January 3, 2013
By Mickey Friedman
Anthony, my bestest Republican in the Best Small Town in America, frets about the Obama Death Panels. But as I transition to New Years, taking stock, a part of me looks forward to my own 1950s candy store-like death dispensary with its malteds, egg creams, and happy death pills.
The recent brutal killings have taken a toll and the world is too much with me. Having lost a friend to a psychopath armed with his Second Amendment-sanctioned semi-automatic killing machine, these mass murders of the innocent are never just news stories to me.
I try to believe in the higher instincts of my fellow humans. That works for a while. Marching with Martin Luther King, a small nonviolent army of black and white and in between, clapping, singing, confronting Governor Wallace and his confederate Alabama National Guard, well, it’s possible for a bit to believe in the best of the human spirit. In compassion and courage.
Connect the large atrocities of Newtown and the murder of firemen with the thievery, lies, and small betrayals of friends and you have an exhausting mix of human failure.
The Fuel Coffee Shop, my ye-olde-general-store, is where I exercise my dwindling capacity for conversing. The wise beverage-making Steph responded to one of my recent rants by acknowledging how hard it has become, what with making a living and raising a family, to keep from going slightly nuts. For me, the stress and strain of survival, of seeing, is a continuing test; and it’s hard to maintain a capacity for joy and hope.
Madness is everywhere about us. Our best political leaders fudge; our worst lie through their teeth. Their lobbyist cronies have looted the treasury for decades, awarding one subsidy after another, for sugar, oil, windmills, enriching defense contractors and corporate farmers alike, while insisting welfare mothers are our problem. They made this fiscal cliff then tell us to cut Social Security. The program that has paid for itself.
Gun manufacturers and NRA lobbyists stuff Congressional pockets as they argue the Founding Fathers support the right of Tom, Dick and Harry to mow down cops with body armor or take out first graders.
Begin with “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” and throw away the vital first modifying clause, then go buy yourself a dozen Bushmaster AR-15s.
Just so we can pick off the runaway Feds or Taliban or Chinese or Jews or Alpha Centaurians as they roll down Main Street. Hey, I don’t trust the Alpha Centaurians either. But arming us has resulted not so much in an admirable readiness but rather a continuing murder and mayhem. And is it not mad that we overwhelm the families of the victims with teddy bears rather than craft a sensible ban on semi-automatic killing machines?
So if ordinary Americans are on the edge, imagine those amongst us who have completely lost their bearings. The ones listening to several angry voices: so pissed off they think it’s OK to kill their annoying mother-in-law, or girlfriend, wife, co-worker or two-year-old.
It doesn’t take a genius to see the connection between rage, madness, men and mass murder. Because it’s the men armed with these guns who kill the most. I’m not saying there aren’t crazy-ass angry women out there ready to kill, but when it comes to wholesale slaughter, look for the mad man armed to the teeth.
There are interrelated strains to our madness: the violence we inflict upon our own; the violence we inflict on others; and the violence we inflict on the planet. Any one of these three, if we were healthier and more aware, would trigger a country-wide alert, prolonged self-examination, and long-term therapy.
Waging wars we cannot win; wars we half-heartedly support; wars fought by soldiers we employ but don’t want to hear from. Wars we wage far away and even farther from our consciousness.
Greatest nation on earth: shell out seven hundred billion a year on defense. While the puny Chinese pony up a measly hundred billion; the Oh Canadians less than twenty-two.
You want iPods, iPads, iBooks, iPhones, iGuns and two cars in every garage. Then burn every bit of coal you can. Jerry Seinfeld, worth $800 million for imaging TV’s Soup Nazi and George and Elaine, has a Porsche for every day of a week. So what’s an iceberg worth? A polar bear?
Re: my last column, the guys from the new USDA-approved, genetically-modified Berkshire Co-op, neither affordable nor participatory, faulted me for not appreciating that bigger will be better. Invoking the magic words “local, healthy, environment, and community” they never once addressed my concerns that they’ll take business from other worthy local businesses or that there might be more important co-opy things to do than expand.
Happy Mad New Year.