Michael Moore Syndrome: Bowling for Aurora

And on 7/20/12 the President ordered all flags to fly at half-mast, a national sign of mourning, for five days. As kind, thoughtful and considerate as it was, pulling the political “attack ads” for these five days, out of mourning and respect, this really says it all about our culture, that being we know what is offensive. Our politics and politicians, in general, show little or no respect for the electorate. And we, the electorate, must demand better. “For eons, humans have struggled to find less destructive ways of living together.” Margaret J. Wheatley,

“Bowling for Columbine”, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the aberration incarnate, attended a school bowling class that morning, is a 2002 documentary about the Columbine High School massacre which occurred on April 20, 1999, during President William Jefferson “Bill” Clinton’s second term. It tries to explore the nature of violence and the causes for the Columbine High School massacre and other acts of violence with guns. If one ignores free will, the struggle for democracy in the world, is a “gun control advocate”, anti 2^nd Amendment, would chose totalitarianism over liberty, does not believe the flaws, defects and imperfections of freedom are worth dying for, are a pacifist, this is a documentary for you. And yes, maybe Aurora, Colorado is the sequel.

It was at a place where we normally go, the movies, to escape harsh realities, the crushing unemployment, exploding national debt, erosion of our Constitution, expanding government, it is there, a brief respite, that we affirm our “time out” from America’s managed decline. On July 20, 2012, in Aurora, Colorado, a Columbine event altered civility, unity, decency, dignity and nobility, capturing politics and the very soul of our homeland for a micro second in a light year, we are a compassionate nation again, our heritage. The price, that day was very steep indeed.

And we ask ourselves, did it last, this reemergence of benevolence? This was not the tragedy of the last days of Pompeii. It was a lesson in evil, psychotic malfeasance, an act of a criminal mind, and the ever present aberrations of any civilization. And the dying in Syria, they are wondering, “Do we now understand?” We, as a nation, will ruminate over this wickedness far more than we wrestle with global pedophilia. It lends itself so gloriously to dogmatic pomposity and elitist exception. We can rail, against violence, an integral part of the human condition, somehow “fast and furious” for gun control, while awkwardly, embarrassedly, sheepishly ignoring “free will.”

Guns are again at the center of our consciousness. Most, if not all, medicines are embedded, entrenched with concerns about risks and benefits, efficacy and safety, cause and effect. Do we scuttle medicines?

So it is with gun control. The promise (benefit) is a false promise of security. History shows us the risk is “freedom” lost, not recoverable without a revolution. The efficacy, effectiveness and value of this surrender of our 2^nd Amendment rights stands in stark contrast to the unrest throughout history and the struggles of today, the main effort is to get arms to patriotic groups. How many would be saved with or without arms? In the end humanity has required bloody conflict for issues of liberty and freedom. Safety without pitch forks and shovels is a non sequitur, evil is part of the human condition, nothing will eradicate it. A strong fortress is the best defense against attack. The aberrations of cause and effect, guns, and Aurora, Colorado, remind us solemnly, somberly, and we take pause, for freedom is not free. We die in war; we die in peace, preventing war?

Our battle for “freedom” once won, must be guarded. To paraphrase, we live in a world that has walls, nationally and domestically, and those walls have to be guarded by soldiers, patriots with weapons, guns. And the existence of guns, while grotesque and incomprehensible to some, saves lives and keeps the peace. Deep down, in a deep, dark, secret place, not talked about at parties, too often manipulated by corrupt politics, policy and legislation, we want armed militias on our wall of freedom. Of course, this is an all too convenient exception. Liberty and freedom are worth defending and dying for. Do not surrender them.

Simply put, “Christopher Nolan: Aurora ‘Dark Knight Rises’ Shooting ‘Senseless’”. Senseless is pointless, irrational, not to be hijacked for needless and covert silent agendas targeting the 2^nd Amendment. There are sacred responsibilities implied in the 2^nd Amendment, meant to protect us against totalitarianism. Are the Democrats trying to link the villain “Bane”, to the Mitt Romney “Bain”? Learn to harness this patriotic, jingoistic fire, do not extinguish it. Ban pornography and you gut the 1^st Amendment. And then what?

