Of Mice and Tyrants )

“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”–Thomas Jefferson

The issue of gun control is rife with stupid arguments on both sides of the isle, and I guess in some ways that’s why I love it so much…I can just float through Facebook and glean the battle-memes.  And there be many.  But no argument for the private ownership of firearms is quite as misguided as the use of the 2nd Amendment.  For those of you unfamiliar with said amendment (I can’t imagine there are many of you) it goes thusly: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” (The 2nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution as ratified by Congress).  It is the only amendment with a stated purpose and, as of late, that purpose has been most popularly translated as an individual’s ability to protect themselves and their family from a tyrannical government…Read: Federal Government.    This translation is nothing more than a romantic notion…the idea that one man with his AR-15 would be able to hold-off the feds should they determine to round us all up and send us to the salt-mines (that’s still a thing right?).    It is a notion that ignores the superiority of the weapons possessed by the government it wishes to fend off, it ignores the legal jurisdiction that has been handed over to said government by liberals and conservatives alike, and it ignores the main component that has been the historic driving force in any successful defense against governments-gone-wild: solidarity.

At the time of its penning this might have been a legitimate interpretation…the gap between the government’s arsenal and that of a well-regulated militia was not as vast as it is now.  It is no tough task to learn about the supremacy of the weapons at the beck and call of the U.S. government.  They are impressive.  Go ahead, Google them…admire them…you bought them.  Gone are the days when you had to round up a gaggle of tank drivers to drive through a public square breaking up a citizen uprising as they go (a flock of tank drivers is called a gaggle…trust me…and I know you were thinking: “it should be called a murder”…no, that’s too “on the nose”…hacky much?).  That, my friend, is exactly the scenario for which God created radio-controlled drones.  No worries though because handheld firearms and semi-automatic long-rifles work great against those; just ask our friends in Iraq or Afghanistan or Los Angeles.  There’ll be no epic “Wolverine”-yelling-shenanigans as you flee into the Coloradan hill-country, that bullshit is the stuff of film and first-person-shooter games, not revolutions…not anymore, C. Thomas Howell.

It would be impossible to exaggerate the level of legal jurisdiction that was grabbed by the federal government under the leadership of that pinko-liberal George W. Bush…wait, what?  He was a small-government conservative?  Of course he was.  The USA PATRIOT Act is nothing if not a small government, pro-Constitution, pro-Bill of Rights document of the stripe that would make Thomas Jefferson proud.  Right?  On the contrary, it is a personal-rights-striping act of the U.S. Congress that shits all over conventional jurisprudence so completely, it renders the 2nd Amendment impotent with regard to defending one’s self from the aggressions of a government turned tyrannical.  Seriously though, I know GW is not to blame; he just happened to be the guy who was sleeping at the wheel when his friends turned tragedy into opportunity.  Nobody blames Barney Fife for the ne’er-do-wells in Mayberry.  It so obviously unfair.  Instead we just chuckle in uncomfortable embarrassment, and hope that little blind squirrel doesn’t shoot himself in the foot in the process of finding his nut.  The very act of writing this post could get me into all kinds of trouble based upon the loose language found in that Act, if this were interpreted as a treatise for revolution…please allow me to be clear…this is NOT a call to revolution…I would willing go to the salt-mines should my beloved government call upon me to do so…Hell, I love salt.  Phew, that was too close for comfort…I think they’re gone now.  Go ahead and read some of the articles in the Patriot Act and imagine how easy it would be for you to land in Gitmo for an extended vacation for even attempting to assemble a well-regulated militia.  And speaking of militias…

Have you witnessed a good example of anything resembling a “well regulated militia” in the U.S. in your life time?  I’ve found them to be astonishingly absent.  And not just absent in reality, they don’t even make much of an appearance in our fiction.  Our folklore is rife with the imagery of rugged individualists coming in and saving the lemmings from their would-be oppressors…all the while using witty quips like “Yipee-Ki-Yay Motherfucker”.  Even the toppling of the Soviet Union, in a fascinating case of revisionist history, is popularly attributed to a lone-cowboy demanding: “Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall.”, instead of the reality that through the policies of “Glasnost” the people of the Soviet Union became more resistant to tyrannical rule.  Solidarity topples tyrannies.  And yet the idea of solidarity in the American narrative is the modus-operandi  of terrorists, radicals, and commies.  Our tradition seems to have little patience for the gathering of like-minded people in the interest of unseating a common enemy.  Even the most recognizable visage in modernity of a well-regulated militia, the volunteer “border patrollers” in our south-western states, have a disdain for their fellow “minutemen” that is veiled only a little less thinly than their racism.  Our founders, who were better historians than the average lay-person of today, understood the concept that revolution is best accomplished using “the buddy system”.  As such, they clothed the 2nd Amendment in the language of solidarity.

