflicted on our nation by execrable, hateful, power-drunken despots like 45 and Mitch McConnell and their congressional sycophants will continue for decades, generations even. But if the catastrophe spawns a sufficient storm of outrage from average Americans, specifically women, and specifically the young, and specifically minorities – all groups targeted by Cheetolini for particular disdain – and they get to the polls in 2018 and 2020 to vote, our nation may yet survive as the republic which the founders envisioned.

There is hope. A song written by Lynzy Lab and posted to YouTube has already garnered half a million views in three days.

Lyrics:

Hi, I wrote a song and it goes like this:I can’t walk to my car late at night while on the phone
I can’t open up my windows when I’m home alone
I can’t go to the bar without a chaperone
I can’t wear a mini skirt if it’s the only one I own
I can’t use public transportation after 7 PM
I can’t be brutally honest when you slide into my dms
I can’t go to the club just to dance with my friends
And I can never leave my drink unattended…

But it sure is a scary time for boys, yeah
Gentleman band together make some noise
It’s really tough when your reputations on the line
And any woman you’ve assaulted could show up any time
Yeah, it sure is a scary time for guys
can’t look at any woman or look her in the eyes
It’s so confusing, is it rape or just being nice
So inconvenient that you even have to think twice

I can’t live in an apartment if it’s on the first floor
I can’t be wearing silk pajamas when I answer the door
I can’t have another drink even if I want more
And I can’t make you feel invalid on the scene or ignored
I can’t jog around the city with headphones on my ears
I can’t speak out against my rapist after 35 years
I can’t be taken seriously if I’m holding back tears
And I can never speak earnestly about all these fears cuz…

It sure is a scary time for dudes
Can’t text a girl repeatedly asking for nudes
Can’t make a girl have sex when she’s not in the mood
And what gives her the right to give you attitudeIt sure is a scary time for men
Girls like to act like you’re to blame and they’re the victim
Her dress was short and she was drunk she’s not so innocent
Thank god your dads a judge and you won’t be convicted…

Oh that’s right… oh yeah, yeah;
It’s not such a scary time for boys
They’ve always had the upper hand, they’ve always had a choice
It’s time for women to rise up use our collective voice
The day to vote is Nov 6th so let’s go make some noiseGo vote

Mad props, Lynzy. The future of our nation is in your hands and the hands of young people like you.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

The Zumwalt-class Destroyer

Posted on August 26, 2018 by The Old Wolf

Currently under construction at Bath Iron Works in Maine, the second Zumwalt-class destroyer being readied after sea trials. The first, the USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000) was commissioned 15 October 2016, and this one – the Michael Monsoor – is slated for commisisoning in January 2019 (Estimated).

[This photo was taken on a lighthouse-viewing cruise out of Boothbay harbor. Not pictured is the Security tug floating very prominently between us and the ship, making sure our boat didn’t get too close.]

A lot of information about this class of ships can be found at Wikipedia.

The military funding and procurement process is a byzantine labyrinth that few can understand, fraught with politics and pork-barrel legislation and contractors vying for a slot at the government trough. But the story behind this project beggars the imagination, given that the Navy originally wanted 32 of these destroyers, and ultimately settled for three, with $9.6 billion in R&D costs spread over all three ships for a total cost of $7.5 billion per ship.

As if that weren’t bad enough, this class of vessel was designed around an Advanced Gun System, but the Long Range Land Attack Projectile (LRLAP) that was the only projectile usable turned out to be so expensive after the scale-back of the destroyer program, between, $800,000 and $1 million per shell (per shell!) that the program was cancelled altogether. Designing a new shell would involve retrofitting the AGS, also unfeasible, and the Navy was left struggling to figure out how to re-purpose an obsoleted multi-billion dollar ship.

For what it’s worth, the ship does have some intriguing qualities, including its ultra-low radar profile, but one is left to wonder how such massive fiscal cock-ups could be allowed to occur.