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.” Ronald Reagan. Thomas Paine wrote the words “These are the times that try men’s souls.” They were written in Paine’s pamphlet ‘American Crisis’. How timely and appropriate.

The exit door opened and a gas masked hooded figure entered, threw gas canisters into the audience.  Most believed this was a promotional gimmick? No! After only a few minutes into the movie “Batman: The Dark Knight Rises”, twelve (12) died and a total of seventy one (71) were hit.

This was not a tragedy like the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake which was an undersea mega thrust earthquake that occurred on Sunday, 26 December 2004, or the 2011 earthquake off the Pacific coast of Tōhoku ,in Japan, ,or the accident on 31 August 1997, where Diana, Princess of Wales died as a result of injuries sustained in a car accident in the Pont de l’Alma road tunnel in Paris, France.

This was a criminal act liken to the Fort Hood shooting, by Nidal Malik Hasan, still referred to as the sole “suspect”,  not an Islamic extremist, a shooting that took place on November 5, 2009, where in the course of the shooting, a single gunman killed thirteen (13) people and wounded twenty nine (29) others, yelling “Allahu Akbar”. It is the worst shooting ever to take place on an American military base.

There have been twenty seven (27) mass casualty (over four victims per) killings in the USA since 1999. The Columbine High School massacre occurred on April 20, 1999. Two senior students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold embarked on a shooting spree in which a total of twelve (12) students and one (1) teacher were murdered. Twenty one (21) were injured. In 2002 two snipers terrorized Washington, D.C. where ten (10) people were killed and three (3) other victims were critically injured. At Virginia Tech in 2007; a student killed thirty two (32) people. Politics corrupted the media coverage. Similarities, in biased reporting, were immortalized in the Gabrielle Dee “Gabby” Giffords atrocity when on January 8, 2011; Giffords was a victim of a shooting near Tucson, Arizona where six (6) died and thirteen (13) people were wounded. And many tried desperately; the venom was palpable, intense and real, to blame Sarah Louise Palin, former governor of Alaska, for a caricature of targeting politicians for electoral defeat.

James Holmes captured in the Aurora, Colorado parking lot, his name was probably “Goggled”, a sophomoric flawed and defective strategy for accuracy, and anathema for professional journalists. Brian Elliot Rossis an American investigative correspondent for ABC News who reported goggled information, unverified, to George Robert Stephanopoulos on 7/20/12. And George gleefully, with substantial delight,  shared on national TV, that rush to judgment, a poisonous assault on the political” right”, embraced, reported, elatedly, that “Jim” Holmes was a Tea Party member. The lie was half way around the world before ABC got its boots on and ABC was forced to “retract” the libelous falsehood.

This was the individual act of mass murder by a Ph.D. candidate. It is this unapologetic bias, prejudice and ugly making of the news, not reporting the news that will not stop, until one day, the law of averages, statistics, they will be right. And they will say “I told you so”. And just what, exactly, will that have proved? Know your enemies.

A Jim Holmes, came up as a Tea Part member, and a Gabrielle Dee “Gabby” Gifford’s sequel, we erroneously blame, for purely political reasons, the product of a biased mind set, the radical progressives, somebody we “hate?”  “James” Holmes, the criminal, need we get smarmy about a forgetful adjective “accused”, was 24 years old. The “Jim” Holmes of Tea Party fame was later confirmed to be a 55 year old senior citizen. And yes, a Tea Party associate.

This criminal act, like the Fort Hood incident, was viewed in a dis-similar light as framed when Hitchens was alive, when Brian Ross asked Christopher Eric Hitchens about the Princes Diana accident, paraphrasing “was this not Tony Blair’s Oklahoma bombing?” This is at least a sordid, disreputable politicization, at most an intentional, disingenuous, hypocritical and deceitful misdirection. The Diana, Princess of Wales calamity was a tragedy, not an atrocious criminal act. And all lies are tailored to pander to the constituency.

