Aside from her warlike tone, and her demonization of President Obama, I applaud Cindy Sheehan’s understanding that the problem of America post-Sandy Hook is not gun control but war control. Why is this not obvious to everyone? Notice how we get funneled into only certain ways of thinking and arguing! Today, I was in the local mall with my kids and grandkids. We went in a game store selling DVDs for Nintendo, X-Box and Playstation. (They just got an X-Box for Christmas). This is the first (and last) time I have ever gone into such a store that sells, I now realize, since I consciously made it my business to find out, only violence.
I tell my son Sean that drone pilots are chosen from among the best video game operators. “Makes sense,” he says, not batting an eye. Why? Not because Sean himself is violent, or that he approves, but simply because the skills developed by a good video gamer are those needed for the drone pilot!
I almost started to scream. Instead, I spoke to his wife Sue about it, about how video games teach the violence that we then use to destroy the world. At first she argued, saying that Nature is violent, that evolution is the “struggle of the fittest.” That it’s always competition, not cooperation, that counts. I asked her to look at Nature from the perspective of the entire ecosystem, where cooperation, not competition rules.
What would happen if we made games that looked at a situation where a single tiny variable had changed, what would happen to the rest of the ecosystem? What if we made games where we asked ourselves, “what kind of a small correction could we make here for it to have a beneficial system-wide effect?” What if we made games where we actually notice the unintended consequences of our actions?
In other words, what if we looked at the world the way permaculture does, and put this perspective into our games? Wouldn’t that be a lot more fun than the kapowee, crash, boom mentality that only seeks to “beat” or destroy others?
It took awhile. I had to repeat myself for awhile, but it didn’t take long before she got it. In fact, not only did Sue get it, she said she was going to talk to her boss about looking at the idea of becoming a company that actually started a line of video games based on cooperation, not competition.
By the time we were done we were standing outside that store. And Sue was standing outside their family X-box.
War Control
December 30, 2012
by Cindy Sheehan
After the recent tragedy in Sandy Hook, CT, the predictable blather became the recycled “debate” about “gun control.” However, as profoundly devastating is that incident, I think the discussion needs to be around “War Control.” Besides saving millions of lives, while the Pentagon just received over 600 billion of your tax dollars and needs to be shoved over the Fiscal Cliff, pushing War Control could also save OUR Social Safety Nets that Obama and his buddy, Boehner, are trying to destroy.
I am not opposed to back ground checks and waiting lists for gun ownership, but why is that restriction only placed on citizens? Here in the US we have an epidemic of Killer Cops and I believe that any new applicant to any police force needs to be first subjected to the most stringent background and psychiatric screening AND, then, the hopeful cop would have to pass the screening of a citizens’ personnel review board that is comprised of a diverse cross-section of community members before he/she is allowed to openly carry a weapon in society. Why are our police forces becoming so militarized anyway? Obviously, to protect the 1%, not us.
Why is this image socially acceptable in MOST circles?
To me, this image is disgusting — that is supposedly a police force, not Navy Seal Team 6!
Gun koo-koos and Second Amendment Advocates have extreme emotional attachments to their guns and when I say that I “hate guns,” one would think I said that I hated babies or kittens, the reaction is so extreme. But putting our love of things that go “boom” aside, what does the Second Amendment to the US Constitution actually say?
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.”
I wonder how many lovers of the Second Amendment actually belong to a “well regulated Militia?” And what does that even mean? My point is, that if anyone thinks that he/she owns guns to fight the US police/war state in open rebellion, that concept is ridiculous. When the Second Amendment was written, most people died of infection or gangrene than died of the actual musket shot. In the days of gun powder and musket balls, the people may have had a fighting chance against the state — now our weapons are like fleas to an elephant. We are more powerful in concentrated resistance, not rebellion, anyway.
Besides the emotionally charged issue of gun control, why are few people making this point as Martin Luther King, Jr. did so eloquently in his Beyond Vietnam Speech exactly one year before he was assassinated: “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today is my own government.”
Why, President Barack Obama even has his very own Kill List and an entire bloated military establishment to do his filthy killing for him. In Sandy Hook we rightfully mourn the deaths of those beautiful children, but in Pakistan, the ones killed in Obama’s drone attacks are called, “bug splat” by the drone pilots pulling the trigger thousands of miles away. However, the mentally ill murderer of 20 children in Sandy Hook is correctly vilified and pitied, while the by proxy baby killer, Obama, is enthusiastically welcomed and celebrated almost everywhere he goes. I don’t get it.
Presidents of the US are inherently the CEO’s of a huge war machine that has momentum on its own, but why does putting one’s hand on a bible and swearing an oath confer respectability upon mass murder? Here’s an even stickier question? Why, in the eyes of some, is mass murder by, say, someone named George Bush (R) more horrendous than the slaughter by a couple named Barack Obama (D) and Bill Clinton (D)? I obviously think any murderer is a low-life scum and wearing an expensive suit and tie and traveling with one’s own squad of heavily armed goons does not give cover to murdering the innocent.
And, guess what, Faux-gressives? The NRA (National Rifle Association) isn’t really THE problem (I am not saying that I support the NRA, I don’t) and making it so is a huge distraction away from the real problem. According to the website, Open Secrets, here is the K Street (lobbying firms) Top 20 for government payola:
| Lobbying Client | Total |
| US Chamber of Commerce | $95,660,000 |
| National Assn of Realtors | $25,982,290 |
| Blue Cross/Blue Shield | $16,238,032 |
| General Electric | $15,550,000 |
| Google Inc | $14,390,000 |
| Pharmaceutical Rsrch & Mfrs of America | $14,380,000 |
| AT&T Inc | $14,030,000 |
| American Hospital Assn | $13,275,200 |
| National Cable & Telecommunications Assn | $13,010,000 |
| American Medical Assn | $12,980,000 |
| Northrop Grumman | $12,980,000 |
| Comcast Corp | $12,420,000 |
| Boeing Co | $12,010,000 |
| Verizon Communications | $11,670,000 |
| Lockheed Martin | $11,518,870 |
| National Assn of Broadcasters | $11,220,000 |
| Royal Dutch Shell | $10,860,000 |
| Southern Co | $10,500,000 |
| Edison Electric Institute | $10,130,790 |
| Exxon Mobil | $9,870,000 |
I don’t see the NRA anywhere on the above list, but I see a lot of war profiteers and oil companies”hmm? In 2012, the same site shows that the NRA spent a little over two million lobbying Congress — chump change to GE. And honestly, I have seen a few NRA spokesmen (I am not practicing gender-exclusive language, they’re always men) on the “news” lately and they are not very articulate or well rounded. Their arguments boil down to basically, “ugh, we like guns, ugh.”
I was in Los Angeles the past few days where the LAPD was conducting another gun “turn-in.” Private citizens bring in guns with no questions asked and then receive a grocery gift card depending on the value of the weapon. That’s also a great strategy for War Control and I propose we pay the war machine NOT to produce implements of death and to go away and just leave the world alone.
In conclusion:
If owning a gun is wrong for Joe NRA, then it’s wrong for Officer Not-So-Friendly.
If it’s wrong to kill children in the US, then it’s wrong to kill children EVERYWHERE else.
If killing is wrong for me, then it’s wrong for Obama and the Empire.
I dream of (and work really hard for) the day when War Control is a reality and our priorities honor the beating of every heart while we watch our deadly tools of war rust, breakdown, and return to the soil.