I hope that this isn’t read as an anti-gun tirade.  I love guns.  They’re a lot of fun, and if I wanted to possess guns I would do so.  I have owned guns; I don’t own guns right now.  I may, one day, purchase a gun.  I don’t know, the thought doesn’t occupy my imagination much.  But I do have an intolerance for illogical group-thought arguments whose use is limited to shilling the interests of the gun industry.  If you feel the need to own a firearm to protect yourself and your family from people who’d do you harm, I fully support your decision in that pursuit.  If you own guns because they are a part of your culture or an important component of your hobbies, awesome.  If you own guns for any reason short of gunning down people to accomplish your own self-interests, I’m right behind you (it’s safer there).  But please, don’t tell me that you need an AR-15, or the like, to hold your government in check.  I’m too smart for that…and I think you are too.  Additionally, please don’t revolt against your government (see, Mr. Rove, I’m against revolution), but if you do, know this: with solidarity it matters little what weaponry you lack, without solidarity it matters little what weaponry you have…that’s just history folks, plain and simple…

Meandering the Fringes: Thoughts in the Wake of the Emerald City Comicon pt. 3: The Pecking Order

People say they love truth, but in reality they want to believe that which they love is true.

-Robert J. Ringer

There were times while we (my friend Ricker and I) were at the “Con” (as my friend Ricker calls it) when we didn’t know what to do we were in that whelmed state that isn’t quite over or under…I guess, as such, whelmed is probably the wrong term, but really who are you to judge.  This is a theme that is gaining notoriety, not judging.  I find this quite comforting after I say something stupid, or almost stupid.  Really this has nothing to do with my point.  My point is when my friend Ricker and I had no idea what to do next; we would go over to our friends’ booth.  We would do this for two reasons.  What are the two reasons; you might be asking yourself.  The answer is, I don’t recall.  However, I do remember having fun every time we stopped by for a visit.  Tom and Tim Engstrom are brothers who write and illustrate comics.  They are quite talented, and I don’t mind saying, handsome devils.  I don’t mind saying this because they are easy on the eyes.  Also, I’m not a homophobe anymore.  I stopped fear the gays long ago, my wife still fears them on account of the fact that I am so attractive, at least that’s what Tim and Tom said.  Together they write “The Legendary Boys of Floyd” a web comic.  They were situated between a couple of heavy players in the comic book game, guys of whom I knew nothing, but my friend Ricker kept totally nerding-out over them, because he is just so into this stuff.  Their names were Kurt Busiek, and Jason Howard, and I only mention their names so that I can use them in tags and possibly funnel more than two people to my blog under false pretense…my third favorite tense, and second favorite pretense.  Don’t get me wrong, they seemed like nice fellows, but I would be hard pressed to muster any strong feelings about them, unless they were driving a hit-and-run van, that was involved in an accident, where-in I was the victim.  Ahh the comfort of tangential goat-trails…I know you were jonesing (which should be a verb meaning: drinking tainted juice or kool-aid, but doesn’t) (it actually isn’t a real verb at all) (it’s fake, but it means that you really wanted me to go off on a tangential goat-trail) (at least in this context) for one.

My friend Tom Engstrom, whom I’ve known for around five years or more, introduced me to his brother Tim.  We all sat around talking to one another about the pomp and circumstance that inevitably follows an event such as the “Con” (as my friend Ricker calls it).  While we were standing there talking to Tim and Tom, the relative jovial atmosphere quickly dissipated as a bald man dressed as a Steam-Punk—who couldn’t quite commit—walked past Tom and Tim’s booth.  After feigning interest in photographing them he moved on, having never clicked a shot, to a different, presumably more popular, booth.  “That guy really pisses me off”, Tim said (I think).  It became clear that this bald man was an important chronicler of some sort, and he was not doling out the love equitably.

The comic book industry kind of started out as a means to promote the interests of the under-dog to a generation of kids whose parents were addicted to the bully ethos of post-war America.  They were accessible books that dealt with the issue of class-antagonism.  Though kids, and their parents, didn’t realize it at the time, these books were subversively communistic in origin.  Imagine a Marvel universe where-in you had to wire “X” amount of dollars to Peter Parker’s Cayman account before he lifted a webbed finger to take down the Hob-Goblin (gasp, commie nerd alert).  So it struck me as strange when I realized there was a very tangible pecking order when it came to the “Con” (as my friend Ricker calls it).  How dare you nerds try and subvert the subversives!  And by subverting them try and insert some hopeless realism into a wonderfully fictitious utopia…a utopia where super-humans are trying to destroy us, either actively, or indifferently.  Stan Lee is probably turning in his grave right now… (Wait, what…are you sure?  Still alive, huh?  A cameo in Iron-Man 2!?  Are you sure he’s not dead?  Huh.  Iron-Man 2?  Are you sure?  Huh.)  Stan Lee is probably very upset over this.  Or maybe he loves it.  We will just add his name to the list of failed utopia makers, alongside Walt Disney, and Thomas Jefferson (yeoman farmers, indeed Tommy)

I guess the point of all of this is…well mainly it was to try and eke out a third post from a two post scenario, but more nobly, it is to say we need to be careful when choosing a pecking order whenever art is involved.  We suck at it.  Art is not conducive to meritocracy, at least not in the commercial sense of the term.   Whenever we try to force our strange ideas of good or bad onto art, weird things happen.  Things like Britany Spears becoming a super star rather than flipping burgers in her uncle’s greasy-spoon, Stan Lee does cameos in movies that should’ve never been made, and my friends Tim and Tom don’t get their picture taken by a creepy looking bald Steam-Punkish guy with a purple JanSport backpack…really JanSport?  Jules Verne is turning in his grave.

Check out Tom and Tim’s website, “The Legendary Boys of Floyd”.  I find it funny.