What a wonderful deceptive, deceitful fact, tortured and twisted, damage done, swept under the rug with a nanosecond retraction, a plot deserving of the new HBO TV series “The News Room”. “The Newsroom” is an American drama television series created and primarily written by Aaron Sorkin, a talented genius, a contemporary, fashionable progressive acolyte of Edward Louis Bernays, the father of the psychological “scientific engineering of consent.” What better way to rewrite history than TV.

It would be wiser to combine idealism with realism, the John Kennedy foreign policy wisdom applied to social issues. There are the “gaffs”, Freudian slips, a glimpse of the truth within, a corrupt news and journalistic mind set, propaganda masquerading as ethical reporting. “Never let a crisis go to waste.”

It is as predictable as Piers Stefan Pughe-Morgan’s “Will Colorado shootings inject gun control into 2012 race?” Wasn’t that the objective of “Fast and Furious”? Charles Krauthammer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist, political commentator and physician opined that the concern over gun control misses a priority. Over years gun control has gone up while the threshold for mental illness has gone down, a choice of risk for civil liberty.

Brian Ross said Thomas Holmes was a Superior Patriot, translated in liberaleeze “a super villain”. How the liberals bastardize semantics for effect. And as we demand and are given security, in such diminutive measures, by our government, beware of “freedom” lost.

To exploit this event is the territory of charlatans. Violent behavior is part of the human condition. Psychotic behavior can be predicted. There were those that knew, that could have and should have tried to prevent, were afraid to get involved. This is the arena of gun legislation opportunists, 2^nd Amendment cowards. And we can question Michael Rubens Bloomberg (near bankrupt New York) and Antonio Ramón Villaraigosa (near bankrupt Los Angeles); clever, manipulative misery merchants (never waste a crisis). This was the worst kind of reality show, but it was reality none the less.

At that moment it was not about red or blue states. United we were, not by the virtue of leadership, but by the bond of faith, hope, charity, and compassion, by something as uncontrollable as “fate”. Whoever it is that we look to for guidance let us look within. Say a prayer, even now, so soon we forget, before the moment is lost in the fog of history, a most recent past. How to find, fashion and hold on to a better world? We must be the change we seek.

Guns don’t kill people, exempted also too much food, motorcycles, planes, trains, cars and revolutions, the salve of blame.  People, acts of nature and disasters kill people. “Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.” Benjamin Franklin. Let us be mindful of those that deserve our prayers and how this is tragedy will be shamelessly manipulated, and again, sadly, mostly forgotten.

Earthquakes, landslides, volcanic eruptions, floods and cyclones are all natural hazards that kill thousands of people and destroy billions of dollars of habitat and property each year, the clarity of the moment 9/11, and the space shuttle Challenger, are all almost predetermined, even predestined. “Louie Gohmert: Aurora Shootings Result Of ‘Ongoing Attacks On Judeo-Christian Beliefs’”. And “People say … where was God in all of this?” Think just for a moment about “free will.” Where was God for the Crucifixion? Is this a suggestion of a higher imperative, to each their own Deity, the immortal Other? One hopes so.

What did lowering the flag mean? “[…]As we think back over the history of our nation’s flag, we remember that the story of its early years was often one of hardship and trials, sometimes a fight for simple survival. … As the American Republic grew and prospered and new stars were added to the flag, the ideal of freedom grew and prospered. From the rolling hills of Kentucky to the shores of California to the Sea of Tranquility on the Moon, our pioneers carried our flag before them, a symbol of the indomitable spirit of a free people. And let us never forget that in honoring our flag, we honor the American men and women who have courageously fought and died for it over the last 200 years, patriots who set an ideal above any consideration of self. Our flag flies free today because of their sacrifice.” Ronald Reagan.

And then, after 7/25/12, when our national flags are returned to their peak positions, where will our national civility, unity, decency, dignity and nobility reside? And the flag goes up, the political gloves come off. “When leaders take back power, when they act as heroes and saviors, they end up exhausted, overwhelmed, and deeply stressed.” Margaret J. Wheatley.

Tags: Aurora, Bowling for Columbine, Columbine High School, Margaret J. Wheatley, Michael Moore, The Dark Knight Rises

This entry was posted on July 27, 2012 at 5:19 am and is filed under Domestic Policy, Guest Writer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.