Bipartisan Senate group proposes ‘no fly, no buy’ gun measure

[Bob Butler 54]

(10-07-2018, 11:46 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: What we have is one side that is trying as hard as it can to destroy voting rights, human rights, workers rights, consumer rights and environmental rights and to protect big business bullies as fully as possible, and the other side trying in a last-ditch effort to hold on to and expand those rights and keep the bullies at bay. McConnell says that the mob has given him a victory this November, and the polls in Texas and Tennessee seem to bear that out for the moment. What that means, without any question, and demonstrated by his behavior and that of his red supporters and voters, is that protest against an appointment of someone dedicated to destroying all our rights will be suppressed.

There are not two sides here now; there is only one right side. Not because I say so, but because the evidence is unimpeachable that this is so. The red side has forced upon us a sexual predator and a violent lying maniac whose proven record and that of his Court allies is clear evidence and proof of their desire to destroy our democracy and all our rights and values. That could not be more clear, and nothing should obfuscate that, especially any claims about intolerance on MY part Mr. Butler.

I am just stating the unfortunate facts. From here on, it is either fight or flight. The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast. The slow one now will later be fast. And the first one now will later be last, for the times they are a changin'. Classic Xer and his buddies are the enemy. We are in a civil war 4T, and the fight is on. At the ballot box for now, but in the future, who knows. The question now is not whether we can unite as a country and get along. The only question is which side will win. The other side does NOT play nice. They are ruthless. If we play nice, we lose. They have forced their way upon us, just like Kavanaugh when he put his hand over Blasey Ford's mouth. That is exactly what is happening. The reds and their voters are putting their hands over our mouth while they rape us. Should we just let ourselves be crushed?

I don't think we in California can tolerate the reactionaries in DC stomping all over our affairs. But that is what the Kavanaugh SCOTUS will do, you can take that to the bank. We will fight back; we won't take it lying down.

Once upon a time, when the first Robber Barons were fighting against the established Lords and Kings of the Agricultural Age, there were many civil wars and revolutions.  In Anglo-American civilization they were regular, formed the S&H crises.  During that time you would quite expect the new values to be proclaimed in the 2T, argued over and refined during the 3T, forced martially in blood by a crisis war in the 4T, and implemented with rigid absolute force in the 1T as seemingly the only way to go.

Now I don't particularly need to tell you that the values relating to guns and nukes have changed.  I have argued that guns and therefore 4Ts were originally part of the Enlightenment values.  You have pushed that we have learned better, that freedom means less guns.  At any rate, perhaps, with nukes, computers and renewable energy, we have passed into a new age.  Perhaps we don't need 4T violence anymore.  Perhaps the Consciousness Revolution sets a new prototype for how values will change.  While the conservatives seem no less rigid in clinging to what was, the timing may have changed as well.

If so, we may be more interested in 2Ts, less in 4Ts.  We may be more interested in politics, less in war.

Now that does not mean we don't need prophets trying to sell the new values.  We needed Thomas Paine and his ilk advocating democracy, and William Lloyd Garrison and the other abolitionists promoting freedom.  We need their uncompromising flaming modern equivalents no less.

But a political process does require people willing to listen and compromise.  I know it is less popular here, where lots of extremists are into the S&H process, and are predicting a war, but I am not seeing it.  The spiral of violence is going elsewhere.  I suspect the democratic 2T will triumph over the bloodshed of war.  

You may have a place on the stage, but it is not apt to be a central place.