Heaven's Burning

Blowin' in the Wind

I recently moved back to this country after 35 years of self-imposed exile.  My reasons are valid enough but not a day goes by that I don't question the wisdom of such a move.  Don't get me wrong I'm cognizant of the many and varied benefits of American life and nowhere I've ever been can rival the bounty available to those who succeed here.  But let's face it, as sure as there's an order in the universe, symmetry and balance in nature, there is a down side to America's rich tapestry.  

I'm not talking here about the last several years of moral and ethical decline on the world stage, and I'm ignoring, for now, the unscrupulous American business practices which precipitated the disastrous events that have ruined the world economy.  These issues have at their core that quintessential Americaness on which the country was founded.  I think Goofy immortalized the idea in that now canonized Disney cartoon when he sang so unselfconciously "Oh the world owes me a living".  That basic concept coupled with the right to bear arms is the fundamental ghost in the American machine. 

The first woman I dated when I moved back here is a captain in the army.  To her credit she's decidedly left leaning and passionately active in the preservation of the environment but nonetheless competent with a 50 caliber machine gun.  There are within 2 miles of my home 3 grocery stores and 5 places to buy guns.   Portland Magazine recently included in its list of top ten things to do in town, taking a date to the indoor shooting range.  Craigslister's looking to unload their boats and cars often suggest trades for a glock or 9mm.   It is a country rife with firepower, scurrying to acquire ordinance before the lefties in power revoke their privileges.  The conventional wisdom ( I use the term advisedly) is that the right to bear arms is a constitutional guarantee and yet there is a great deal of discussion regarding the concept as it was proposed by the framers.  Whatever the idea may have been and however it may apply today, the proliferation of weapons among the general populace is alarming and nearly every page of the first couple sections of any city newspaper has at least one article about somebody discharging one of them.  

 That said, even with its myriad of gun-totin' stories my morning newspaper has a much more sinister depository of horror;  the editorial page.  The local paper here, which I would call fairly conservative, is now considered as many others like it to be decidedly left-wing.  Admittedly there is an attempt to balance the reportage and even the editorial content but the idea that Conrad Black or the Hearst Corporation have suddenly become New Socialists is a bit far-fetched.  This paper alternates voices from opposing camps in the daily columns but it's the reader's letters that are scary as hell.   There is a subtext in the bulk of these letters that promotes the notion that the righteous path has been lost.   

Only two months into a new administration and already they lament the passing of those halcyon days of enlightened leadership that secured our shores and protected our homes.  More importantly they decry the passing of lower taxes and rail against the costs of earmarks and pork fat doled out by the new socialist government.  If there's one thing Americans don't like it's paying taxes.  As a culture it's been genetically inscribed beginning with the tossing of tea barrels into Boston Bay.  We are a people who collectively say 'No one's the boss of me' so 'don't tread on me' or 'I'll grab my 9 and bust a cap in your head'.  

As much as all this frightens me it also fascinates.   When I was a kid it was considered cool to smoke, a right of passage that lingered on into adulthood.  Smoking was cosmopolitan, a symbol of rebellion and distinction.  Maybe the Glock is the new Marlboro.  I haven't encountered the tiniest resistance to the notion of a date at the firing range.  So, maybe it'd be cool to pack, women seem to think it's 'interesting' and as an added bonus if some interloper should darken my door, well woe be it.  It's almost as though it's my civic duty.  Sure they're dangerous, guns kill people, or people kill people I'm not sure which but anyway when they go off in close proximity to people sometimes someone gets killed.  I guess that someone could end up being me if I happened to run into someone else being cool but at least it wouldn't be that lingering death carting around the oxygen bottle.