Oh, let’s see. I’ve had about 400 things this week that really pissed me off, and maybe 2 things that didn’t, so the table is full of great big fat mushroom stuffed WTF, MAN???? Grab your forks, tuck in those little bibby napkins, and let’s chow down on some bitter dishes.
WTF?? 1. Educators and Shrinks think kids shouldn’t have best friends. Seriously. The new “In” theory amongst some educators and shrinks (self-described and the ones with actual sheepskins) would rather see children taught to…get this…rather than have a best friend, children should be taught tobe friends with everyone! Yeah. That’s what I said. WTF, Man?? Evidently, it’s all through fears of exclusivity and bullying. Here’s what one…ahem, cough cough, Director of Counseling had to say:
“I think it is kids’ preference to pair up and have that one best friend. As adults — teachers and counselors — we try to encourage them not to do that,” said Christine Laycob, director of counseling at Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School in St. Louis. “We try to talk to kids and work with them to get them to have big groups of friends and not be so possessive about friends…Parents sometimes say Johnny needs that one special friend,” she continued. “We say he doesn’t need a best friend.”
I don’t remember ever once “preferring” to have a best friend…that’s just how it happened. Because, you see, we humans are a diverse lot when it comes to personal preferences – likes and dislikes in every possible field, from music to politics to religious beliefs to whether Revlon mascara is better than its Covergirl counterpart, or if we should just chuck it all and go with Clinique. We can’t be friends with everyone. There will always be people who annoy the living daylights out of each of us. I can think of a couple right now that annoy the living daylights out of me. There will always be people who we annoy the living daylights out of, in turn. Just ask Mr. Bee.
We live in a society that is plugged in to every distracting device we can get our hands on. Blackberries, iPhones, iPads, netbooks, laptops, constant news streaming 24/7. GPS mobile alerts. QVC shopping channel mobile alerts, for christ’s sake. Our television and movies tell us every day that close relationships don’t really exist, but at the same time they tell us that love should come easily and naturally, which it rarely does. What is the divorce rate in the US now? 50%, more or less? If the other person doesn’t turn out to be our “perfect soulmate,” whatever that is supposed to be, we ditch a relationship rather that learn to deal with the fact that we can’t control others, no matter how hard we try – or we drive a relationship away entirely because of a constant yearning for that movie scene where the hero and heroine kiss and live happily ever after. It doesn’t work that way. In reality, we’re all pulled in 5,000 different directions each day.
So when a kid finds a friend who they can develop a close relationship with, share secrets with, trust implicitly, call at the drop of a hat without invitation, just show up at the friend’s house unannounced with the inherent understanding that they will be welcomed, we’re supposed to tell them “No, you can’t go to Janie’s house, you two are entirely too close, and you need to be friends with everyone.” Talk about setting up kids, once again, for an epic fail. What do we tell them when they realize that reality doesn’t work that way? That you cannot please everyone, and not everyone will please them in return? So, I call bullshit on this little theory, because it is counterintuitive in the extreme to how humans function.
WTF?? 2. Pot should remain illegal! Why? Because it worsens the effects of schizophrenia! Fine, then don’t give the schizophrenics a doob. As for the rest of us, well, okay, me, I’m not schizophrenic, and I could really use a nice big fattie right about now. You’ll understand once you see #3.
WTF?? 3. Who rules the land, Baby? The NRA thinks they do. In the continuing saga of the finance reform bill, a saga worthy of Tolstoy in sheer number of words and twists, the NRA won…again. They managed to get themselves an “out” from the donor disclosure requirements in the proposed bill. So, in other words, because they’re soooo very big, and soooo very prevalent, and give sooooo very much money to various congress-critters, they get a pass from any potential donor disclosure requirements. We little people, we don’t stand a friggin’ chance against this. Oh, I’m sure someone out there might accuse me of not being fair. But Bee, they might say, You wouldn’t complain if it was the ACLU getting the pass!