According to Ed Prince, a political pundit who worked on numerous campaigns, there are five basic reasons for cost overruns in defense contracts.

Congress/military keeps changing the specs. Nothing increases the costs like having to make changes mid-way through production. It also delays the production which increases prices.
Conflicting needs missions of the armament. In an attempt to keep costs down, weapon systems will have to do multiple duties to meet the different demands of the military so instead of a clean, straight-forward system, a much more complicated one gets authorized even if it more costly.
In an effort to curry favor with Congress, weapons manufacturers scatter the development and manufacturing process to as many Congressional districts as possible which is hardly an efficient way to build things and invariably causes over-runs.
The current system often relies on former military personnel who have retired and then gone to work for the defense industry where they can earn many multiples of their military salary. It does not make for efficient oversight.
Reality. If a program is going over-budget, what can the military do? Cancel the project? Presumably, they still want it. That would delay it even longer and that’s assuming that there is another contractor capable of producing the system.

Clearly, there may be a whole host of other reasons, but these seem reasonable to the layman’s eye. And since I’m neither an economist nor a military strategist, I really have no solutions to offer – but as a taxpayer, I know that this kind of expenditure, along with failed projects that have nothing to show for the money spent, rub me the wrong way. (The F-22 Raptor, close to $80 billion spent on 187 aircraft, has seen some service, but remains fraught with operational and training problems.)

Lately, despite 45’s tax cuts (which have been definitively shown to favor the wealthy over the course of the next 10 years), I keep feeling that tax season is creeping more and more in this direction:

Now I know taxes are necessary in any republic the size of the USA, but I wish taxpayers had the right and privilege of indicating where their taxes were going. I’d be tempted to give all my taxes to the arts and education, and let the Navy hold a bake sale for their next advanced technology program.

No, that’s not practical, and the Constitution provides for the Common Defense, so a certain amount to maintain our armed forces is necessary, but I wish our legislators had more fiscal responsibility toward their taxpayers than to the lobbyists and corporations that fill their re-election war chests. That’s why it’s important for concerned citizens who favor progressive government to get their fannies into the voting booths this November, and henceforth forevermore.

In that vein, I realized that just a couple of tweaks to a famous song recorded by Nancy Sinatra makes it very relevant to today’s political landscape (with apologies to Lee Hazelwood!)

You keep saying you got something for me
Something you call yuuuuge but confess
You’ve been a’messin’ where you shouldn’t ‘ve been a’messin’
And now someone else is getting all your best

These booths are made for voting
And that’s just what they’ll do
One of these days these booths are gonna vote all over you.

You keep lyin’ when you oughta be truthin’
You keep losing when you oughta not bet
You keep samin’ when you oughta be a’changin’
Now what’s right is right but you ain’t been right yet

These booths are made for voting
And that’s just what they’ll do
One of these days these booths are gonna vote all over you.

You keep playing where you shouldn’t be playing
And you keep thinking that you’ll never get burnt (HAH)
I just found me a brand new box of matches (YEAH)
And what he knows you ain’t had time to learn

These booths are made for voting
And that’s just what they’ll do
One of these days these booths are gonna vote all over you.

Are you ready, booths? Start start votin’!

The Old Wolf has spoken.

No, Senator Hatch, 45 is not a “very good man.”

Posted on August 26, 2018 by The Old Wolf

Before he passed away, and feeling the rapid onset of eternity, Senator John McCain expressed that he didn’t want 45 at his funeral, opting instead for Vice President Mike Pence, according to family members close to the respected legislator.

Orrin Hatch (R-UT) told CNN,

“I think that’s ridiculous. He’s the President of the United States. He’s a very good man.”

Feeling the backlash of public opinion, Hatch later apologized, saying

“I felt badly, I had spoken out of turn,” Hatch said. “I shouldn’t have said what I said.”

