Good Morning.

Let us consider ourselves this morning. We are all veterans of a sort.


We've long been at war with ourselves in the United States. I have opined about the ongoing Balkanization of this country many times in this space. I do not see that we are any sort of "United" anymore, and haven't been for quite some time.

But this battle isn't fought on the streets with weapons of war. Many politicians speak of the fight for the 'hearts and minds' of the people. We are not only divided by culture, or geography, religion, or whatever. Language plays a role, too.

Think of the multitude of issues that many of us believe in. There are many things that could be rallying cries of unity and action. But a small subset of society that no doubt believes themselves to be those True Patriots have opposed every single one of them, and have even managed to change the dialogue by inventing disparaging names for these things. I can enumerate some of them, and there are likely many more.

Let's think about what some call the bedrock of society - marriage. Some of us are married on this blog. Maybe even to members of the opposite sex. But the obvious examples here have never procreated - and according to the religious zealots, that's the only reason we should be married. Never mind the societal and financial benefits we have because of the way the laws are structured in this country. It's not wrong to think that every American should have access to that. But my friend that happens to love people that have the same kind of genitalia were outcast and prevented from doing so for a very long time. What we advocated as same-sex marriage became the derogatory "Gay Marriage".

I live in an apartment. Some of us have houses, and many of us take the time to scrum around in the dirt during the warmer weather. I have flowers and vegetables in my typical urban plot here....but not yet. I'm Sicilian - I'm required by family tradition to grow at least tomatoes here. When I was a youngling, I can remember helping my mother in the garden around this time of year. When I got married and started doing it myself, our typical growing season began around Mother's Day. I don't dare now - I usually wait until Memorial Day. Just a few years ago now, we actually had a hard freeze in the middle of the month.

But we can't talk about Climate Change anymore, because it doesn't exist according to many. Because it's cold in the winter, and sometimes very cold, "Global Warming" is something made up by the liberals to destroy the oil industry.

One that gets me is the heavily armed militia that passes for a local police force in most cities. This one doesn't really need a narrative; instead, I'll post an updated version of the classic Norman Rockwell painting, "The Runaway".



But God forbid we ever speak of "Defunding the Police". Even worse, there has been an explosion in what I call "Ersatz Flags". You know the ones. The Ol' Stars and Stripes used to be thirteen horizontal stripes, alternate red and white; and the union of the flag shall be fifty stars representing the fifty states, white in a blue field. But every special interest group, or supporters of something, have their own alternate colored flag. Disturbingly, some of them are starting to replace the red, white, and blue at many public events. I simply refuse to acknowledge those flags exist, especially the police flag, which may as well be a swastika to me, in support of a fascist police state. but I digress.

But this finally brings me to my point. Raine wrote about it yesterday. The gun violence in this country is far beyond the point of common sense. Some local politicians may make feeble attempts from time to time, but the big guns in Washington will never lift a finger to make any changes. This is from a few years ago, but take a look at where that NRA money goes.

Can we do anything about it? Probably not - but we can own the language on this.

There are shootings every day in the United States. Sometimes every hour. My national news feed is full of daily occurrences of gun violence. But why call them that?

You may have noticed on my Facebook feed that I have started referring to these as "Second Amendment Celebrations". Think of all those citizens that on a daily basis get to embrace the full power of their constitutional rights in this regard. That is not something to mourn, or change, or outlaw. They didn't die by the gun - they embraced their rights!

It works for the other guys. Perhaps, with some small change in the way we talk about this, we can try to take something back, too.