And they would be right. I wouldn’t complain one damned bit if the ACLU was getting the pass, and let’s look at why. The ACLU defends the rights of everyday, ordinary americans from infringement by others, even by the Federal Government. And let’s not let the Right-wingers forget that the ACLU defended the self-proclaimed and crowned leader of the conservatives, Rush Limbaugh, when the Feds wanted access to his medical records to find out just how he was getting all those prescription painkillers he was hooked on. On the other hand, the NRA is an organization that promotes nothing but violence. Despite rashes of shootings across the country, despite the all-too-regular occurrence of mass murder by gun in this country, despite school shootings like Columbine and Virginia Tech, despite the sheer number of people who are severely mentally ill and the number of people who are just plain meaner than a broken-tailed snake in this country, they still keep prattling on about the “gun rats!” Enough, already! This is the organization that has opposed legislation that would ban people on the TERRORIST WATCH LIST FROM BUYING GUNS IN THIS COUNTRY. That’s right, you heard me right. How imbecilic does one need to be to realize that hey, maybe allowing every tom, dick, terrorist and mental institution escapee to legally buy a gun in any shop in the freaking land might NOT be a good idea. As I wrote about some time ago, the NRA now wants to have elementary school educational programs on gun safety in the public schools. Some localities in Virginia have already signed up for that particular sales pitch, and a sales pitch is what it is. It’s all a bit of PR in a pathetic attempt to deflect attention from their lobbying efforts against any flavor of gun control legislation, even if it means that some asshat on the TERRORIST WATCH LIST can walk into the local gun shop and buy himself a sawed-off, or even better, that Uzi sitting up there on the shelf, gleaming black as midnight with its promise of instant death to any mammal on the planet. Now they probably won’t even have to disclose to the rest of us how much they paid for those congressional leaders. If that’s not a wake-up-call WTF, MAN???, then I don’t know what is.
I like to think that the NRA doesn’t really pose much danger to the American public, but my gut tells me that their agenda doesn’t stop with free-gun rights, it doesn’t stop with the bastardization of the Second Amendment, and it doesn’t stop with allowing every tom, dick and Terrorist Watch List Name to have all the weapons he or she wants. The NRA lays claim to 4.3 million members, spread across all 50 states.
4.3 million members in the NRA. They are overwhelmingly white, republican-voting and they are, without exception, armed.
The United States has approximately 1.4 million active duty personnel. Several hundred thousand are stationed overseas, and we know where a big chunk of that number currently are stationed.
4.3 million vs 1.4 million. Local, state and federal law enforcement equates to approximately 800,000 in the United States. 4.3 million armed members of the NRA versus 2.2 million armed military and law enforcement personnel.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not crazy about those numbers. Let’s speculate for a moment about what the NRA’s real agenda might be. Right now, the NRA seems to be content with a propaganda campaign to bastardize the Second Amendment in the American psyche, and so far, they are succeeding. Right now, the NRA is content with their bought and paid for members of US Congress as well as their servants in state and local government. One future segment of their agenda could be that the NRA thinks ahead to the possibility that one day, their bought governmental representatives, legislatures and PR campaigns won’t be enough to keep them in the power structure they currently enjoy with just a flick of the wrist on the checkbook. The way I see it, their exemption from any possibility of having to disclose how they spend their money on Capital Hill and in State Legislative houses in all 50 states is the least of what we need to consider. The NRA, through sheer numbers, firepower and common ideology, poses a grave threat to the Republic.
Think I’m paranoid? Maybe I am. I actually hope I am. Someone once said, though, that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.
That’s it for this Sunday potluck, folks. I think it’s probably enough, don’t you?
Tags: ACLU, assault rifles, how many members does the NRA have, NRA, pot worsens schizophrenia
Bee, I read that article in the Times about best friends too and thought it was the biggest crock of you-know-what I’d ever read. Keep out of kids’ relationships, let them have whatever friends they want. It’s hard enough to find good friends in this world; and now they’re trying to take that away? Sure, bullying is bad. Has nothing to do with best friends.
The NRA stuff is really scary – I share your paranoia. To your point, all these armed people are all Republicans. Maybe we liberals need to start buying guns of our own….:-(
Bee
As you know, I basically just started following your site. Note to self, put a shot of Tia Maria in coffee as I read Bee’s post.
Item 1..awww those poor kids. I guess these people are well meaning but jeezbegone stop it. How the hell did we manage to grow up.
Item 2.. Yes please;)
Item 3.. If they want to shoot me have at it..I’m to old, sick, and cranky to care. But they better stay away from my family. I’d put a whoop ass on them. Now as the saying goes I don’t belong to an organized Party, I’m a Democrat. Thing is we better start being organized and very outspoken about our views. Screw the NRA, they hung up on me not to long ago because they didn’t like what I had to say. Hell with them, they called me.
And finally,Love your site and what you have to say…
Time for my Ahem coffee..
Tim
I don’t smoke or consumed pot because I’m one of those rare people who gets a full-on anxiety attack from it. The effect is quite the opposite of beer, wine or a pina colada.
Plus, I don’t smoke period.
But, I’ve always held the reason marijuana isn’t legal is thanks to the enormous influence of the alcohol lobby in Washington DC.
I say legalize it, tax it, and take it out of the hands of the drug dealers.
Wow Bee,
had to get a second cup of coffee to drink with this post, It’s an absolute gem.Funny and entertaining and accurate and pissed me off, all the major blogger food groups in a single post.Great!
WTF 1 I wasn’t aware of this,it sounds like someone’s stupid senior class psychology paper went viral and some educated asshole bought in and his or her colleagues are marching in lockstep.You elaborated on all the points I could come up with and more. As was said about the Gramm-Rudman balanced budget act-”a bad idea whose time has come”. Let’s hope it’s time to go is,like,immediately?
WTF 2 I’m with you and Christopher on this, and like Christopher I get a contact high that brings on an anxiety attack.
WTF 3 I don’t think you’re paranoid about them, they’re dangerous.I’m sure plenty of their members are hunters or legitimate gun enthusiasts who don’t concern themselves with the politics, but there are also plenty of right wing whackos there too, and the only thing worse than a right wing whacko is an armed to the teeth (if they have any)right wing whacko.
Tying all three topics together:
It looks to me that we should just go ahead and legalize pot, since it seems there’s already widespread access to mass quantities of the really potent stuff.
I mean, when I see whacked out stuff like this:
I can’t help thinking it’s evidence of Bob Marley levels of ganja intake.
Ditto for the NRA stuff as well.
May as well go ahead and legalize pot:
It might give people a leg up on learning “how to be friends with everyone.”
And it might make the NRA just a tiny bit easier to take.
Marijuana–it’s not just for breakfast any more.
(However, there has never been, and probably never will be, pot good enough to make Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, teabaggers, Glenn Beck, Joe Liebermann, or the current Supreme Court make sense to me. But I’m willing to try anything you’d care to pass over here. I’m an open minded kind of guy.)
Hi Bee!
#1. Using that logic, instead of having a single partner, everyone should be lovers with everyone else. That might be fun, but not at all reasonable or practical.
#2. We have to remember that the only reason pot was outlawed at first was to give an earlier generation of Republicans a way to harass Latinos.
#3. I used to be an NRA member, because of their excellent shooting and gun safety programs. I achieved their Rifleman award with nine bars. I canceled my membership years ago when the GOP and the gun industry took them over for political ends.
TC,
Mental note to self-cancel plans to rob TomCat’s house.
Maui: I’m actually saving up for a shotgun…not because of all this NRA and teabagger crap, but because I can admire a nice weapon, and I enjoy shooting at targets that don’t move.
Tim: I don’t belong to an organized Party, I’m a Democrat. LOL! That’s about how I feel these days.