Whether that was a sincere apology or political mush because he was caught out is only for him to know. But the “very good man” part of that first quote is what got my hackles up. Oh, it’s not that Hatch is a die-hard Republican, Congress is full of those. People like McConnell, Ryan, Cruz, and a whole host of other supporters of 45, as inexplicable as that is to me. No, it’s the fact that Senator Hatch claims to be a member of my own faith, specifically the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That, by definition, makes him a Christian.

So let’s start with the Bible. In 1 Timothy 3, we read Paul’s admonitions about ecclesiastical leaders:

A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach; Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous; One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity; (For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?) Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover he must have a good report of them which are without; lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.

Note: many people in the world don’t put stock in the Bible, and that’s fine – it’s their privilege. But Hatch does – he claims to reverence this book and its teachings, so it’s very relevant to his statement about 45’s character. In an article dealing with Evangelicals’ relationship with 45, the Washington Post wrote,

“Many have acknowledged the awkwardness of being both self-proclaimed followers of Jesus and the No. 1 champions of a president whose character has been defined not just by alleged infidelity but accusations of sexual harassment, advancing conspiracy theories popular with white supremacists, using language that swaths of Americans find racist, routinely spreading falsehoods and an array of casual cruelties and immoderate behaviors that amount to a roll call of the seven deadly sins.”

The hand-wringing, self-justification and scripture-twisting that 45’s religious supporters have brought to the stage is literally breathtaking. Our current *president fails almost every one of Timothy’s admonitions, and while some might say, “Oh, he’s talking about leaders of the church,” for me these are qualities that ought to apply to leaders of peoples and nations as well. And I’m not just talking about Republican leaders, either – I was heartsick when William Jefferson Clinton disgraced the office of the presidency (and in the Oval Office itself!) and have always felt that despite whatever qualities he brought to the presidency, he should have immediately stepped down.

But as this cartoon by Pat Bagley from the 70s illustrates, many Americans seem to tolerate a lot from their elected officials if it happens to advance their own interests:

The more you look at 45’s public persona, and public behavior, and public business dealings, the less he seems to align with anything one finds in the teachings of either the biblical or the historical Jesus.

But then there’s the Book of Mormon, another scripture that Hatch claims to reverence, where we find the story of Korihor, the anti-Christ:

“And many more such things did he say unto them, telling them that there could be no atonement made for the sins of men, but every man fared in this life according to the management of the creature; therefore every man prospered according to his genius, and that every man conquered according to his strength; and whatsoever a man did was no crime.”

And that has pretty much been 45’s game all along – to paraphrase what I see in his statements and his actions and his tweets, “I’m rich, I’m powerful, I’m President, I’m the best, I’m yuuuuge, I can do anything I want, and there’s nothing wrong with any of it.”

Senator Hatch, as you look at 45 and his history, the history of questionable business dealings, irresponsible behaviors, dishonesty with contractors, countless bankruptcies, the adulteries, the dalliances, the sexual harassment, the hate, the xenophobia, the racist attitudes, the arrogance, the intolerance, the public mockeries of those who disagree with him, the inexperience, the incompetence, the unleashed and uncontrolled and unsubstantiated tweets, the megalomania, all of it – 45 makes Richard M. Nixon look like Gandhi by comparison. These are not the qualities of a “very good man.” You, and every other Latter-day Saint who cast a ballot for 45 have effectively put Korihor into the White House, and now we’re all reaping the political and social whirlwind.

Now before anyone accuses me of hypocrisy, let me quote the relevant passage for you:

“Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own ye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”

On a personal level, I leave all judgment to God, because I’m keenly aware of my own failings. But we’re talking politics here, and public service and honor and the common good, and I hold my leaders to the highest possible standards. If our chief executive and our legislators can’t be better than the rest of us, they have no business leading us, because otherwise they can lead us nowhere but unto destruction.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Trump’s narcissistic language

Posted on May 26, 2018 by The Old Wolf

This is a comment made at reddit by /u/C250586. In it, (s)he explains how Trump’s use of language exhibits the traits of a sociopathic narcissist, and how his words have no objective meaning, but only subjectively mean what Trump decides they mean.

