Cowboy Confessional

Perhaps the most succinct statement on geopolitical economics came from a 9th grade student.

“Well, here’s what I’ve learned: socialism is fair but doesn’t really work, while capitalism isn’t fair but does work mostly.”

I wish politicians could be that plain spoken.

But simple is as simple does, and youth exists to allow simpletons.  What the young person did not comprehend is that socialism, by its very design, is unfair … just the opposite of his claim.  Ignoring just the financial exchange that socialism dictates — which is nothing more than orchestrated pocket picking –  there is the inherent injustice of forced association.

Take San Francisco … please.  They have a major bum problem there, as well as a much smaller homeless problem.  Bums have drifted to the Modern Sodom and to the tragic-chic Tenderloin district mainly due to “bad live choices”, which is a social worker euphemism for “they’re drunks and druggies.”  The city pours millions of tax dollars into the housing, feeding, and medical repair of people who were stupid enough to jab needles into their arms and not bother to remove them.

Taxation to support people you would not invite to dinner is a form of forced association as well as well intentional and equally inane robbery.  People have the right of association, which has an inherent right from association.  Forced financial support of someone you disrespect as much as they disrespect themselves is an abridgment of a fundamental civil right.

And therein lay yet another crime of socialism, a system inherently unfair by design.

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I slapped on my hiking shoes and took a quick stroll around the Alameda bay side, a village of tolerable yuppies and assorted San Francisco refugees who managed to escape the debilitating effects of drug intake (not that they didn’t take a whole lot of drugs … they merely managed to dodge a cranial chemical bullet).

As I lapped around a the cove I came across a public dog park where yuppies and yappers where in full Halloween celebratory mode.

Sigh.  Dogs just don’t get it.

A feisty competition was in full pitch with pups paraded in costumes both quickly and elaborately conceived.  All participants seemed to be happy, aside from the pugs who always appear to be perpetual and premature curmudgeons, and the canine rodents called chihuahuas who are constantly on the panicked verge of wetting their owners.

In situation like this, dogs simply don’t understand that they are the butt of the joke.  Nobody (aside from me and some other cynics) is laughing at the yuppies.  And the yuppies surely aren’t laughing at one another, for that would be oh so gauche.  But we all were laughing at the dogs, who seemed to enjoy the merriment, being completely oblivious to the punchline.

Now, find pictures of cats in Halloween costumes.  They can be had, but it takes some looking compared to locating the same for their tail-wagging compatriots.  Cats simply don’t put up with such human insolence, and the few that have been manhandled into such silly sartorial submission scowl into the camera lens.  A cat’s dignity is not to be trifled with.

This variance in varmint viewpoints says as much about owners as it does about the critters themselves, and why some prefer the company of one over the other.  But I’ll avoid this digression as dog owners would not appreciate the analysis. 

Cats however, would find it hilarious.

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The San Francisco Chronicle (a publication otherwise not to be trusted) ran an interesting interview with a film maker who did a simple and ingenious thing:  he interviewed people in Israeli prisons for attempted suicide bombings to discover what makes them tick (pun intended).

Several items are enlightening, including a claim by a Hamas cleric who said the promised 72 virgins were not provided bu Allah for sexual gratification (which is completely understandable given a virgin’s utter lack of sexual experience, one could only be so gratified by their respective talents).  They should be thankful that they were not promised 72 Virginians.

What caught my fleeting attention was the odd notion about how these bomber thought they were doing the world and God a favor:

This is what struck me the most: The result of this brainwashing was kids who were very good people deep inside (were) believing so much that they were doing something great.

Every one of them said that all our behaviors on Earth are impure, and they were trying to reach purity. They said they were “invaded” by Israeli culture. When they turn on the television, they see half-naked dancers. They were offended by that. They wanted me to understand that all this was forbidden on Earth, but if you did something great for God — like blowing yourself up and killing a bunch of innocent Israelis because they are Jews and don’t believe the same thing you believe — you end up being forgiven for all of your sins and will go to heaven and find 72 virgins waiting for you.

Ignoring the fact that Jews were emigrating to Palestine long before World War Two, and that even young Palestinian delinquents can manage to turn off their televisions, we must contemplate that these bimbos actually believe their actions are morally enlightened.  It does not cross their alleged minds that the people they are blowing up did not found Israel (that happened too long ago), likely didn’t contribute to the television programing they found so offensive, and might be so young as to have never sinned against anyone.  Where, pray tell, is the moral justification for harming anyone who has not specifically caused you or your family harm? 

Contemplate this only briefly, as the larger point escapes these bimbo bombers as much as it does Jimmy Swaggart. God, by definition, is all powerful.  Ipso facto, God does not need any-ones help.  Thus these youthful idiots (if I may be redundant) are only fooling themselves and perhaps doing the devil’s bidding.  God sure as hell doesn’t need them.

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Several San Francisco area newspapers have reported on an irony of violence that is bizarre even by Bay Area standards.

Just up from Berkeley — known affectionately by locals as Bizerkley — is the town of Richmond, which is generally poor, ethnic, governmentally corrupt, and violent. There is a region within Richmond known as the Iron Triangle, where most of the blood is shed. Life has become so cheap in the Triangle that Mother Terresa’s order has sent nuns from Calcutta (yes, from the home of the Black Hole) to minister, and pacifist tent towns have been erected to bring attention to the everlasting mayhem.

Gang bangers, uncaring about such sentimental gestures, killed a man across the street from the Utopian encampment. Several slugs where pumped into this fellow while he sat in his car outside of John F. Kennedy High School. Wouldn’t old JFK be proud.

What pacifists perpetually fail to appreciate is that violent people don’t care. Someone who would murder another human is never deterred by moral persuasion. Nor are they likely to find Jesus in a split second of devotional insight.

Military organizations have to work very hard to get soldiers to overcome their reluctance to kill. Anyone who has achieved this state in civilian life has done so of free will, based primarily on an utter lack of compassion for others. Nothing short of death or incarceration will stop them.

People residing in these tented peace cities are merely targets in waiting.

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Gallup Poll has concluded that you are more likely to own a gun if you are rural, southern, conservative and male.  Next week they will determine that breathing is part of a healthy life style.

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