I'm going to spin off another diary that opens the big can of worms! Nancy Lanza Not Just "Gun Enthusiast" - updated
There’s been some level of mystery about just why Adam Lanza’s first victim, Nancy Lanza, had such a stock of weapons, particularly military style weapons like the .223 Bushmaster, the weapon we now know was actually used in the killings. She wasn’t just into guns. She was apparently stocked up for when the economy collapses and when everyone’s on their own with their guns.
This makes me very ambiguous about those I have been calling "paranoid" because they so desperately believe they need guns. I still think guns are a sick solution to what might be a more real impending problem than we are willing to come to grips with. Read on below and we can explore this together.
Jim Coffman and I just coauthored a book that spells it out in some detail: Our new book: "Global Insanity" is out. I hope you like it!. Our scenareo for the future is not unique. The prognosis just from climate change has been discussed over and over again. The economic distress and resultant conflicts are not unimaginable. The inability of government to handle what is coming is a real possibility.
So we can sort out the scenarios that are motivating people to come up with really bad answers to a very real possibility. Economic collapse as mentioned above is a paranoid prediction of the anti-Obama wingnuts. Economic collapse and conflict as a result of the yet poorly understood consequences of climate change are another story.
Our book tries to see the world system as a complex interacting whole. We trace the origins of the denial and political impotency that got us here and these things are very real. Our faith in the capitalist system is part of the problem. The people who run that system have no loyalty to anyone but themselves. They, for example are quite ready to put guns in the hands of anyone who can pay the price and feed their profits. They have no national loyalty and are as global as can be when they consider how to expand their exploitation.
As we watch workers struggle for simple rights and for way to make a decent living we must feel the frustration and the insecurity. Having a job today means a far far less secure life than in my dad's time.
Is it possible that the system will collapse? I think it is. It sure shows no signs of being able to function at this moment. So is fear about the future paranoid? I think not. Are guns the solution? I think not. But, I, for one, will die rather than take up arms again. My service as an officer in the USMC taught me things about myself that I'll never forget. I will not arm myself again. But I am the odd one. All my fellow Marines and service people were taught to kill as a solution to problems. This was our government's lesson to us. I learned to kill with my bare hands! How do you reverse a lesson like this? If there is a collapse and some form of chaos what do you think people will do? The answer is clear for our society breeds killing each other as a "solution" to problems on a very significant scale and people die every day because of this.
We have become a society of denial. Yet the facts are overwhelming. You really do not need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing!