What rhymes with Putin?

I don’t know Ukrainian, but I’m sure Ukrainians have their zingers.

In English, Zero clued in works.

Rasputin stand-in does the job.

This frivolous Putin query comes as we approach the anniversary of a madman’s attempt to rewrite world history. On February 24th, 2022, Putin let loose the power of the Russian military – with a destructive force not seen in Europe since World War 2 – on a peaceable neighbor, Ukraine. There was nothing frivolous about Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.

What rhymes with madman?

Con man.

Convinced I can.

Bad man.

Putin thought he was invincible.

What rhymes with invincible?

Despicable.

Unpredictable.

Unthinkable.

This time last year, Putin was on top of the world, about to rewrite Russian history; he imagined himself emulating Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, also known as Catherine the Great, once Empress of Russia, his long dead and gone heroine.

What rhymes with Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst?

I have no idea.

I do know what rhymes with Putin’s attempt to rewrite history.

Dark night.

Quenched light.

Instead of imposing his will on the populace of Ukraine, approximately 44 million souls, or about the populations of Florida and New York State combined, or even Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina, New Hampshire and Georgia combined, Putin became the first easily identifiable despot of our new century, shockingly pushed back to where he came from by the pure force of Ukrainian willpower.

What rhymes with despot?

Guess what?

Crackpot.

On February 24th, 2022, Putin lent his name to a mega invasion of a nonbelligerent neighbor on an international level never imagined. The consequences were disastrous.

In November, 2022, mere months ago and just months after Putin’s initial decision to ‘take’ Ukraine, the BBC reported that the most senior US general, Gen Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, estimated that 100,000 Russian and 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or injured in the war in Ukraine so far. Gen Milley added that at least 40,000 civilians had died by November of last year.

Thanks to our zero clued in, Rasputin stand-in, demented man in Moscow, epicenter of Putin’s mythical former USSR, innocent lives are being lost on a daily basis in Ukraine in numbers that are nothing short of abominable.

What rhymes with abominable?

Dishonorable.

Unconscionable.

And what rhymes with demented?

Disoriented.

Unbefriended.

Dented  – big time where it counts, in Putin’s internal psyche.

Lest we get suckered into a Putin-defined cesspit and bogged down in the mindset of an autocrat, I was inspired by one of the catchiest songs of 2023 so far, the brilliant Colombian Shakira’s take-down of her ex, to imagine how Putin might deserve his own rhyming put-down.

In a hugely publicized 2022 breakup, the former Barcelona football player Gerard Piqué left Shakira, his wife of 12 years and the mother of his 2 children, for a new paramour, a much younger woman called Clara Chía.

Shakira is resilient if anything. She is no push-over. On Jan 11th, she released a masterpiece, a blockbuster hit with the enigmatic title of SHAKIRA || BZRP Music Sessions #53.

Even though sung in Spanish, the title shot to the top of Apple’s iTunes charts in the U.S. on release. Many, so many of us it would seem, can resonate with revenge. The song’s video, with English subtitles, went viral. The song is not only catchy, bitching and biting, but cathartic. It broke YouTube records, registering more than 64 million views within 24 hours. Lord, does Ukraine need revenge!

Think about it for a minute. Millions upon millions of us can resonate with what is happening to Shakira. Millions more of us around the world identify with what is happening to Ukraine. Billions of us have reasons to get angry with Putin over Ukraine daily. The man seems unaccountable.

What rhymes with unaccountable?

Incomprehensible.

Unfathomable.

Shakira is a genius at rhyming. In her Spanish lyrics for SHAKIRA || BZRP Music Sessions #53, she found a way to connect her philandering ex, Piqué, to mortification, (te mortifique), chewing up (mastique), and a host of other rhymes and homonyms that might be enough reason for any year-abroad undergraduate or graduate student to want to learn Spanish. Shakira doesn’t let go. The video has already had 288,109,016 views on YouTube as of this writing. It’s averaging more than 5 million new views daily.

Imagine if Shakira took on Putin?

Imagine how she, stand-in for Ukraine, could destroy this pseudo Westerner, this false Russian prophet, this wannabe Catharine the Great, this Putin, with just a few rhymes and words.

Shakira can do that. She has that power. She is, after all, the reigning queen of World Cup Soccer anthems. Her Waka Waka video from the 2010 World Cup has had more than 3,472,939,423 (3 billion!) views.

Shakira knows how to garner world attention. Sorry Piqué. Maybe she’s right. Maybe you did choose a Twingo over a Ferrari, just as Putin fell into his own Twingo hell with his decision to try to absorb Urkaine into a mythical Russia.

Here’s how Shakira might put Putin – our present-day world pariah – in his place. And here, too, is how that very same Putin might feel, shamed, hearing himself belittled in a song where billions more than the billions that have watched Shakira’s Waka Waka see him as a wuss.

Just imagine Shakira’s singing these rhymes as she does on SHAKIRA || BZRP Music Sessions #53, but addressed to Putin, and here we go:

Putin?

Zero clued in

Rasputin stand-in

Madman?

Con man.

Convinced I can.

Bad man.

Invincible?

Despicable.

Unpredictable.

Unthinkable.

Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst?

History rewrite?

Dark night.

Quenched light.

Despot?

Guess what.

Crackpot.

Abominable.

Dishonorable.

Unconscionable.

Demented.

Disoriented.

Unbefriended.

Dented

Unaccountable?

Incomprehensible.

Unfathomable.

Despicable.

Unpredictable.

Unthinkable.

Abominable.

Dishonorable.

Unconscionable.

The post Shakira nails Putin appeared first on Occasional Planet.

In 1967, President Lyndon Johnson sent the United States Army into Detroit to try to calm the streets after rioting and police conduct had resulted in the deaths of forty-three. Fifty three years later, the governmental approach to civil unrest continues to be to send in armed police officers and national guardsmen.

It did not work well in Ferguson, MO in 2014; it certainly is not working well now in Minneapolis and a host of other cities. Are there other ways to deal with citizen concerns besides massive displays of armed power?

Here are a few suggestions as to how authorities in Minneapolis could have, and hopefully still can, try to communicate an understanding of the frustration of the citizens. Beyond that, the police forces still have time to try to make amends.

1. Immediately acknowledge that the cops messed up. Police officers on the street could acknowledge this. If they really wanted to get the point across clearly, some police officers could carry signs saying, “We messed up,” or perhaps even better, “We screwed up,” or “We fucked up.” It’s not what the community would expect to see, but these are not ordinary times. As Mark Twain said, “When everything else fails, try telling the truth.”
2. Instead of having police on the front lines opposing citizens, the municipal leaders could call out other public employees who are more skilled in conflict resolution. Imagine if the city sent hundreds or thousands of public school teachers, social workers, public defenders and others to talk openly with the protesters. They could hear out what the protesters had to say, document it, and commit themselves to passing along the concerns of the citizens to “higher-ups.” In the category of “truth in advertising,” we have to acknowledge that not all teachers, social workers and public defenders are terribly skilled in conflict resolution, but they would be a good group with whom to start.
3. Find ways to organize community truth and reconciliation gatherings. These would be on-going. Minneapolis seems to have an outstanding mayor in Jacob Frey and an excellent Chief of Police in Medaria Arradondo. Begin scheduling meetings now, and be sure to include on the beat police officers. Everyone would have to follow rules of civility.
4. Being somewhat facetious, but what the hell, the Minnesota Vikings could sign Colin Kaepernick to compete with Kirk Cousins to be quarterback. At the very least, Kaepernick could teach police officers the proper way to take a knee. As silly as this may sound, it could be an act of good faith within the community and would probably give the Vikings what they need to become a Super Bowl contender.

We have previously written about police officers also being trained to be social workers. Police are often the first level of government with whom citizens come in contact when there is discord. They should be the best possible representatives of the state. Their jobs put them in positions to be the first line of justice when troubles occur within our society.

Yes, this includes investigating crimes and apprehending those who have broken laws, but it also involves delicate situations such as domestic disputes or daily occurrences such as truancy.  When police interact with citizens who have broken laws, or people who are in distress, they need to be able to address the immediate emotional needs of the people. Additionally, they must be equipped with a wide range of resources that can direct citizens to agencies that can help them with their areas of frustration. In the case of domestic disputes, police should be able to direct parties to effective counseling, the type that can be immediately available. If a person has an alcohol or other drug addiction, police should be able to direct them to rehab programs. If a person just lost his or her job, police know how to help citizens effectively look for new job opportunities.

But, as we all know, most of today’s police are not trained that way. This is why they are perhaps among the least equipped people in our society to deal with the current justified anger on the streets of Minneapolis and other American cities. So, while putting alternate personnel besides police officers on the streets during this current outrage over what four police officers willingly did to George Floyd, the police in Minneapolis and every other community in our country must have their jobs radically redefined. Those who are currently police officer who have to quickly learn to adapt, or they will justifiably be replaced by many others who have the requisite skills to know far more about justice than Officer Derek Chauvin and his three colleagues.

The post Creative strategies that could have worked in aftermath of George Floyd Murder appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Trump’s former consigliere, Michael Cohen, is reported to be writing a tell-all book. Whether he’ll be writing in in a jail cell or at home is still not clear, as his pandemic-related release from prison was suddenly, unceremoniously, and suspiciously rescinded just days after it was announced in late April 2020.  One thing is certain, though: He’s got the goods on Trump and his circle.

This article first appeared on this site in 2018, just after to the FBI raided Trump fixer Michael Cohen’s office, home and hotel room,  where they found and seized a cache of old cell phones—sixteen cell phones, to be precise.  The parody song at the end of this post could be the theme song for his new book.

You have to wonder why Cohen held onto all of the phones. It is possible, after all, to transfer one’s contacts to a new phone. It’s possible, too, to destroy a phone and its memory, if it contains things you don’t want discovered. One could speculate that he kept them for sentimental reasons, or because he thought that someday a Blackberry would be a valuable collectors’ item. Not likely, though. A more plausible explanation would be that Cohen hung onto his old phones because they house, in their micro-memories, some important things that didn’t transfer over to the next generation of mobile phone. And what might those things be? Could they be saved voice mails and “taped” conversations with people Michael Cohen worked with? Cohen is known to record conversations—perhaps to retain them to play back in the future as embarrassing evidence or leverage, perhaps to use them as gossip fodder, or perhaps to play them for the merriment of his friends.

Whatever his reasons, the seized cell phones are now in the hands of the special master appointed to evaluate the attorney-client privilege-ness of what they and other documents contain. Are they the 21^st century equivalent of the incriminating Nixon tapes? We may never know. Suffice it to say, though, that Cohen is probably sweating—as are all the people he may have talked to over 16-phones-worth of conversations.

So, in honor of the 16-phone seizure, I’ve composed a parody of Tennesse Ernie Ford’s, “16 Tons.

Here is the original 1955 hit. My lyrics follow:

Okay, now you’ve got the melody. Here goes

“16 Phones: A Michael Cohen sing-along”

Some people say my ethics are stuck in the mud,

 I never had to worry: I had Trump as my bud.

I said I’d take the bullet if it came down to just us,

But I’m getting run over by Donald Trump’s bus.

You load 16 phones, and what do you get?

A lot of old recordings and a lot of new sweat.

Mr. Mueller don’t ya call me, and don’t harass,

I’m holed up at home tryin’ to save my own ass.

I was born a fixer, and I’m good at the game.

Bully and Sleazeball are my middle names.

The Boss trusted me with the nastiest jobs,

And I’m consigliere to the Trump family mob.

You load 16 phones, and what do you get?

A lot of old recordings and a lot of new sweat.

Mr. Mueller don’t ya call me, and don’t ask for more:

I’ve sold my soul to the Trump-any store.

I was born on Long Island, just a privileged kid,

I’m working for Trump now, and you know what I did.

I paid off some women and threatened the rest,

And now I’ve been raided, and I’m facing arrest.

You save 16 phones, and what do you get?

A lot of old recordings and a lot of new sweat.

Mr. Mueller don’t ya call me, and don’t harass:

I’m holed up at home tryin’ to save my own ass.

Some people say I’ll flip and just tell it all,

Listen, you assholes, I’m not takin’ the fall.

Shut up for a change, and try to be wise,

‘Cuz I’ve got the goods on all of you guys.

You save 16 phones, and what do you get?

A ton of old recordings and a lot of new sweat.

Mr. Mueller don’t ya call me, and don’t harass:

I’m holed up at home, tryin’ to save my own ass.

Parody lyrics, Copyright 2018, Gloria Shur Bilchik

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The National Memorial for Peace and Justice made me cry. And that, I’m sure, is not a unique experience. I can’t speak for the busloads of other people who were there, and I can’t pretend to know how black people feel when they see this stunning, symbolic representation of the thousands of lynchings in America’s sordid racial history. I can only say that, for me, it evoked deep sorrow and outrage at the cruelty that human beings are capable of inflicting upon others.

As a fitting prelude to visiting what has come to be known as the “lynching memorial,” we went to the Legacy Museum, about a mile away in Montgomery, Alabama. Housed in a building that was once part of the domestic slave trading hub in Montgomery, the  Legacy Museum sets the stage for the Memorial by poignantly telling the story of slavery and racial injustice in America through news photographs, headlines, archival film, animated and live video documentaries, and even an early 20^th century recording in which a 100-year-old former slave describes his experience.

Walking through the exhibits is a gut-wrenching, sensory-overloading experience—almost too much to take in at a single visit.

To convey the scope of slavery in America, a video info-graphic at the Legacy Museum demonstrates how the domestic slave trade evolved after the U.S. government banned the African slave trade in 1808. Limited to slaves already in the country, traders shifted masses of enslaved people from the upper Confederacy to the Deep South, until there were more than a million slaves concentrated just in Alabama, with hundreds of thousands more trapped in other states. In another area of the museum, archival 19^th century photos show the scarred backs of beaten slaves and blurry images of families on the slave auction block. On one wall of the museum, enlarged reproductions of advertisements published in newspapers tout the high quality of shipments of slaves scheduled for upcoming auctions.

Of course, the end of slavery did not end racial injustice in America. It merely shifted to other incarnations, such as share-cropping, and to laws institutionalizing white supremacy. One exhibit displays replicas of signs carried by segregationists, and notifications warning “undesirable” groups to stay out of restaurants and bathrooms. In one section, you can sit down at a simulated prison visitor’s booth, pick up a telephone, and listen to a prisoner describe his/her experiences. Many of the people visiting alongside us appeared old enough to remember the fire hoses turned on civil rights marchers, the police dogs attacking, the burning of Freedom Rider buses, and the murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi. I overhead snippets of conversations among visitors testifying to what they had seen and experienced themselves.  But I wonder how younger adults—and especially young children—experience these exhibits.

Walking through the museum, I felt worse and worse about the human race, and sadder and sadder for black people who have been regarded as lesser beings, treated violently, arbitrarily and unfairly—with nowhere to turn for help in so many cases. Their insecurity, fear and physical pain are unimaginable to a privileged person like me.

And then we went to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. As we entered, busload after busload of other visitors arrived, too. Once inside the perimeter, there was almost total silence. Photos are not permitted, so there were no silly selfies, but I don’t think many people would have tried such a thing, anyway: A feeling of reverence permeated the atmosphere. This was holy ground.

As you’ve probably read, the Memorial consists of a series of steel slabs, suspended from the roof, each representing a county in America where law-enforcement officials, huge mobs and small vigilante groups carried out lynchings. There’s a slab for every state in the U.S.—broken down by counties—with the named of lynching victims etched into the hollow steel rectangles. The memorial begins on level ground, and then you descend into what ends up feeling like a forest of hanging bodies. On the outer walls, signs give the sad details of many lynchings: People who were murdered for “knocking on the door of a white woman;” “making a white woman feel frightened;” “not showing respect for a white man.”

Since the memorial opened in 2018, people have come forward with more stories of lynchings in their families’ histories, and more names are being added. When I asked a docent about the most recent lynching in the US, I was shocked at his answer. “It was in Ferguson, Missouri,” he said. “In 2018.”