I wish everyone could read this. Sadly, the ones who really need to will not, and those who do will most likely dismiss it as “fake news” or the ravings of a “libtard.”

This is posted by permission, with only one small Bowdlerization.

Why do people get so hung up on what Trump says? The words he uses? Why do people constantly try to frame his pure subjectivity in an objective way? He views the world as an extension of himself… so every word he says needs to be in that context. I’m not sure people recognize how profound this revelation actually is…

When Trump is talking about anything (for example, “The Swamp”), he is not speaking about things in the same objective way that (most) of the rest of the world would – he views things from an entirely non-objective frame of reference so every sentence out of his mouth is a subjective label that is a reflection of this personal closed off frame of reference he lives in. Using the above example, he uses the term “The Swamp” to describe a non-specific group of people/entities that have blocked him from getting what he wants throughout his life (aka, FBI, DOJ, EPA).

He would never talk about a tree as a thing – an objective entity – it would be a “really great tree that he likes” or a “terrible tree”. Does “Crooked Hillary” ring any bells? Have you ever heard Trump speak about Hillary in a way that doesn’t involve him projecting his own frame of reference, his own view of her onto her? He isn’t capable of it because his brain is flat out not wired to do so. Nothing exists outside of his frame of reference where he is the center of his own personal universe.

Think about it. Listen to the man talk. EVERY SINGLE WORD out of his mouth is a label… an adjective… he only speaks in pure subjective rhetoric and hyperbole. Every word is an extension of his one dimensional perspective – intended to label everyone and everything in line with his own personal world view. Everything is an extension of himself, and how he views the world. Textbook narcissism at its absolute worst and most infuriating.

If that’s the DOJ, FBI, or any Mueller, he/they are going to label them all as “spies”, “swamp”, whatever it takes to turn public opinion against these entities. Just like he calls investigations “witch hunts”, and The Washington Post “Fake news”… it’s just an endless sociopathic stream of manipulation, on a massive and very public scale.

Of course Trump hates the DOJ, FBI, and EPA – these entities have all been trying to shut him down and stop him from getting what he wants for his entire life. It’s pretty clear he figured he would become president and finally get rid of them. All his supporters are the same kinds of people who would see the EPA/FBI/DOJ as just red tape that is stopping them from getting rich. These people (and Trump specifically) cannot view these agencies in an objective light. Aka… Yes it costs money to NOT dump your uranium waste in the river, but it also prevents the people downstream from dying of radiation poisoning.

It’s pretty well understood in psychological circles that Trump is textbook sociopathic narcissist. Kinda like a corporation with no soul in human form, who somehow convinced a bunch of people to elect him. Trump is “capitalism”, for lack of a better term, at its absolute pinnacle…. get rich by whatever means necessary, no matter who or what he has to destroy in the process. Zero empathy.

Trump’s mouth is a 24/7 gish gallop of falsehoods, slander and libel, leaving an absolute [imbroglio] of rational people scrambling to attempt to counter him in his wake.

Here’s hoping that the US has a strong enough backbone to prove that indeed no one is above the law, and there are enough checks and balances in place that corruption can’t exist at this level.

#MeToo: The Court of Public Opinion

Posted on April 28, 2018 by The Old Wolf

#MeToo is a powerful movement. Like #BlackLivesMatter, it’s not wrong about shining the harsh light of reason on social ills, be they sexual harassment or ongoing racial discrimination or anything similar. If there is misconduct, current or past and un-accounted for, it should be exposed and dealt with.

But there’s another side.

It’s important to remember that there are unrighteous people in the world, those who will do what they can to game the system for personal gain or attention.

I’m reminded of something I learned in my association with Klemmer and Associates: “If one person calls you a jackass, it’s just feedback. If six people call you a jackass, it may be time to buy a saddle.”

