Level the Playing Field--Everybody Pack!
Violence is as American as cherry pie!--H. Rap Brown, aka Imam Jamil Al Amin
The murder of my child will not make your child safe.--James Baldwin
The recent mass shooting in a Colorado cinema is an essential part of American culture, a culture steeped in violence, genocide and a plethora of psycho pathologies too numerous to catalog. In short, America is a society rooted in mental illness. The very idea of claiming equality of all men, yet practicing chattel slavery of kidnapped Africans is schizophrenia of the most morbid kind.
Furthermore, the very idea of a free market economy is not based on fairness or social-economic justice but to obtain the cheapest labor possible and the acquisition of raw materials at the lowest price, including at the point of a gun, hence the trillion dollar US military budget to kill, maim and dominate people around the world.
So how can we imagine living in a peaceful society when we are in permanent war around the world with hundreds of military bases throughout the globe to insure political/economic domination? How can we be so delusional to think there shall be no blow back for American behavior around the world? Surely, we know what goes around comes around!
We need only look at the violence in the hoods of America, aided and abetted by gun sellers often working in conspiracy with government agents, e.g., Fast and Furious, although this was across the border sales, but do not think these same gun sellers do not operate in the hood, spreading their wares to people so desperate from economic deprivation they can only rob and kill each other. We rarely hear of ghetto youth crossing the line into the white side of town to kill white people. If anything, it is most often white police officers (sometimes black officers as well) who act as an occupying army in the hood. White police have a long history (originating with slave catchers) of executing justice upon North American Africans and other minorities.
As Baldwin noted, the murder of my child will not make your child safe, so violence appears in the suburbs from time to time, a reminder that when one child or adult is not safe, no child or adult is safe anywhere in the world.
There is no way America can murder with drones in Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere, yet
harbor the thought that there shall be peace at home.
As we look for options to stem this violence that is American as cherry pie, we think the only option is to level the playing field by making everyone pack arms at all times, yes, as in the Wild Wild West days. No persons should find themselves in a situation where some crazy fool is armed and we are not.
In the hood, even black bourgeoisie parents have been known to allow their children to arm themselves if they happen to live in or near the hood where there is rampant gang violence. Some parents urge their children to dress down so they do not incur the wrath of poor ghetto youth who may be jealous and envious of them parading in the latest high priced hip hop gear. Here, we see the economic motive that leads to violence. Only when we address the economic inequities and social psychology of American culture wIll we be able to solve this problem. Until then, it is only sensible to practice self defense at all times and never get caught naked or unarmed. The South learned this lesson long ago. I have friends in the "dirty South" who never go out unarmed, especially down those southern roads.
Up South in the North, the situation is approaching the dirty south. Many of us dare not go out at night, some stay locked inside their homes except for necessary trips outside. Long ago, ancestor Ray Charles told us about the danger zone, "The danger zone is everywhere...." So be aware of your surroundings and as the Boy Scouts taught us, "Be Prepared!" The old Arab adage is, "Trust in God but tie your camel!"
--Marvin X
7/20/12
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