He told me that a young man had been lynched in Ferguson, but that police were calling it a suicide, “like they always do.” “But, you know,” he added, “People don’t commit suicide with their hands tied behind their back.”  [News coverage of the incident does not seem to include the hands-tied-behind-his-back detail, so I am researching the news further, to try to figure out how to interpret what he stated as fact. But, then again, who am I to say? How do I know that this is not another case—in the long history of lynchings so dramatically depicted at the memorial—of an official cover-up?]

The final section of the memorial is a stone wall, inscribed with a remembrance for all victims, over which cascades a gentle but infinite waterfall. I experienced that waterfall as a flood of unending tears shed by the families of people who innocently went out of the house one day and never came back. They were victims of hate that I once thought unimaginable in the apparently fictional America I grew up in — but that I now see, in the current political climate, as frighteningly imaginable. That’s when I sat down and cried. Many of my tears came simply from being in a place commemorating such horrific events. I was thinking about the broken-hearted mothers who lost their sons, and that made me think about the recent death of my own son, from cancer. I would not presume to equate my personal loss to that of generations of black families terrorized by lynching — but I do, in my own way, feel connected to their grief.

I’m not religious, and I’m not sure about the concept of sin. But if there is such a thing, lynching certainly qualifies, as do the perpetuation of racial hatred and the institutionalization of fear. I was heartened to note that several of the inscriptions placed around the memorial use the word “terrorism” to describe lynchings—as they were, in fact, designed to terrorize the black community into submission. I can only hope that the memorial helps people whose history has been stained by the hatred of bigotry to find affirmation of their story, and acknowledgment of their pain. In a normal ending to a post like this, I would probably add “hope for a better future.” But as to that, I am agnostic.

Watch this video to get a glimpse of the Legacy Museum and the reasons behind it:

The post Reflections on the Lynching Memorial and Legacy Museum appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Last week the National Rifle Association suffered a resounding defeat in the State of Arkansas.

I imagine that this week most Arkansans will be resting a bit easier and feeling a lot more secure out on their streets, in parking lots, and in other public places following the defeat at the hands of the state’s judicial committee of a Stand Your Ground bill introduced by Republican State Senator Bob Ballinger. Following a hearing characterized by heated testimony and a passionate plea by State Senator Stephanie Flowers for senators to reject the proposal, the bill was defeated by a vote of four to three—with three Democrats and one Republican voting “nay” and three Republicans voting “aye.”

In their wisdom, Arkansas’ state senators delivered a blow to the National Rifle Association’s long-term legislative priority of expanding the Stand Your Ground law to all fifty states. Since 2005, when the NRA lobbied hard and successfully for the first Stand Your Ground law in Florida, twenty-four states have followed suit with their own iterations of the law—including Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia.

What are Stand Your Ground or “no-duty-to-retreat” laws? The laws effectively remove an individual’s duty to retreat before using deadly force, as long as the individual reasonably believes that he or she is facing bodily harm or imminent death. Stand Your Ground can be invoked while an individual is present in virtually any place where the person has a legal right to be.

Here’s how Everytown for Gun Safety characterizes the dangers of Stand Your Ground:

Stand Your Ground laws upend centuries of traditional self-defense doctrine and threaten public safety by encouraging armed vigilantism, allowing a person to kill another person in a public area even when they can clearly and safely walk away from the danger.

The record on the fallout of invoking the Stand Your Ground defense is horrific. Americans were first made aware of how far justice could be thwarted with the shooting death by George Zimmerman of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin and the subsequent not-guilty verdict on charges of second-degree murder and manslaughter after Zimmerman claimed he was acting in self-defense—even though Trayvon was unarmed.

The data since that first highly publicized incident demonstrates the extreme danger posed by these laws.

• In Florida, in cases where perpetrators claimed Stand Your Ground as a defense, fully 79 percent of the shooters could have retreated to avoid the confrontation, and 68 percent of the individuals killed were unarmed.
• Even more shocking, of those Floridians who claimed Stand Your Ground, almost 60 percent had been previously arrested, and about one third had been previously accused of violent crimes.
• Since 2005, there have been two hundred incidents in Florida alone in which the Stand Your Ground law played a role in the decisions of prosecutors whether to bring charges, in juries’ decisions to acquit, or in judges’ decisions to throw out the charges.