The recent events surrounding a popular long-time comedian and rôle model are a perfect example: There was a a huge body of evidence and a long line of accusers. From everything I could see, the conviction was justified.

In Tom Brokaw’s case, you have an accuser on one side and a whole line of defenders (note: female) who are bearing witness to high ethics and character: “MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski’s has added her name to the more than 60 women who signed a letter supporting NBC News veteran Tom Brokaw after sexual harassment allegations against him were published by Washington Post and Variety.” (Deadline Hollywood)

The media, in its frenzy to be first-to-publish for the sake of clicks and eyeballs on ads, is happy to embody the fictional persona of Rita Skeeter, who reminded us that “The Prophet exists to sell itself, you silly girl.” Accusations become front-page news without the most ephemeral shred of investigative journalism, and instantly – in less than 0.68 seconds – a segment of the public has convicted someone, and a career can be ruined or eternally tainted, whether there was any truth to the allegations or not.

It’s possible for people to live dual lives, as we have seen. And if there’s a devil hiding in angel’s clothing, there’s nothing more appropriate than exposing that duplicity. But in today’s world, an accusation can leave lasting effects that are impervious to reason or fact (just look at the vaccine/autism nonsense that persists in the minds of so many).

I have long admired Mr. Brokaw’s journalism, integrity, and philanthropic efforts. I’m sorry this has blindsided him. And if, as I suspect, these allegations prove to be turn out to be the machinations of an unbalanced and vindictive individual, I hope he is able to get it sorted quickly and get on with his life.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Happy International Women’s Day to all the “nasty women” out there. All of them.

Posted on March 8, 2018 by The Old Wolf

Now, put away your pitchforks and torches and listen to this amazing video by Aya Korem (it’s in Hebrew with English subtitles, but you’ll have to read fast because she does the equality run in less than 12 parsecs¹:

I asked this question over on Facebook:

Answer me this: why should more than 50% of the earth’s population be given a single day of celebration? Just sayin’.

Listening to Ms. Korem, I was reminded of the following exchange Morgan Freeman had with Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes:

WALLACE: Black History Month, you find …
FREEMAN: Ridiculous.
WALLACE: Why?
FREEMAN: You’re going to relegate my history to a month?
WALLACE: Come on.
FREEMAN: What do you do with yours? Which month is White History Month? Come on, tell me.
WALLACE: I’m Jewish.
FREEMAN: OK. Which month is Jewish History Month?
WALLACE: There isn’t one.
FREEMAN: Why not? Do you want one?
WALLACE: No, no.
FREEMAN: I don’t either. I don’t want a Black History Month. Black history is American history.
WALLACE: How are we going to get rid of racism until …?
FREEMAN: Stop talking about it. I’m going to stop calling you a white man. And I’m going to ask you to stop calling me a black man. I know you as Mike Wallace. You know me as Morgan Freeman. You’re not going to say, “I know this white guy named Mike Wallace.” Hear what I’m saying?

So yes, I get it. Happy International Women’s Day. It’s never inappropriate to celebrate the accomplishments of anyone. But in today’s world of #MeToo and #TimesUp, it seems jejune to celebrate half (more than half, statistically) of humanity by giving them a single day.

When we achieve the kind of gender equality that people of humanity strive for, the kind of equality that Morgan Freeman was alluding to, then we can truly celebrate.

¹ Any respectable Star Wars fan knows that a parsec is a measure of distance, not speed. It’s a joke.

Guns are in America’s DNA

Posted on February 18, 2018 by The Old Wolf

Australia

After the Port Arthur massacre in Australia, former Australian Prime Minister John Howard said, “We have an opportunity in this country not to go down the American path.” And they took that opportunity: Australia banned semi-automatic rifles and shotguns – weapons that can kill many people quickly – and implemented a 28-day waiting period, thorough background checks, and a requirement to present a “justifiable reason” to own a gun.

Guns were not banned outright, and while gun violence did not end in Australia, it was cut by roughly half since 1996 – and there has never been another Port Arthur since.

