The recent shooting of the
conservative " youth leader Charlie Kirk brought to my mind a lot o questions. I wasn't aware of this particular "rising star" of conserfativism and I wondered what exactly he stood for. It turned out to be difficult to find an actual break-down of his points beyond general terms such as conservative.
The terms conservative and woke have changed, even turned upside down in the past ten years or so. As it turns out the Charlie Kirk version of conservativism in summary seemed to be against:
Feminism (equal rights for women)
Civil Rights for African Americans or citizens in the LGBTQ sector
Education that included analysis of the effects of slavery on our society
Birth Control available to women
Freedom of thought for college professors
Ecolongy and environmental protection
limitations on gun ownership
And Woke, was interesting because the term was co-opted by the right wing from a term used by African Americans in the 1930's to mean to be awake to racism, bigotry, and danger
To the new version of conservatists to be "woke" means to be in favor of all the things they are against incouding civil rihts, limitation of gun ownership, birth control, and rampant capitalism.
It is ironic or perhaps predictable that someone who was a fervent supportor of the National Rifle Association and widespread freedom to own and use guns was a victim of gun violence. The rhetoric that promotes a tribal passion against the 'enemy' tribe, or politiacl party, incites the mentally unstable to seek what their unbalanced minds feel to be a heroic action in taking down the bad guy, though often later we learn they arent' even sure who the bad guy is. The previous mentally unstable shooters appeared to lurch from right to left and from tribe to tribe and their enemies seemed to arise and disappear like the visions in a computer game.
We live in a sad and troubled time. Recently I was wathing program set in the 1960's and the background music was filled with early Beatles songs. It prompted me to looke up the shooter who killed John Lennon. John Lennon was a lover, not a hater. He was a brilliant, gentle, funny and kind man. His dreams in song like "Imagine" were beacons of hope to those of us who wish for peace. His killer, whose name I will not type here, stil lives and has been denied parole 14 times. In his pleas for parole he spoke of his motive for killing Lennon. he said he killed him because he sought fame through killing someone who was famous, an icon. He said he was jealous of John Lennons success, and his fame and lifestyle so he chose him to kill.
I would have to say that it is self evident that this killer was mentally unstable. The problem is that guns are so readily available that the mentally unstable no longer are forced to hide in the darkness nursing their rage, they can buy a gun and go out and kill someone. Number one problem - gun availability. Number two prolem the lack of availabiity for help for the mentally ill. That topic is too big for this blog, but I knew a mentally ill man who is able to ead a satisfactory life because of family intervention, psychotherapeutic support in the form of medication and psychotherapy, and supported section 8 housing.
We can do better. We cannot return to the fantasy wild west of the immature mentality of the far right where African Americans are returned to slavery, women are returned to economic dependence through lack of control over reproduction, and gas is cheap and low skill facotry jobs are pentiful. Strive thought they may, outside of a television series, they cannot make this happen and the old men cannot make themselves young studs via the proliferation of testerone supplements, they can only cause their own deminse via prostate cancer.
That version of the past is over and gone - the 1950's will not return. The benie cannot be put back in the bottle.
The proliferation of guns will continue to erupt in a harvest of massacres from school to supermarket to college campus. Perhaps we cannot return to a time of gun control either and this is our new reality where madmen roam the streets wearching for a target to somehow ease the pain of their torturned minds.
Meanwhile, I can practice medicattion on my shady porch and be grateful for my small town of peace and stability, the good fortune that brought me here, my good education and good career that made it possible for me to survive in the humble and comfortable living that I enjoy, a woman who practiced birth control, got a good education, worked in a career that benefited my country and my fellow human beings, and had a union that provided the benefits that allow me to live my old age in humble comfort.
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