A pattern of extreme racial bias and racial disparity has become ever clearer since the unjust verdict in the Trayvon Martin case. According to a study published in the journal Social Science and Medicine:

The impact of Stand-Your-Ground laws revealed a disturbing pattern of racial bias. Individuals (i.e., defendants) in Florida were more likely to avoid charges if the victim was black or Latino but not if the victim was white. Indeed, individuals are nearly two times more likely to be convicted in a case that involves white victims compared to those involving black and Latino victims.

Here’s what Everytown for Gun Safety observes about the dangers and injustices of Stand Your Ground:

These laws are associated with increases in homicides and injuries across different demographics and neighborhoods, while disproportionately impacting communities of color. They encourage the escalation of violence in avoidable situations and do not deter crime.

Watch and listen below to the despair, the frustration, and the justifiable anger of Arkansas State Senator Stephanie Flowers as she pleads for the life and safety of her son and for the lives of all Arkansans of color who would have born the brunt of the law’s assault on public safety had it passed.

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“I don’t wanna be brave. I just wanna be safe.” – Lyrics from “The Most Vicious Cycle,” by Kesha.

Two must-watch videos. Two approaches to get out the youth vote. One is of the mind, and one goes straight to the gut.

In the first, Barack Obama, showing off his signature combination of brain and wit, obliterates the seven most often repeated excuses why young voters fail to show up at the polls.  The most spot-on moment is when Obama narrates over an image of a bespectacled, white-haired lady and asks, “You wouldn’t let your grandparents pick your play list, so why would you let them pick your representatives who will determine your future?”

The second video, called “The Most Vicious Cycle,” was produced for March for Our Lives, the gun-control advocacy group founded by survivors of the mass shooting that stopped short the lives of seventeen teens at the Marjory Stoneham Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The video powerfully inserts the viewer into the moment in a high school corridor when bullets fly and the sound and blast of gun fire shatter the every day. Music and rap lyrics are by singer Kesha, and production is by Sage Sebert, a graduate of Marjory Stoneham Douglas.

I dare you not to chuckle at one and cry with the other. But after you’ve finished, share these videos and talk about them with your friends and family. Then work like hell to make sure that the people in your lives get out and vote.

Here’s what March for Our Lives wrote upon the video’s release: “After every shooting, there’s outrage, prayers and false promises. Then it happens again. End #TheMostViciousCycle. Vote for morally just leaders and share the video.” #VoteForOurLives on 11/6.

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One of the excuses de jour of why to not enact stringent gun controls is that the problems would be solved if guns were kept away from those who are mentally ill.

There are lots of problems with this contention:

1. Guns kill. They facilitate violence among human beings. The more guns that are in our society, the more likely it is that someone, deemed mentally stable or mentally ill, will be able to use one. The most effective way to control guns is to reduce their number. It’s kind of like the most effective way to combat obesity is to reduce calories.
2. Who really knows how to define or categorize who is mentally ill? Much as we may like to think otherwise, the fields of psychology and psychiatry are inexact sciences. Labels, diagnoses are things that we are forced to do because the nature of human communication requires descriptions to explain even what is uncertain.
3. For what it is worth, researchers have found that at some point in our lives, over half of Americans will experience some sort of mental illness. We move in and out of periods of our life when we are depressed or anxious. The symptoms of other problems such as manic-depression or bi-polarity occur at varying times in a person’s life. For all of us, some days are good ones, other days are miserable.

Considering that we are people in motion, not just physically but also mentally, it is wise to minimize our proximity to weapons that can either do harm to others or to ourselves.

Consider one of the nation’s greatest proponents of gun rights, Missouri Governor Eric Greitens. To say that he had a bad day yesterday would be putting it mildly. He was humiliated to do the perp walk as he was indicted for on a felony invasion of privacy charge for allegedly taking and transmitting a non-consensual photo of his partly nude lover. Details of what exactly happened fall short of actual facts, at least with regard to what the general public knows. But it is rather clear that there was some sadistic, if not masochistic, behavior involved by Greitens. There was clearly hypocrisy involved as he ran for governor as a man of family values (his official gubernatorial portrait is not an individual one; rather it includes his wife and two children).