United Kingdom

In 1987, a single gunman killed 16 people in what came to be known as the Hungerford Massacre. As a result, made registration mandatory for owning shotguns and banning semi-automatic and pump-action weapons.

Despite this action, in 1996 an unspeakable, cowardly bastard burst into the gymnasium of a primary school in Dunblane, Scotland, and killed 15 children aged five and six along with their teacher before turning one of his handguns on himself. By 18 months later, UK lawmakers had passed a ban on the private ownership of all handguns in mainland Britain, resulting in some of the toughest anti-gun legislation in the world.

The United States

In the first month and a half of 2018, there had been 17 shooting incidents at schools in our country. Some were accidental, some were intentional, one was suicide, and some resulted in no injury or death – but 22 people died, and many more were injured. As of this writing, there have been 290 school shootings since 2013.

Even one is too many.

But the odds that the United States will ever ban firearms outright approach my odds of winning the lottery – that is to say, virtually nonexistent.

From where I sit, there are two dominant reasons for this, reasons which have the weight of history behind them.

1. The right to bear arms is guaranteed by the Second Amendment to our Constitution:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The interpretation of the scope of that statement, in the absence of the people who framed it, is being examined in courts on a continual basis. More about this in a bit.

2. Firearms are an integral part of our nation’s history

For better or for worse, our nation’s history depended on firearms. The expanding frontier and the uncertainties of life in a lawless country made owning a firearm (or an armory) often meant the difference between survival and becoming a nameless skeleton on the prairie.

“Why don’t she write?”

But after surviving the hostile elements, there was still the matter of putting food on the table. Hunting in American has morphed from a matter of daily bread to a wildly popular sport; in Utah, for example, teachers expect classrooms to be oddly empty during the deer hunt.

When I was growing up, guns were everywhere. It may be why “A Christmas Story” is such a popular movie with a certain generation:

Ads for air rifles and BB guns were seen in just about every comic book:

At summer camp, we had a BB range and a rifle range. I loved riflery, and in 1964 I attained the Junior NRA rank of “Sharpshooter 2nd Bar.” I would have certainly gone farther had I been able to attend camp more frequently – target shooting was a lot of fun, and I was proud to have earned these.

I owned many toy guns and weapons of mass destruction when I was a kid – and playing “cops and robbers” and “cowboys and Indians” was just what was done.

In our games, when you got shot dead you always just got up again… even if they got you right behind the davenport. While our riflery instructor was impeccably serious about safety on the range, there was never any training given on how to handle a gun safely in the real world, or education around the fact that guns were designed to kill things instead of hit targets at 50 feet, or that when you’re dead, that’s it – there’s no coming back for a second chance.

The fact that guns are written into America’s DNA has allowed the NRA to morph from an organization for sports enthusiasts into a powerful political entity – one which seems determined to preserve and expand its influence at all costs. And their “cold dead hands,” any weapon, any time, any caliber, any size, any magazine, any bump-stock philosophy has been adopted by a significant portion of our citizenry, including a significant number of our legislators who take obscene amounts of money from the NRA, all the while sending their “thoughts and prayers” to the victims without being willing to do anything about the carnage.

The recent shooting at Parkland left 17 people dead. I haven’t even mentioned other gun-related deaths, such as the one in Las Vegas that killed 58 people and injured 851.

It’s time for a change.

Yes, the 2nd Amendment still guarantees our citizenry the right to bear arms, but I do not believe – I will not believe – that the writers of that amendment ever meant for a single individual to own something like this, unless the zombie apocalypse were a real possibility:

Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative voice on the Supreme Court, wrote:

“Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited…”. It is “…not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”

I personally believe that the writers of the 2nd Amendment would be shocked if they saw how that little bit of the Constitution was being interpreted and argued and implemented today, especially if they viewed the daily carnage in a nation with between 270 million to 310 million firearms, depending on whose estimate you believe.