Christopher: I’ve been saying for years it needs to be grown and sold in what we have here in Virginia for liquor: state run liquor stores.
Oso: I think part of wackadoo ideas on how to deal with kids stems from a fear of them – schools and half the parents are afraid of the kids, it seems. On point #3, even if only half of NRA supporters are the followers who could be effectively mobilized, then they still equal total numbers of law enforcement and military personnel – and I’m not hip on those numbers, either, y’know?
Isaac: Excellent summation! And you’re right, there’s not enough pot in the world to make Bachmann and Beck and the rest sound right in the head.
TomCat: Thanks for the insiders view of the NRA. I used to carry a .38, before I was married, and was working in a rough part of town. That was before I came to my senses and realized that I really didn’t need it, and was safer without it. I never considered joining the NRA. Granted, I’m not the “joiner” type, never have been. I really want to get a shotgun and try my hand at trap/skeet shooting, but I really don’t want to have to go hang out at a gun club to do it.
I agree bullying is a problem, but that’s one wacko solution. No excluding, “best friends with everybody” — WTF? That almost sounds like a Kurt Vonnegut short story, “Harrison Bergeron.” Nobody was allowed to be any more talented or skillful than anybody else. If somebody was exceptionally intelligent, he/she had to wear earphones that would make a loud shrieking sound in the person’s ear every half minute or so, in order to distract the person from coming up with any intelligent ideas. A person who was “too” strong and athletic had to have a heavy weight chained around one leg at all times, so he couldn’t outrun or outperform anybody else.
Keep pot illegal because schizophrenics can’t smoke it? OK then. Ban all cars because blind people would be a hazard if they drove.
Tom H: I never read that one. Sometimes the prescience of writers like Vonnegut, Philip K Dick, etc. amazes me, and scares me. Is art imitating life, or is life imitating art? And if it is, why can’t it imitate Star Trek??
WTF?? 1. Educators and Shrinks think kids shouldn’t have best friends. These no doubt well-meaning fools deserve all the criticism they’re in for. That’s because, like so many before them for as long as history has been handed down verbally or recorded, well-meaning fools have come up with all sorts of bright ideas doomed to failure because they go against human nature.
Going against human nature never works. It might seem to in a specially set up and restricted setting, but it’s never sustainable. Remember all those communes that sprung up in the desert Southwest in the 1960s and early 1970’s? Where are they now? Perfect example.
I just hope this latest batch of well-meaning fools come to realize the folly of their meddling before they do too much harm.
BTW, making everyone your good friend throws you wide open to selfish people with no scruples who look on you not as a great friend but as a doormat to walk on or a patsy to be fleeced. Friendship is earned through being a friend. It’s not a right and not an award given for being part of the same class or school.
WTF?? 3. Who rules the land, Baby? The NRA thinks they do. This is completely outrageous. Reaction from the left should be big, loud and just as determined as the NRA bullies and fanatics get over the slightest provocation.
I have one reservation, though. It’s interesting this comes up so close to an election when the gun nuts’ party of choice is the out party. The gun nuts’ and wing nuts have been spoiling for a fight over guns ever since Obama got the Dem nomination two years ago. When nothing materialized, they even started making stuff up and spreading rumors. They’re full of this kind of nonsense:
“Oh, Obama knows he doesn’t dare doing anything right now. But you watch, he’s got plans. He’s just biding his time until he gets an opening, and then he’s going to ban handguns or make everybody with a gun get a forehead tattoo and put up a $10,000 bond for every gun they own, or something even worse.”
So, IMO, this could very well be a sort of trap, trying to draw Democrats, maybe even Obama, into an election-season showdown with the NRA. If that were to happen, no matter who prevails Republicans will benefit in a big way.
Well, you do tend to come up with ’stingers’ don’t cha? Good one here….
