Good morning, y’all. While we should all be making ourselves crazy worrying about our Christmas preparations, we are being driven crazy by the daily news. I would gladly take commercials for Popeil’s latest labor saving device twenty four seven over the current daily broadcasts of shootings. I know Christmas is the time of the year that stresses our mental health the most, but we’ve reached new heights.
The shootings in San Bernadino, California have shocked the nation. San Berdoo, the birthplace of The Hell’s Angels, is an otherwise non-notable city sixty fives miles East of Los Angeles. We just never hear about anything happening in San Bernadino, until yesterday. Now San Bernadino is the center of the universe for CNN and others to take facts and suppositions and weave them into a plot that can not leave Americans feeling safe.
All of America is waiting anxiously to hear the answer of how and why, and sadly, I must report, I was completely caught up in the coverage myself. I know better. I do, really. I know that it’s better to wait and read about events a week after they have happened than it is to stay glued to the TV as the events unfold. It wasn’t until the second hour of Wolf Blitzer asking loaded questions of “experts”, experts who had clearly been brought in based on their point of view, that I realized I was being played. Ok, big statement, if I’m being played, why, and who stands to benefit from influencing my opinion?
Let’s start with how the news was being fed to us. Initial reports were of three tactically armed assailants with “long rifles”. Let me interject here that the way Wolf loves the phrase “long rifle”, there must be something else going on here, maybe something Freudian. Anyway, the suspects, dressed like SWAT team members, broke into a facility charged with treating the disabled. The shooters were supposed to be dressed in full body armor, militarily trained and based off of their quick exit, carrying out a plan that had taken weeks to prepare. Speculation ran high that these “terrorists” were targeting a “soft target” where the people would be defenseless.
It took hours to report that the attack actually took place at a leased conference room that was being used by county employees for a holiday party. It took many, many hours to report that the police knew who they were looking for from the get go. The shooter was actually at the meeting and got mad, left and came back with his wife. They were wearing ammo vests that can be bought from Amazon for $34.99. No body armor, no extensive planning for a “soft target”. In one sense, just another pissed off mentally unstable worker that had had enough. I think we use to call it, “going postal”, before it became a requirement of all news agencies to look for an ISIS link.
The repeated interviews of terrorism “experts” through out the broadcast was one of the clues to me, that I, and the rest of the public, were being played. I think the second clue was Wolf’s repeated call to carpet bomb all of the Middle East, Israel excepted of course, and turn the desert to glass. I would think that in the interest of maintaining the motto, “the most trusted name in news” that CNN would sit King Wolf Hyperbole down and explain the rules. Quit creating news “links” that support your personal agenda. The “news” are the verifiable facts that are known at a specific point in time, the news are not, “what if”.
I had to laugh out loud at one of the speculations by Wolf that only a terrorist would have four guns and thousand of rounds of ammunition in their house. I can stand in my front yard and see at least four homes that qualify as “terrorists” by Wolf standards. In fact, some of my neighbors would qualify as “ultra terrorists” by Wolf standards. The pipe bombs found by the police were a little more unsettling. But, I can go a hundred yards and find the same thing with one notable exception, little Danny Katz’s bombs actually blow stuff up. Danny’s been at it since he’s twelve, and is quite good at stump removal. I guess I better put Danny on my “terrorist” list.
Whipping the American people into hysteria is a shameless, but tried and true method used by the powerful people to foment their agenda. Why do we want the shooters to be Isis and not “postal workers”? Very simply, we don’t want do anything to diminish gun sales in the U.S. Part two, we don’t want to spend any money to help the mentally unstable get the help they need. We do however want to help all of those brave freedom fighters in foreign lands by providing them with all of the arms they will ever need. Perhaps another “fight them there before we have to fight them here” war is order. It worked really well in Iraq.
Sorry, I am a sad, cynical, old man that feels abused by the people who are supposed to being truthful with me. BTW, gun sales for Black Friday this year topped all records with 185,345 requests for background checks. That would be the people who are legally obtaining guns. See, CNN, advertising does work. I’m sure your check is in the mail.