People need to protect themselves – by whatever means possible. We live in a violent, cruel world, after all, full of dangerous immigrants from sh*thole countries and Muslim Terrorists. With this sober reality in mind, I have a modest proposal: Nerve Gas.
Sure, military grade assault weapons like AR-15 are incredibly cool looking and easy to use. I mean, even a cross-eyed teenager, or a depressed middle aged booze hound can spray a crowded area and mow down dozens of innocent people in seconds – but these high-grade boom sticks really get in the way when you want to use your hands for other stuff – like shopping at Trader Joes.
Plus, as we all know, psychos aren’t intimidated by guns, or cops anymore. They don’t respect nuthin’ – specially not gun laws! No, my gentle friends, what mass murderers respect is instant, gruesome death. The more horrible and instant the better. It’s the only thing, besides armed teachers, that actually registers in their deranged minds.
Nerve Gas is the answer to our prayers.
Case in point: no one gave a rat’s ass how many kids were being blown to bits in Syria for years on end. Then Assad drops a couple of little canisters of the hard stuff on some cute tots and boom! Suddenly, the whole world is gnashing it’s teeth and demanding Saddy chill-the-freak out and go back to killing children the normal way. He did and we stopped bothering him.
Nerve Gas has that effect on people: it gets results – just ask Putin!
That’s why armies invented it in the first place. Gas did the trick in World War One! In fact, it worked so damn well that the liberals banned it. But that was before we understood that the Geneva Convention got it all wrong: nerve gas doesn’t kill people, rather mentally-ill people addicted to video games kill people. Why, therefore, should we turn an innocent substance as nebulous and natural as “gas” into the bad guy?
Poisonous Gases are like two thirds of the periodic table, after all. Should we really be so judgmental over something so fundamental to the fabric of the universe?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not proposing that the public be allowed to wield Nerve Gas irresponsibly. What sane person would do that? Nerve Gas should only be used by people over the age of 18, and then, and only then for recreational hunting, or to deter a serious crime.
For example, the next time an MS-13 thug breaks into your house in the middle of the night? Instead of crouching under your bed like a scared little rabbit huddled to your puny AR-15, what if you could simply don your personal gas mask, push a button like James Bond and bam, odorless Nerve Gas silently fills the room killing them all!
Who’s the bitch now, putos!
Can you image how safe our schools will be when educators who are rigorously trained in Nerve Gas bomb hurling, prowl the hallways of our kids schools? I, for one, will sleep a whole lot better knowing that dedicated teachers are ready to gas deranged teens threatening my kids!
But, remember, Nerve Gas is not a toy. Collateral damage always happens when clouds of deadly chemicals are drifting about. That’s why these people will have to be the best people and have the very best training, so that no one, except the mass murderer ever gets hit with one whiff of deadly stuff!
But most of all, I think of the benefit to Women. Just think how secure you’d feel, knowing you’d be able to stop sexual predators dead in their tracks with one squirt of Nerve Gas to the face. Now, that’s what I call packing a real can of whoop-ass!
Yes, the upside is huge – the downside not worth calculating. If only we have the courage to get past our prejudices and embrace the wisdom of founding fathers who endowed us with the God given right to proudly bare arms of any and all kinds.
It seems more and more these days we are having to cope with the despicable actions of extremists. And I don’t mean the political/religious violence of jihadists and terrorists. No, unfortunately, I’m talking about our own brand of domestic extremism: political intolerance.
Whether the issue is gun control, health care, immigration reform, or the budget, there’s no denying that we’ve reached the nadir of partisan warfare. Congress no longer tries to pass bipartisan legislation of any kind; instead, to please their Tea Party-inspired base, which demands extreme confrontation at every turn and “no compromises” on their agenda, the Republican-led House and Senate vote endlessly to dismantle Obamacare.
“Mr. Shutdown” Ted Cruz
These same politicians who rant and rave about the extremism of jihadists in the Middle East and Paris, see absolutely no contradiction or extremism in their own scorched earth political policies, which almost decimated the good credit rating of the US government in failed efforts to defund Planned Parenthood and Obamacare.
We are truly living in an age of extremism on every front. Now, conservatives reading this will be quick to deny any blame for the tragedy. They’ll cite the way Obamacare was passed without their votes and Obama’s executive orders on immigration as prime examples of how the Left is equally intolerant. There’s some truth in this.
However, there’s also no denying that Democrats were willing to work with Republicans on major immigration reform, and Obama did attempt to work out a “grand deal” with Boehner on the budget only to get thwarted by conservatives. It is the NRA who will not consider even the most common sense gun control measures, such as eliminating straw sales.
“Whoops! Changed My Mind!”
Many Democrats would like to reform Obamacare, but across the aisle the only words that are spoken are “scrap the entire thing!” Sadly, there really is no possible compromise from the perspective of many tea party conservatives, “our way or the highway” has become the law of the land.
It’s tragic that our nation has arrived at this dismal nadir. It didn’t used to be this way. Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan were both very conservative presidents, but they valued political compromise and understood deal-making as an essential tool of successful leaders.
Nixon even took the brilliant step of “compromising” with communist China, opening the door to diplomatic relations with that country. Nobody hated communism as much as Nixon, and yet he was able to be pragmatic about how things work in the real world.
Conversely, Reagan’s “revolution” could not have happened if Tip O’ Neil had staunchly opposed him at every turn. The Gipper made deals with his enemies.