The obvious… no effin’ way would I ever propose to a school board to place limitations on friendship… because, Bee, isn’t that what they are actually doing there? I don’t know about y’all, but me? I was expelled the first time by the penguins and padres in third grade. Being an outcast became a lifestyle (like to think it still is… cheap ego trip, but mine own) and finding that one best friend was the saving of me. But as you say Bee, hasn’t it been just like that for us all? Didn’t we learn to trust in that relationship… show up, rely… yes. I agree with you.
All of these informational devices we ‘play’ with are really just metaphors for realizing that the information we search for is within… that Home is within. Well, at least I think so. I think the net is a planetary consciousness, too. Don’t bogart that over there, either!
I’m starting to think the voice and corrosive hate among conservatives – NRA and nutter styles of ignorance exist in a very finite timeline, now. This “2nd Amendment remedies” speak and apologizing for corporate despoilers who commit environmental atrocities and
GAD! can y’all see how BP is getting whack caught by the likes of AC360, Rachel Maddow… The press is taking on an advocating stand for the public, for the people and the spirit of place…against the status quo of corporate rule. [Something I was taught in school to think was the job description YA KNOW!] I mean, things are really shifting before our eyes. Yes?
Yeah, 4.3 million of Bubba Dumb.
And how many of the rest of us?
Real stinger, Bee!
TC – I’m aware that NRA has good programs for learning & caring for weapons. It has never made me comfortable to be around NRA groups as they’ve come together. I lived in Linville NC next to Grandfather Mt., the heart of Appalachian Mts… and while I made good friends at the VFW and with individuals / who still think me ‘touched’ for my liberal views / I was never ever comfortable with the ’strict’ NRA crowd. That superior for armament type of mentality was a rancid kind of smell beneath the gunpowder making me think if I disagreed with conviction I might regret it. Spooky folks.
But that was the top of the mountains in NC, where most of the neighbors were wonderful.
Just that the Bubba Dumb was kind of government leveled.
SW: You said: Friendship is earned through being a friend. It’s not a right and not an award given for being part of the same class or school. Exactly!!!
As for the NRA part, SW, I don’t think anyone’s really thought about how their membership overwhelmingly outnumbers all the military and law enforcement combined 2 to 1. I ran several google search strings, and I found plenty on the subject of the donor disclosure exemption, but nothing talking to the numbers. Probably someone else on some little blog somewhere (not unlike mine own, lol) did catch the numbers problem…I couldn’t find them. That doesn’t mean anything, of course – but when Think Progress, Dem Underground, etc. don’t pick up on it, then they need to think outside the box!!!
Gwen: Glad you liked it! I really hope things are shifting…the only problem is, which way will it shift? Lately, it’s like one step forward, 25 back, y’know?
A real zinger here, Bee. The one that interests me most is the one about kids. I happen to know several child psychologists and I can’t believe for a moment that they would subscribe to this nonsense. Having said that, I can also say that the most effed up kids I’ve known – and that’s a lot – are probably that way because the parent(s) is always practicing the latest theory on them.
I no longer smoke funny cigs as they make me paranoid during and seriously depressed after. But it needs to be legalized. And then, who knows, since it would be legal maybe I wouldn’t get paranoid.
Leslie: I’m with you there, sister. I read parenting mags for about 2 months after I had Lil’Bee, and once the rational-brain-killing hormones wore off, decided that those mags were mostly full of shit. It’s too bad about the ganja…I’ve always been a happy drunk willing to talk about anything from UFO’s to who’s hotter, Ironman or Wolverine, and the MJ affected me pretty much the same way…just lucky, I guess
Legalization definitely would cut down on the paranoia factor, I would hazard to guess! As for me, hell, I wouldn’t even know where to get it anymore. I’m hoping that when Lil’Bee is a teenager, she will at least have one bad-sheep friend who will know where to score.
Yes, I’m kidding about that last part.
Well, mostly kidding, anyways:)
I haven’t read any of your post lately. I see they still not want to advance. As for shrinks most of them are still trying to figure them self out.
Coffee is on.