Kyle Rittenhouse and the Stupidity of Gun Culture

 I haven't written much about Kyle Rittenhouse. From what I have read it looks like he'll likely be acquitted, or the thing will end up in a mistrial. Apparently the jury has already requested a mistrial twice and been denied.

Frankly he probably did kill those two men and wound the third in an act of self defense. And this is my problem with gun culture.

Because we all know he never would have been there if he didn't have a gun.

And he shouldn't have been there, because a 17 year old boy doesn't have the experience to be successful in that environment.

His mom says he would have died if he hadn't "brung" his gun with him. Fuck lady, he also wouldn't have died if you hadn't fucking driven him there. How these people manage to tie their shoes is beyond me.

Gun advocates love to talk about how a "good guy with a gun" can solve a bad situation. It seems like that happens about once in every million shooting instances, but I'm not sure statistics go over real big in the gun crowd. I think you're something like 5 times more likely to be killed by a gun if you have a gun in your house than if you don't, but that figure doesn't seem to cause much hesitation in the gun-inclined group.

A gun is known in some circles as an "equalizer." Meaning some pudgy little shit like Kyle Rittenhouse can go out and be just as deadly as a highly trained mixed martial artist - even more so. All he has to do is squeeze that little trigger and now David is taking down Goliath.

I'd be willing to bet that the gun that is supposed to keep us all polite is in fact the object that starts a fair amount of fighting. People who have no business fighting get into fights because the gun they are holding tells them they can fight. It proves they can kill.

It's grotesque. How we got to a point where taking a life is so trivial, even celebrated - I'll never understand it. I'd never want that kind of blood on my hands and now this 18 year old, 17 at the time of the shooting, is going to be warped and twisted and perverted because he took lives, and one "side" thinks that's awful while the other "side" thinks he's a fucking hero. Of course he's going to go to the side saying he's a fucking hero. We all want acceptance in this life.

I hate it all. I hate the rioting, the looting, the violence. I hate that this is all solvable but we won't solve it. And I'm not talking about getting rid of guns, I'm talking about getting rid of poverty. That won't make every problem disappear, but it will sure go a long way towards it. People riot and loot because they see themselves in an economic situation from which there is no escape.

A whole lot of pressure could be released by simply easing poverty. By implementing fair wages, fair housing prices, by starting a universal basic income. People are getting richer than any human has ever been in this country. Why is the bottom still living on the streets? How is anyone in this country being allowed to go hungry?

I guess I've gotten off the gun culture topic here, but it all ties together. Poverty is at the root of the vast majority of criminality. Eradicate poverty and watch crime rates drop like they've never dropped before, and then law enforcement can focus on dealing with the actual criminal class instead of the victims of bad domestic policy.

The Resurrection of the Blog - Achilles' Chill

 I'm blogging again. My mental health is so shit right now. I dealt with Trump by drinking and the Pandemic by drinking even more and even though he's out of office Trump won't go away and the Pandemic is still raging, so the drinking hasn't really slowed. It's not good. The depression medicine I'm taking doesn't seem to be cutting the mustard, but how could it when I'm drowning myself in depressants every night? But damn I do love red wine. My Achille's chill.

Maybe, if I'm lucky, I can write some of this out of my system. Writing is creation, creating something from nothing. Putting words together, making sentences, trying to explain the whirring of the mind. Trying to reach across the chasm of nothingness and derive meaning from the void. Trying to make contact with the collective - trying to feel the oneness of the universe.

When the pandemic started I lost all ability to create. I couldn't bring myself to paint, to play music, to write. I sat, and stewed, and drank. I couldn't read a book. Long fiction was too much to try and take in. If I didn't have weekly beers with one of my closest friends I would have gone far more insane than I have, but still, as I noted, the mental health isn't good.

I believe more than anything it is the stupidity, the abject stupidity that a large enough portion of the country seems to have embraced. This weird fucking notion that science is no good and we should trust random idiots on the internet over an actual process that yields results through trial and error and a whole lot of study. People listen to Joe fucking Rogan for medical advice? What the fuck? I can't even begin to understand that. He is a television host and a podcaster, why would anyone trust his medical advice? Even Joe Rogan says not to trust his medical advice, but here we are. I don't get that.

So much I don't get and my brain seizes up trying to make sense of that which cannot be made sense of. I wish I could accept it. Accept and move on, people are fueled by emotions and will trust something one of their friends read on the internet over what some egghead in Washington D.C. has to say. I sort of get that, but I also rail against it. I want data, research, studies, and that's what the eggheads in D.C. are looking at before the get on TV and say what they have to say.

I'm writing again, so that's something. I really hope it grows into something productive, something that helps me, and helps you, if you're reading this.