Well you know Linda Butkus and I are trying to perk interest in the
class of 63 joining the class of 64 in their reunion (still not too late
Beagles, don’t you want to see sweet home Chicago again?), and one of the guys I
have been communicating with is Bob Ferkaluk, who I don’t remember from high
school, but he had seemed like a reasonable guy and I had friended him and I
didn’t think much about it.
And then I looked at fb yesterday and there was a big pro gun video
posted by him. What the hell? He had seemed like a reasonable guy, like
I said. Lives in Tinley Park, not quite the city, but close enough I suppose.
Not some wacko out in the boonies like some guys. Strangely enough he comments
that he doesn’t have a gun, but that when we outlaw guns then only outlaws will
have guns. You may be familiar with that phrase.
Well you know me, already I am preparing a rebuttal in my mind,
something along the lines of if you sell guns to anybody it will make it even
easier for outlaws to get guns, or like in your case, if we sell guns to
everybody the bad as well as the good will get them, but then I suppose that
since the more people who have guns the happier you are, you want bad people to
have guns too. Well I know you will have something to say back to that, and I
will have something to say back to that. We could do it in our sleep. Let’s
just not do it today.
And you know I hate those pithy slogans, where you take a few words
and twist them around and come up with something that sounds clever but if you
analyze it, it’s basically meaningless. And I’m not saying it’s just your side
that does it, my side does it all the time too, that pithy slogan thing. But
that is also something I don’t want to talk about today.
It’s just that I was about to formulate a biting comment and put it
on Ferkaluk’s page, but then my better sense angel stepped in. Don’t do it, she
said. I assume she’s a she, women seem to have more common sense than we do.
And so I didn’t, but my palms were itchy, and then I thought of an even more
biting remark, one that would tear that stupid pro gun argument to smithereens,
and make all those idiot pro gun people aware of their stupidity, so they
wouldn’t have a word to say.
Fat chance. They would have plenty to say, and there would be
plenty of them, and I might think that it was a good thing that I would also
have plenty of anti gun nuts on my side, but you know most of them would be
idiots, and the next thing you know there would be a string of arguing comments
that stretched to doomsday, and surprisingly after all this open commentary
between reasonable men, well maybe a few reasonable men but mostly idiots, the
issue, when all those typing fingers were worn to the bone, would remain
unresolved.
And the reason I think only a few of the commentors would be
reasonable men is that most reasonable men would have listened to their better
sense angels and refrained, as have I, this sunny winter day which appears to be
pointing, however feebly, towards spring.
I’m sorry I said you don’t read books, I thought you had told me
that. I did a little research into that book. One thing I was intrigued by was
choosing our leaders randomly. I believe the Greeks did a bit of that back in
the day, or at any rate Plato or one of those guys had recommended it. You
might run a higher risk of choosing a crazy guy, but I don’t know how much more
than the one we risk with the current system, and look at all the muss and fuss
we would avoid.
I believe that idea where everybody votes on every issue was
discussed by the Greeks too, but they thought it was too nutty and so do
I.
And now I will do something useful with the day, or maybe fritter
it away, but I won’t spend it with seething temples and flying
fingers.
Good Day.
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