Constitutional Wrongs

I have finally been able to reconcile my internal conflict about whether my visceral response to the school shooting in Connecticut should be to cry or to vomit. As it happens, thanks to the combination of the actual tragedy of lives lost and the tragically offensive commentary in response to the incident from many on the political "right", it turns out that both reactions are equally appropriate. The crying speaks for itself while the right-wing driven urge for reverse peristalsis is simply a question of sanity. What other sane reaction is possible when right-wingers decry politicizing a tragedy by raising the issue of gun control while their talking heads - most prominently former Governor Mike Huckabee - attribute the event to god being "systematically removed" from schools? The stupidity of the latter point is hopefully obvious, but the former notion is frankly even more ridiculous. This is not some abstract debate about principle - this is life and death. There is nothing more important in politics - ever. And to those who are possessed by some form of mania (I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt) that requires you to cite the Second Amendment to the US Constitution as the reason firearms should not be subject to common sense controls, allow me to point out that the same US Constitution originally specified that in electoral terms most African-Americans were only worth 3/5 that of the majority of white men - with even less value being ascribed to women. Perhaps there are some in the Republican party who think the Constitution got it right in the first place, but again I'm trying to give people the benefit of the doubt. Whether the outcry from the right over comments like Huckabee's will display the same level of offense they mustered for those who raised matters like closing the so-called "gun show loophole" or restricting access to high-capacity magazines will say a lot about the kind of American values they truly hold.

Why Does 12/21/12 Make Me Think of 666?

One month out from the supposed day of destiny, despite being widely discredited, the notion of the Mayan apocalypse prediction still lingers in the popular imagination. If this idea is going to insist on persisting, we owe it to ourselves to consider it from an alternative angle. Perhaps December 21 isn't the date when the world will literally come to an end but rather is the point at which we collectively stop believing that it deserves to continue.

As I looked in the sky tonight, I marveled at the array of color that was a jet's vapor-trail. Therein was the dilemma - as lovely as my heart found it, my head knew the chemicals the plane was pushing out were bad for our planet. Somehow science is rarely so beautiful as when it's being destructive, even when it does so in subtle ways.

Perhaps that's part of why so many people of faith have difficulty with things like "global warming". It's hard to reconcile one's faith in a supreme being with the concept that that entity's handiwork could be both appealing and dangerous. After all, isn't that the Devil's move? If so, perhaps all it means is that the Devil isn't just in the details - the Devil's in us as well.

If at First You Don't Secede

At first, I worried that my urge to post about the picture here was overly petty. After all, everyone spells things wrong on occasion, and that especially vocal segment whose calls for greater freedom often seem to be as much about freedom from proper grammar and spelling as they are any deeper considerations are such easy targets. Put another way, shooting fish in a barrel is barely worth the 2nd Amendment remedies required to get the job done. On further reflection, though, it struck me that many of these folks are the same ones calling for English to be declared America's national language - despite their seeming inability to use it properly. Needless to say, I immediately felt much better about the whole thing.