OPEN YOUR EYES, PEOPLE!

My parents live in Chattanooga and my mom said she'd been very depressed since the shooting of several military personnel there a week ago. Mom visited the grave and brought flowers to the memorial since her brother was a marine. She also said that the local papers were reporting that gun sales had jumped sharply since the shooting. While I understand that people get scared and feel the need to defend themselves, if brutal shootings are the problem then circulating more shooting devices aren't the answer.

Just week later, there's a new shooting in all over the news. Lafayette, Louisiana had just been named "the happiest city in the USA." I wrote something on the 4th of July which I don't think went over too well. It was a post about how the USA stands for oppression, weapons and murder both here and abroad. Look at the centuries of sadness experienced by blacks during slavery and then segregation--only to end up with a black president and Attorney General who can't stem the bloodshed their own people experience at the hands of the very law enforcement agency which ought to be protecting them. That #Blacklivesmatter is a heartbreaking statement to even have to utter in 2015. Look at the Indians we savaged to build this country. Brutality is the American way.

Equally heartbreaking as the fact that we killed 1 million Iraqis in a war we should never have started--and this recent figure wasn't even picked up by major news outlets. Obama's secretive drone war may have taken out some high level terrorists, but they've also indiscriminately killed many civilians. Look at the shocking number of rapes in both the military and colleges. Look at how school children at Sandy Hook were gunned down, cinema patrons gunned, military personnel, House member Gabby Giffords--we simply aren't safe. But there is a way out. You don't find many lone gunmen shooting up public places in other countries. You also don't find the NRA and the Pentagon running the governments of those countries. The NRA represents gun deaths and the Pentagon represents war. Wouldn't we be safer if we knocked these purveyors of death down to size? But you can never do that with the bulk of our corrupt politicians at their beck and call. But wait--who elects these politicians? Us. And we've got some work to do. It's literally a matter of life or death.