That’s the nature of democracy itself: compromise. Only in dictatorships does one get 100% of what one wants with no objections.
I’m not sure what the exact moment was when we, as a nation, lost all ability to rationally deal with each other. Perhaps, it was around the time Ann Coutler and Rush Limbaugh began calling people “Libs” as if the mere word was the ultimate insult. One thing is for certain, regardless of exactly when this trend began, ever since Obama took office intolerance has been on steroids – and it’s decidedly unhealthy for our country.
It may seem simplistic and naive, but I think anyone who cares about this great nation should fight against this extremism with all the fiber in their body. We should fight it with all the passion and courage that we use to fight against terrorism. Unlike terrorism, we can realistically change this dynamic. All we have to do is accept people for having a different outlook and work at compromises.
It’s not as hard as it sounds. I should know. My mother and step-father were Republicans. Later in life, as their hatred of taxes and big government grew, they evolved into a full-fledged libertarians. They believed the government was a form of oppressive evil and should be entirely dismantled. Being a “lib,” I did not share their views, and over the years we got in some pretty terrific arguments about politics. I can still recall my mother shaking with rage, her face beet-red, the veins on her neck bulging out, as she reached a point of total exasperation at my stubborn refusal to see what a “pile of road kill” Michale Dukakis was.
And yet, after all the yelling and table pounding had run it’s course, we would agree to disagree and move on. It seemed like the sensible thing to do – after all, you can’t really convince anyone to change their core belief system no matter how hard you try. At the end of the day, my mother and I realized that politics wasn’t everything. More important than being “right” was being a family. I loved my mother. I didn’t agree with her, but we found ways to compromise and live together.
Now least you think I’m being unfair to conservatives here, I’ll share another intolerance story from the other side of the spectrum.
I had a very liberal friend from college named “Theo” who had a similar issue with his family. Theo was a devout Buddhist, a vegan and a serious thinker about social justice. His father, however, was a conservative lawyer from So Cal who owned his own private plane.
Now, Theo’s dad wasn’t a foaming at the mouth John Birch society type. In fact, he really wasn’t that political, but he did like to occasionally share his opinions. He listened to Rush Limbaugh, but also admitted he was kind of an “a-hole” most of the time. He wasn’t a bigot or completely unsympathetic to gay rights or women’s health issues. His worst crime, IMHO, was that he told a lot of bad lawyer jokes.
Theo didn’t dislike his dad when he first started college. But as Theo political choices evolved, his dad became something of the Anti-Christ to him. He lectured his father endlessly about how his decadent lifestyle was raping the planet. Theo’s dad didn’t really get it. He thought of himself as a decent, hardworking guy who gave a lot of money to charity. So what if his car wasn’t fuel efficient, or he enjoyed a good steak from time to time? “I’m not Hitler for Christ sake!” he would often protest to his son to no avail.
Theo, however, saw how all this “soft selfishness” was lethal for the world, and he finally grew so exasperated with his pop’s inability to change that he cut off all communication with him. He explained this to me at his “New Age” wedding, which took place in a forest and featured a circle of friends passing around a “talk jug” and speaking words of love and wisdom to the bride and groom. “My dad’s willful ignorance is destroying this friggin’ world, Scott. I literally cannot be around him without wanting to vomit.” Ouch.
I have a proposal. Let’s all agree to agree for once: neither the Right nor the Left has cornered the market on intolerance. We all have the instinct to surround ourselves with birds of a feather who agree with us, and we all have the instinct to assume that we are 100% right. Nevertheless, let’s agree to stop feeding into the gathering darkness in this troubled world; let’s stop emulating the extremist mentality of our worst enemies. Having strong convictions is all fine and well, but let’s move past our zeal and start working together to find common ground and solutions to our problems.
We have real problems in this country that can’t be solved by stalemates. Immigration will not be solved by building a humongous wall and deporting 11 million people, nor will it be settled by issuing “executive orders.” We need grand bargains and omnibus bills to solve these urgent matters.
Most of all, we need to learn how to work together as a nation again, like we did when Reagan was president. True, compromises are wimpy things. They are unsatisfying by definition – like kissing your sister or brother, but that’s precisely the way democracy works. There’s nothing wrong with working something out with your enemies. It’s a sign of strength, not weakness. Long ago, I learned to live with my mother’s opinions because it was more important to me to have a loving family than being right.
The same can be said of this country. We’re at war. We need to find common ground as a nation again. In war, there are no Republicans or Democrats, just Americans. We will never defeat ISIS by hating each other.
Let’s try to remember that the next time we feel the urge to trash someone on the internet, or end a close relationship over politics, or applaud some idiotic political opportunist who declares they’ll never compromise with anyone. Rather, let’s try to recall the words to that great old song from a less extreme era:
“What’s so funny about peace, love and understanding… ?”
Collateral damage always happens when clouds of deadly chemicals are drifting about. That’s why these people will have to be the best people and have the very best training, so that no one, except the mass murderer ever gets hit with one whiff of deadly stuff!
Now, Theo’s dad wasn’t a foaming at the mouth John Birch society type. In fact, he really wasn’t that political, but he did like to occasionally share his opinions. He listened to Rush Limbaugh, but also admitted he was kind of an “a-hole” most of the time. He wasn’t a bigot or completely unsympathetic to gay rights or women’s health issues. His worst crime, IMHO, was that he told a lot of bad lawyer jokes.
Scott Marcano 