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The America We Vote For [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-07-03
By David Glenn Cox
I recently watched a video of a shopping mall I had frequented many years ago. Now a failed decrepit shell and obsolete eyesore on the American landscape. Shopping Malls worth hundreds of millions of dollars reduced to junk status and auctioned off for pennies on the dollar bringing only the land value. Tens of thousands of jobs and companies long gone.
Shopping Malls offered a safe space and an escape from the ravages of extreme weather. Video arcades and food courts and movie theater complexes all gone once the mall ceased to be a safe space. The end for most shopping malls came about the same way. A shooting in the food court or a murder in the parking lot. Random violence that pierced the faux reality shell of the mall.
Gun shots over the muzak, violence between the potted plants. Shopping malls became territory for gangs to fight over. A way of life in America faded away to history because of hand guns and social injustice.
Then came the rash of school shootings, All these weird and whacked out sad kids with guns! With parents that either gave the kid a gun or blissfully didn’t know nothing. It’s almost become a stereotype, The weird kid with guns In the orange jump suit and chains. Disappearing forever into the prison system leaving behind grieving mothers and candles and teddy bears piled on a makeshift shrine. “Oh, how could this ever happen to us? What made little Johnny do it? We should talk about having more mental health care available and then do nothing.
It's reaching epidemic standards, and no mask can save you. Cities are reaching war zone statistics. The shootings now become anonymous due to their frequency. Who can keep up? Some guy did it! Who cares who did it. Just a random shootings after all, being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Pedestrians’ invisible anonymous passengers in passing cars, it could be you next or me, until large public gatherings become an unsafe use of your leisure time.
Memorial Day weekend was like Vietnam War combat report with 30 injured here and 11 killed over there. It would be impossible to keep up without a tote board. Parties, family gatherings and public events no longer safe to attend. Happy Independence Day!
“America Is the Only Country That Went from Barbarism to Decadence without Civilization In Between.”- it’s attributed to a bunch of people but I’m a big fan of Ogden Nash. So, I’ll say he said it but might have been the French Premier Clemenceau. But it doesn’t sound much like Clemenceau to me. I don’t remember Clemenceau as a much of a humorist. Churchill maybe, but he gets credit for anything said cleverly, but I still like Nash.
The land of the free and the home of the brave best hunker in the bunker called home this weekend. Watch the fireworks from the relative safety of home. The temperature is hot, and the liquor will flow. What makes people kill with reckless abandon? Twenty-five years in prison is still twenty-five years in prison, isn’t it? You shoot up a school, and it’s the full Monty, and you ain’t never getting out. But that no longer seems to matter to the perpetrators anymore.
A certain persuasion of politicians view the issue from the standpoint of the 2nd Amendment and the rights of the shooter without considering the rights of shootee. My Bible, my gun, and my country! “Is that you John Wayne, is that me?” It’s wonderful to live in a country where everybody can carry a gun. But wouldn’t you rather live in a country where everyone wasn’t carrying a gun?
It is no longer just a political issue; it’s a public health emergency.
It doesn’t matter where you live or what your zip code. It doesn’t matter how much money you make. If you are in public, you are in danger. A convenience store after ten o’clock and you’re just looking for trouble. A street party or festival and you better leave before sundown.
Be careful and courteous to others while driving on the highway. Just some friendly advice in a country swamped by guns. Illegal guns, stolen guns random and miscellaneous guns. Without the slightest hesitation to use them if the mood strikes. “He yelled at my dog! They turned around in my driveway! They came to my door and rang the bell.”
The cost to society and the damage of the societal fabric is staggering. A child’s largest threat to growing up in this country is going to school. Public, private, elite, ghetto stay away from school sporting events and parking lots. You can cheer for the team online.
The plethora of weapons are bad enough but the psychology behind of the willingness of people to shoot and kill someone basically over nothing or just carelessly. “He looked at me funny.” Oblivious, that they’re going to jail for a long time. Just like the roaring twenties, it’s easier to make money dishonestly than it is to make money honestly. A nasty little thing called no upward mobility. Little opportunity and what you see around you is what you get. Live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse. Live for today for tomorrow we die. The way of the urban jungle. Kids killing kids and innocent bystanders.
Both Florida and Texas have made it even easer to carry a gun with open carry. Anyone, anyone can carry a gun now cart blanch. No paperwork required!
A Florida tow truck driver was attempting to repossess a vehicle when the car’s owner intervened. The tow truck driver said he felt threated when the car’s owner attempted to drive away. And quoting the state’s stand your ground law shot the car’s owner three times killing him. When the police arrived the tow truck driver was shocked when he was handcuffed and put in the back of the police car and charged with murder. “But,but,but stand your ground! He frightened me!”
The guns which once made us free now make us prisoners. The cops are powerless, churches, movie theaters, fireworks displays anywhere people gather. And the ultimate irony are the American’s complaining because the sound of fireworks upsets their dog, while the city streets are rivers of blood. There is no top number on how many people will die needlessly this weekend.
This is the America you voted for.
“America...just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable”
― Hunter S. Thompson
[END]
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https://dailykos.com/stories/2023/7/3/2179083/-The-America-We-Vote-For
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