But hypocrisy may be normal for politicians, in fact, for most of us. But he has other strange behaviors such as disappearing for days at a time. He is very belligerent towards others. He has few friends, even among those who are supposed to like him like his Republican colleagues.

It certainly is not for me to say that Eric Greitens is mentally ill. However, despite his military career which included being a Navy Seal, he still seems to be rather fragile. Again, that is not an indictment of him in comparison to anyone else. It is simply evidence that if we want to have a safe and secure society, we are better off having as few guns as possible within the civilian population.

Unless Greitens is convicted, he will be free to purchase virtually whatever guns he wants. That scares me. I think that it’s scary for America.

How many times has he been called one of the “good guys,” and as Wayne LaPierre, executive vice-president of the National Rifle Association says, “the only way to top a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.”

If only LaPierre and his like knew on any given day who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. I think that’s beyond all of our pay grades, even his, which is high. To be safe, let’s get rid of as many guns in civilian hands as we can.

The post Greitens illustrates why the mental health diagnoses won’t work appeared first on Occasional Planet.

It’s an outlier. It is essentially unrelatable to the other nine amendments in the Bill of Rights or anything else in the U.S. Constitution. But because the founding fathers wanted to make sure that white males would be able to keep slaves in check, the “right to bear arms” was included in a sloppily worded notion called the Second Amendment.

If slavery was America’s original sin, then the Second Amendment is the second sin. And they are related, as that right to bear arms was in large part included in order to perpetuate slavery.

Other than slavery, there was really no need for the Second Amendment. At the time that the constitution was being framed, guns were just another implement of life in on a lightly developed continent.

Guns were definitely an improvement over bows and arrows. There were definite human and non-human threats while living on the prairie. A gun could be useful there. It also would be efficient for the government to know that many potential draftees in a time of war would have their own weapons.

But in a lot of ways, they were just another implement, like a plow or a gas lantern. They made life easier. The Constitution already said that individuals had the right to property, so there was no need to establish a specific “right” to own firearms.

This Amendment facilitated the use of violence, something that is part of human nature. But as we look at countries such as the United Kingdom or Australia, we can see that human nature can function without easy access guns. And Australia is like the United States in that it was a vast expanse that had to be settled under dangerous conditions. But after a school shooting in the late 1990s, they called upon their common sense to make it very difficult to purchase firearms. They have had no school shootings since.

I would love it if the Second Amendment was repealed and most guns were confiscated. My reason is simple – we would be a more civil and civilized society. But I am not so naïve as to think that this will happen. The process of confiscating guns would likely result in domestic carnage the likes of which we have never seen save for the Civil War.

But what we should do is to recognize that the Second Amendment was created on spurious grounds and that it protects a specious right. It is unlike any of the other rights that are essential to a democracy.

What we can do is recognize that this mistake of a “right” will likely be with us for a long time, but we should work to craft gun policy that looks at weapons like any other implement that can be dangerous and needs to be regulated to ensure safety (e.g. power tools).

There are many Americans who resent the lives of metropolitan elites. They have good reason to hold grudges and to want a rebalancing of economic power within our society. But the right to resent should not be confused with the right to bear arms.

It might be easier for us to try to get along better if there were fewer guns. Let’s not lose sight of that.

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A common form of sexual harassment, in my case, is through technology. Someone I briefly dated many years ago sent me unsolicited and unwanted explicit pictures and videos shortly after socially reconnecting online. He was married, I was not interested. I immediately broke our connection and blocked him. For months afterward, I beat myself up about it. Did I lead him on by accepting his friend request? Should I have ignored him? What would his wife think about me if she knew?

I am an adult woman in my 30’s who knows better than to blame myself for that. Imagine a young girl experiencing that. It happens.

This scenario has played out so many times, I can’t even recount each individual experience. The DM’s and private messages on social media, wherein a stranger or casual acquaintance casually drops sexual suggestions or nude photos, or both. Sometimes the comments are even public. Ah, the anonymity of the Internet. You might be surprised how often that type of behavior goes unchecked or is accepted as commonplace.

