Organizations like Planned Parenthood and the National
Abortion Rights Action League—if one assumes that they believe in the teachings
of the messiah, Margaret Sanger—are proponents of population control, particularly
of life unworthy (or at least that is the philosophy promulgated by Sanger in The Pivot
of Civilization). "Birth
Control: To create a race of
thoroughbreds" was one of the slogans of the early incarnation of
Parenthood. Who was Sanger referring to as “borderline cases” who were a “greater
menace” than “imbeciles’? Racial minorities? But we won’t dwell on such
speculations at the moment, since Republicans, right-wing extremists and the
National Rifle Association also have a “plan” at reducing the population.
Some people are not as sanguine about this as others; I
occasionally listen to “A Prairie Home Companion” hosted by Garrison Keillor,
which usually airs on Saturday afternoon on NPR; back in the day when radio was
the principle form of media entertainment, some of those old shows were wickedly
clever in the way they drew laughs or terror in order to hold the attention of
the listening audience. In the humor
department, “Companion” gives you an idea of what “old time” radio was like. This
past weekend the show aired an advertisement for a “shoulder-mounted automatic hunting
rifle” for the hunter whose “aim is not what it used to be.” The rifle comes
with a 250-round drum and a flamethrower, so you can kill game and cook it at
the same time; thrown-in for free is a metal detector—so you can more easily
find your kill, or what's left of it. An old geezer says his new rifle comes in handy since “I used
to hunt with a shotgun before my glaucoma got so bad.”
Obviously this is a spoof on how gun rights activists insist
that assault rifles with 50-round drums have some useful purpose and are driven
crazy by the idea that such weapons should be banned from civilian ownership;
nobody intends to go hunting for “game” with such weapons, unless it is human
game—as we have seen dozens of times too often in the past decades. Polls show
that a majority of Americans support a ban on these weapons, but because the fanatical
core of its constituency opposes any regulation on gun ownership, the
Republican Party continues to block action on gun legislation in the wake of
the Connecticut massacre. It’s the same old story: After a shooting rampage,
people wail in sorrow and demand something be done, the media exploits it for
ratings, and the NRA chimes in that it is just some lone madman and the
solution is not less, but more, guns.
When the inevitable next carnage occurs, the country goes through the same mendacious cycle again. And again. And again.
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