Listening: The Fragile, Nine Inch Nails
I'd rather be: done with work
Desiring: rest

Today is Guy Fawkes day. Being really not-British I forget what that means and just think about burning a guy in effigy a few hundred years after he died is one of those cute, quaint British things like driving on the other side of the road and tea time. It's not in my reality to really consider the religious violence this day represents. And the fact that continuing to celebrate it when it's not very clear if there really was a plot to blow up Parliment just commemorates a lot of hatred and burnt bridges.

It's also the anniversary of the patent of Gatling's gun, in 1862.

This brings me to a bit of a tangle of thoughts I've been working through for a few days now.

This is about violence, armed resistence, murder, mayhem and the Second Amendment. Before you proceed you should know that I am an avowed PACIFIST. I don't believe in violent insurgencies. It demands that people take on the worst stains to their soul on the vague promise that maybe afte a lot of death and destruction things will get better. That rarely ever happens.

Peaceful resistance may be the height in passive aggression, but darn it, it works.
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The Second Amendment is supposedly in place because American citizens supposedly have the right to rise against their government and clearly to do that they'll need arms. Right? So then it's kind of odd that it's the right to the method of revolt that is enshrined in the Bill of Rights, but not the right to the actual Revolt. The Michigan Militia is flat out not allowed to go down to any military installations and try to take them out, or go to the governor's mansion and kick him out.

Put another way, when General Lee showed up a few hundred yards from the White House emphatically using his and the right of his men to bare arms (and subsequently hold forth against their oppressors) there wasn't a single Unionist who wasn't thinking "why the fuck can't they just chill out?? Killing us? isn't that a little much?"

I'm not going to rehash my thoughts on the Civil War, I'm just pointing to a historical event that is more real to most Americans than the religious struggles of England of a few centuries ago.

I was raised hating and fearing guns. You can read more about my history with the issue here. There are a few things that have come to help me get over that.

But mostly my personal history is my own. It's tied to my father's distrust of guns and a very liberal outlook that on the one hand sees a severe limitation of products that are specifically designed to do harm and the outlook that people should persue whatever they like in their free time, so long as that persuit doesn't harm anyone else.

I was raised pro heavy gun control. While I have no interest in ever shooting a gun I have to say this administration has single-handedly made me entertain the thought that I may somehow need to protect myself with a weapon. I've lived in downtown/South Central Los Angeles off and on for about nine years, walked alone through her streets in the dead middle of the night and in general tempted fate time and again. But I've never really thought about how much danger I could be in if just a few things went south. Maybe I'm just getting older and some of that youthful belief in my immortality is wearing off. But I have to tell you, I'm still not very afraid of street thugs.

I'm afraid of thought police. I'm afraid of a new House Committee on Unamerican Activities. I'm afraid of rampant and intense descrimination ratcheting back up because police are busy defending the rich and not poor women of color. I'm afraid of the ramping up of global hatred for my country that emboldens those who have no qualms for killing and see travelling to a foreign country for the express purpose of murder to be a holy mission.

In a true twist of irony that I happen to love and would laugh at were it not so deadly serious, it was Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine that really gave me a new appreciation for the Second Amendment. I am afraid. And it does make sense to reach for the available aresenal.


So over and over I'm hearing slogans like "cut and run," "stand and fight" (fight??) "love it or leave it." I have to remind myself that I don't ascribe to binary thinking like this. Slogans don't truly capture me and if other people delude themselves into thinking that a handful of monosyllabic words will describe me, that's their lack of imagination.

It simply doesn't make sense: Assuming I believed the government was setting out to opress me, assuming I believed that I could only defend myself through violence, and indeed that I have a right to that defense and the consequent violence, assuming I could arm myself as heavily as the law allows (I'm currently limited by funds), assuming I truly believed in the freedom to bear arms and that it equals an overall personal freedom to demand the sort of government I deserve, wouldn't that mean I have a right to wage violent dissent?

Wouldn't that mean I have a right to threaten lawmakers with my weaponry and demand that they govern as I believe is right?


So yes, I'm taking the thought process to a fairly absurd extent. But really. If the rule is ther "just in case we need it" how do we know when we need it and how is it that we won't end up seriously violating other major laws of the land (I can't help but notice that life comes before Liberty and the persuit of happiness)?

So in a way I'm amused (because I love irony so) that the Second Amendment is so sacred to the status quo. And when you ask them why they insist on the right to give government a big comeuppance. And yet government doesn't seem to have any protocol for appreciating that comeuppance and not just squishing the comeuppers.

just some thoughts.