When I was a teenager, it was worse. Men twice, three times, four times, five times my age gawked at me, tried to touch me–and sometimes succeeded–without invitation or permission. They sat too close, exposed themselves to me, made sexual suggestions, stalked me, invaded my privacy, and much, much worse. Most of the time it was a complete stranger. Sometimes it was a neighbor or parent of a friend or other trusted adult figure. Other times, it was boys my own age, coworkers and students.

A man in a sports car once pulled alongside me as I was walking home from a car accident. He asked me for directions. I knew better than to get too close to his car but I didn’t need to in order to see that he was completely nude and touching himself. I ran the rest of the way home and tearfully told my mom, who immediately called the police and filed a report. I was 15 years old.

At a crowded live music event in my home town, I was repeatedly grabbed, pinched, and touched while navigating through the crowd. My t-shirt was ripped, I had bruises. I never even knew who was doing it. I was 16 years old.

Two different ex-in-laws grabbed and molested me–one of them had to be pulled off of me with force (it took two adult men) because he was drunk and wouldn’t let go even while I was pushing at and kicking him. I was almost 21 years old and 7 months pregnant with my first baby.

I won’t horrify you with the details of the more serious incidents. The recounting is a form of reliving these experiences and I have no interest in that. But I want everyone to know, if there’s any doubt in your mind, that this happens on a daily basis. Sexual assault and harassment take many forms, happen in many settings, and come from many people of different ages and backgrounds and levels of familiarity. Victims can be any age, any demographic. It is always unwanted, unsolicited, uncalled for, and wrong. Wrong. Wrong. It should be a crime with consequences. Every. Single. Time.

It is beyond wrong that we allow this to happen and that victims are afraid to tell anyone. Our fearful silence is another form of abuse being perpetrated on us by a system that punishes, doubts, and blames victims and lets the criminals go. I know the world can be a horrible place and we have many big, important issues to tackle. But this is one we have complete control over. Let’s stop it already.

The post Me, too: a lifetime of sexual harassment and abuse appeared first on Occasional Planet.

As we reel from the carnage in Las Vegas, Congress is contemplating a bill that would make it easier to purchase silencers that would make it easier to shoot people without making a lot of noise or damaging the killer’s hearing. And guess who thinks this is such a great idea that he made a promotional video on behalf of silencer manufacturers? None other than that great intellectual, big-game killer Don Trump, Jr., son of the guy who, after Las Vegas, said, “We’ll talk about guns later,” meaning, of course, “never.”

Disguised and hiding behind the laughable euphemism, “The Hearing Protection Act,” the provision is, according to US News and World Report:

…tucked into the bipartisan Sportsmen Heritage and Recreational Enhancement, or SHARE Act, [which] would eliminate restrictions on silencers and instead treat them as ordinary firearms. Under the National Firearms Act of 1934, suppressors – along with “destructive devices” such as grenades or rocket launchers, “sawed-off” shotguns and machine guns – require federal registration and a special license to own, as well as a $200 tax stamp to purchase that would also be repealed under the proposed law.

… Proponents of the Hearing Protection Act say suppressors are unfairly maligned and make it harder for hunters to hear their surroundings, potentially endangering them and others.

But gun control advocates have slammed the measure as a boon to manufacturers of silencers, whose sales have been slumping in recent years. They also point out silencers would make it much more difficult for law enforcement to stop shooters like the one who opened fire on an outdoor music in Las Vegas, killing at least 50 and injuring hundreds of others Sunday night.

Law enforcement and military experts oppose the bill. Kris Brown, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said this in a statement after the bill passed out of committee:

There are very effective hearing protection devices already available on the open market…Keeping guns out of dangerous hands and stopping school shootings, ambushes of police and other mass shootings before they can start is the priority for the American people – not making it harder to detect a shooting once it starts.

But that’s not how Don Jr. sees it. In a video released in December 2016, Junior—in a business suit—gleefully fires off a rifle equipped with a silencer, and then shoots a hand-gun similarly tricked out. “I think it’s great,” he says. “I love your product.” Then he calls silencers a “public-health issue,” and “about safety,” that would also be just dandy when “getting little kids into the game.”

But don’t just read my excerpts, witness his testimony in all of its gun-blazing, beyond-belief,  insane illogic. Ready. Fire. Aim. No need to cover your ears, though.

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