Tag Archives: racism

HAS THE WORLD CHANGED?

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A Homeless Man asks a question with his pants down, but can anyone really answer?

Gawd, now I know I’m back in my beloved but gone-to-hell Seattle. While changing buses at Northgate Way & Aurora Avenue on my way home from a long trip to North Carolina, I came upon a homeless man of about 40 years old who also happened to be Black and bearded. He stood on the edge of the curb on the west side of Aurora next to the crosswalk, cupped his hands up to both sides of his face, and bellowed out into traffic:

“HAS THE WORLD CHANGED? HAS THE WORLD CHANGED?”

“WELL, HAS IT?” was my automatic response tho only in my mind.

My second response was the temptation to shout at him to pull his damn pants up, but that was before I listened to him.

Then he rhythmically pulls down his dirty gray sweat pants and shows his naked ass to the whole wide world and then swings his cock up and out across the way like the neck and head of a goose jerking forth from a lake. It looked large and waxy in the harsh, September sunshine. Pulls his pants back up with this tip of his penis perched upon his waistband like a damn peacock peeking out. Damn, I looked away, away, AWAY!, but, OH GAWD was too late as it all happened in a flurry of seconds as the crossing lights hadn’t changed yet. Couldn’t unsee this mess. Felt transfixed, no, crucified, crucified! Felt crucified by the clarity of his call and response during the middle of our long, apocalyptic slide into Armageddon. Continue reading →

Guns in America: Paralysis, Polarization, & Do-Nothingism

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Yes, address mental health care, and, yes, more importantly,
Amend the Second Amendment

The numbers make mass shootings in America look like war. Certainly feels like a war. Per the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 214 mass shootings in the United States of America with over 17,300 deaths by guns from New Year’s Day to the end of May 2022. There were 42 recognized mass shootings in the first 23 days of the month of May, then several more, then another 14 over the Memorial Day holiday weekend. This warfare seems bookended by the predatory, hate-filled slaughter of Black people grocery shopping in Buffalo, New York, and the equally hateful, psychopathic hunting down of little kids and their teachers to shoot and kill in Uvalde, Texas.

Those on the Left bellow, “Do something!” Those on the Right shout, “Do nothing!” The outrage, deflections, and self-righteous demonization boils over and continues to divide us further from doing the “something” the majority of Americans demand. Most of those in the moderate middle feel “sick and tired” of grocery stores, houses of worship, restaurants, city streets, schools, more schools, and yet still more schools getting shot up and say, “Enough is enough!”

Even the “commonsense” gun control reforms people want enacted at a federal level including strict background checks for all purchases, tighter regulation of and even banning of certain military-style firearms and types of magazines will only go so far.

We often experience the rigidity of political extremists on both sides. We see, read, and hear their demonization of each other and everyone else with the quest for opposing utopias between the libertarian right and the socialist left drowning out the voices of our vast pragmatic middle. “Mental health issues” is a term bandied about without serious action steps taken to address them.

What to do? The solution is to go to the source of the controversy, the wording of our Second Constitutional Amendment, and reform it. This shall override the ineffective crazy quilt patchwork of conflicting state and local regulations or lack thereof. It’s simple. We do what’s hard. We do what’s hard first! Continue reading →