As long as the 2nd Amendment remains in force, we as citizens of this country must balance a right to bear arms with an end to the daily death toll which has reached untenable proportions – indeed, has been unbearable for decades.

If you want to own a gun, this is how it should go:

You take “Firearm Education,” a government-approved class on firearm operation and safety. (Note that many states mandate a driver’s ed class of at least 30 hours.)
You take a written and practical test on the type of firearm for which you wish an endorsement.
You submit to a background check. The current Brady Law mandates use of the NICS, but as we have seen with the Florida and Las Vegas shootings, past actions are not always an indicator of future ones. Too many red flags were missed in the case of the perpetrators; more needs to be done to keep weapons out of the hands of unstable individuals.
Your guns are registered, licensed, and taxed, just like your cars are. Nobody tells you how many cars you can own, or of what kind, as long as you’re licensed to drive them and pay all relevant taxes and fees.
You have liability insurance on each weapon.
Your weapons are inspected and re-registered at yearly intervals, just like your car. Aside from the die-hard sovereign-nation groups, nobody complains about having to re-register cars, or pay excise taxes, or have them inspected for safety, or maintain current insurance. It’s for everyone’s safety, owner and public alike.

In addition to this, I call for a total ban on semiautomatic weapons in the hands of private individuals. They are weapons of war; nobody needs one of these killing machines for hunting, or for any other purpose short of the above-mentioned zombie apocalypse. Bump stocks are a no-brainer – they make no sense.

I have many gun-toting, sharpshooting, hunting, and reloading friends who will disagree with my opinions, but that’s how America works. This is such a highly-charged issue that I debated about disabling comments on this post, but I have always supported civil discourse on difficult issues. Ignorant and trollish comments will be ignored and deleted without ceremony.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Alan Alda: Prognosticator

Posted on February 3, 2018 by The Old Wolf

The following words were offered by Alan Alda in 2001, at the graduation of a friend’s daughter. Alda was referring to a piece written by a Chicago newspaper columnist named Mary Schmich, which was virally circulated on the Internet but erroneously attributed to Kurt Vonnegut.

And that’s what makes this Internet event a great image for the age in which we live. There are probably just as many lies going around now as ever before, but these days they’re traveling at the speed of light. There are just as many people who want to fool you into thinking they’ve got it all figured out for you, but now you don’t have nearly as much time to think it over.

And with the help of an engine for repetition that works on a scale unheard of in the past, the lies stick. People are still sending around the talk, thinking it was written by Vonnegut. I was sent a copy just last week.

It’s a delightful piece of writing. But if it’s presented as if it were by someone other than the person who wrote it, it steals that person’s good name and gives itself a certain credibility before it has a chance to earn it honestly. So, as good as it is, it’s a cheat. At least in the way it’s offered to us.

So, you may be thinking, big deal. It’s just a few good jokes. But think about it… It could be selling you anything. It could be a cult religion that could separate you from friends and family, or a quack medicine that could lead you paralyzed, or bogus political information that cause you to elect a numbskull to the presidency.

God forbid.¹

These are great words with regards to the internet and its impact on the dissemination of information – both genuine and bogus – but eerily prescient in view of the political developments of recent years. For what it’s worth, the entire book is a wonderful, human, and relevant read.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

¹ Alan Alda, Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself (New York: Random House, 2007), 121.

About those Confederate monuments…

Posted on August 21, 2017 by The Old Wolf

There are basically two schools of thought floating around the public’s consciousness about confederate monuments right now, especially in light of recent events in Charlottesville, Virginia.

These are monuments to slavery, hatred, bigotry and the losing side of a war. They should be destroyed, or at the very least put in museums.
You’re rewriting/destroying history. They should be left in place.

Now let me tell you a story:

In 1968 and 1969, I spent a year at Gettysburg College.

Pennsylvania Hall, also known as Old Dorm, was built in 1837 and was used as a signal station and field hospital by both Union and Confederate forces. It was gutted and restored the year I was there, and underwent additional restoration in subsequent years. The entire campus is steeped in the history of the Civil War.

Decades later I returned to visit the campus, and had more time and more mobility to visit the historical sites, museums, and the battlefields.

In May of 2009, my son contemplates a battlefield.

The silence that hangs over those fields, where about 8,000 people lost their lives and over 57,000 were listed as casualties, is haunting. In Lincoln’s words, “The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.” Standing on that quiet land, listening, one can almost hear the tumult and terrors of war – and it’s important to note that Lincoln did not single out either Union or Confederate soldiers in his appellation “brave men.” Those who fought and died, regardless of how just their cause or how willingly or not they served, deserve to be remembered. They belong to the annals of our nation.

The word nigger appears 219 times in Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, but it was a product of its times and remains a classic piece of literature – an ode to the evils of slavery – just as it stands. I’ve seen “sanitized” versions of the work, which has long been one of my favorites, and they just feel wrong.

When I visited Albania numerous times in the early 90s, shortly after the fall of Communism, I found a land in which almost every reference to Enver Hoxha had been purged, except for the national museum in Tiranë. And I understood that national sentiment as well. After 41 years of brutal repression, very few Albanians had any desire to “remember” that part of their history, that they had so recently been relieved of.

In our case, the civil war is now 150 years behind us, but the history of slavery in the USA was almost 100 years longer than that, beginning on 31 August 1620, when John Rolfe recorded that “there came in a Dutch man-of-war that sold us twenty negars.” And the ripples and ramifications of slavery extended well into my lifetime; although I personally never saw scenes like this one, I was 14 the year of the Selma to Montgomery marches, 15 when Bobby Seale and Huey Newton founded the Black Panthers, and am watching the social media storm swirling around the Black Lives Matter today. If black lives really mattered, there would be no need for such a movement.

The record shows that most Confederate monuments were put up during the eras of Jim Crow segregation and the civil rights movement. They were put up, many with financial support from The United Daughters of the Confederacy, to influence the narrative of the Civil War; the message was that the Civil War was not an issue of slavery but rather an issue of states rights.

On one hand, historical revisionism is a slippery slope. Humans are imperfect, and there will always be unpleasant truths in our past that must be acknowledged and remembered if we are not to repeat them. On the other hand, while my experience has been one of white privilege I can at least begin to imagine the gut feelings of those who have been impacted by the legacy of slavery at viewing – or even thinking of the existence of – monuments to people who fought, killed, and died to keep their people in bondage.

There are no monuments in Germany venerating Hitler or Göbbels or Eichmann. According to Joshua Zeitz, writing for Politico,

“The generation of Germans that came of age in the 1970s and 1980s confronted the country’s Nazi past and forcefully repudiated it. It took several decades of hard self-reflection, but a reunified Germany emerged from the Cold War as one of the great mainstays of democracy and human rights.”

Even though America stood for freedom and self-determination during the many wars of the last century, at home our own legacy of keeping a large part of our own population in miserable servitude for centuries remains not only unrepudiated but continues to be celebrated under the guise of another kind of historical revisionism.

It’s not enough to remove bronze and stone monuments to human wretchedness and cruelty; the underlying attitudes of the antebellum South and the Civil War remain enshrined in the hearts of too many people and too many textbooks. But it’s a step that we owe to the descendants of those who sweated under the loads and suffered under the lash and who have endured second-class status since their forefathers were emancipated, a step that must be taken if we are to eradicate those attitudes.

And what of private Buford Liles who marched off to war believing that the cause of the South was just and who never came home to wife and children, and all the privates and sergeants and fighting men like him who laid down their lives? A nation that has turned its back on the inhuman excesses of the past and that strives to build a society that works for everyone, with no one left out, can honor the bravery of these men and women, and all the victims of that wretched conflict, in memory without celebrating the flawed cause that moved them.

A contemplative visit to a peaceful battlefield would suffice.

The Old Wolf has spoken.