American Lunacy

Gun control seems to be a major topic in the news.  Our current President understandably seems preoccupied with unnecessary gun violence during his last year in office.  It is a fitting concern and thus ideal with which to wrangle.  First I must say I received notification from the North Carolina Department of Revenue today. Those two ominous letters marked with "Private and Confidential" were no surprise.  For a great while this North Carolina agency has been querying my income tax status.  Although I have been living around the world in cruise ships, I have kept my vehicles "garaged" at my parent's home here.  They sit for up to six months at a time.  (You can't drive a truck on a cruise ship.)  Only once did I ever use it, when I drove to Port Canaveral to embark the Monarch of the Seas.  Instead of sitting at my parent's home, it sat in the cruise terminal parking lot for four days at a time.  On embarkation day I would escape the ship long enough to drive around in the most redneck town in Florida I ever have seen.  I grew up around rednecks, and I am not a biggot.  There was something about the irony of leaving my leisure industry job and entering the realm of leisure living poverty.  That is water under the bridge.  After rebutting the NCDOR's claims for many years with concrete tax knowledge and a judge's understanding of domicile and residency, today I received official notification from them that they had determined I was not required to file state tax returns for the years 2011 and 2012.  Previously with the same package of materials consisting of federal transcripts and Florida W2's, I had escaped the looming prospect of a lawsuit suing me for nonpayment of North Carolina state income taxes.  I believe I have sent it to them at least four separate times.  Never have I received an official reply exonerating my supposedly intentional avoidance of North Carolina tax debt, until today.  Word.  Gun control seems to be a viable issue for our current outgoing president, and as usual there is little substantial information about it.  It has been reported he has enacted another executive order affecting gun control in some way. As many pundits have responded, "There is not much he can do."  The NRA may be America's largest and most powerful lobby.  It seems we like our guns, and we want to keep them.  I agree with our Constitution that because a "Well-Armed Militia" has been and may again be one of America's biggest assets, we as American citizens have a right to defend ourselves and thus own guns.  It wasn't that long ago that the people were required to take up arms and defend themselves, their families, and their property.  It will happen again.  The issue is a rather new phenomenon, and President Obama is doing his best to confront its cause through personal emotional channels.  It is an interesting approach.  Because juvenile gun violence in particular both is startling and upsetting, it may make it more difficult to discern its cause.  Obviously if mentally challenged people are allowed to possess firearms, bad things can happen.  It widely has been reported that the majority of shooters in the U.S. in recent years were on prescription medication.  I will repeat this.  It widely has been reported that the majority of shooters in the U.S. in recent years were on prescription medication.  (I typed that sentence in record time, because I am practicing my word-processing skills.)  When you blog you are thinking up what you are going to say on the fly, therefore I type more slowly.  When I am able to engage my brain with merely typing copy, it is easier to blaze.  I don't have to think about the content of the sentence.  I just type it like an assembly-line working builds a particular product.  (By the way I personally would like to thank the North Carolina Department of Revenue for reviewing my information and agreeing with my insistence, that I was not responsible for taxes here!)  I have spent a long time on the F.B.I. watch list.  Evidently those few thousand dollars in delinquent state income tax merited continual scrutiny with expensive Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and U.S. Customs and Border protection planes.  That or else they  must believe I am growing weed in the woods behind our house.  I used to spend a great deal of time in those woods clearing fallen pine trees, poison sumac, grape and wisteria vines, and extraneous brush.  Unlike the majority of urban-dwelling middle class America, I enjoy riding trail bikes.  We have been fortunate enough to live adjacent to a large swath of woods behind an elementary school.  Since we moved here in l978 I have created an array of motorcycle trails that have proven to be cathartic, consoling, and enjoyable.  That changed when drunk one night I fired a single round of .32 caliber pistol ammo into the air attempting to discourage future arsonists from burning these particular woods.  It seems the persons living at the bottom of the woods having come home from some event were making a bit of late-night noise.  Henceforth the soldier living at the bottom of my steepest trail took a dislike to me.  While there was no way the summoned law enforcement officers could have found our home in the pitch black darkness at 1:30 a.m., they did.  I met them happily in the middle of our back yard, and giddily told them that juvenile delinquents had been shooting off fireworks.  It was true, and they believed me.  That late night marked a milestone for this probable trained Green Beret.  I don't know if he was a member Fort Bragg's elite Special Forces, but he certainly didn't like me and my single shot of .32 caliber small arms ammo fired into the air.  There have been several drive by shootings in Vanstory Hills, and I witnessed one.  It was about the same time one evening when my mother was away, and I heard six shots in slow succession that only could have been large caliber rounds.  They were within a city block.  Fayetteville is a violent city, and people are murdered daily.  It was a relief when he, his wife, and his annoying dogs moved away.  No longer do I have to worry about having to condone my ax work.  Ironically as much as I enjoy swinging an axe for physical exercise, a used chainsaw has made its way into our garage.  The last batch of trees that fell across my motorcycle trails was too large for me to cut through.  ( I realize I am ending this sentence with a preposition, but I am too fatigued to figure out how to reword.)  You get the point.  I like the physical pleasure of swinging an axe, and clearing the brush and trees in these woods has been a source of pleasure.  At one time it looked like a city park, and only locals could enjoy it like a Pacific Ocean Park surfer.  Today these woods are neglected, because I spent the entirely of the last year fixing our front yard.  That will be another story.  America is run by industrialists.  Mostly it is run by the railroads.  They are an unregulated monopoly, and before long there will be more freight than people.  (or there will be dead people in freight cars, which probably are there now, Mexicans, I mean).  It was not that long ago persecuted and condemned Jews were transported in freight cars to concentration camps, which in actuality were gas chambers.  We can have some comfort for the moment that transporting newly found shale oil in the Midwest is more lucrative than transporting Jews.  (It's a good thing Cheney is out of the White House)  Either people will be extinct, they will live underground, or they will live in mansions in the sky courtesy of Sierra Nevado Corp.  They can take their pick of a number of rocket-based carriers that are sprouting each year.  I do not think humans will live in space.  They only reason we would want to live in space is because the earth has been destroyed.  It will happen one day, but the expedience of that outcome is in our hands.  Why industrialists continue to kill the planet is beyond me.  It is the way the world has become without Christianity.  That campaign, that far-right, extreme Republican Fox News contingency only is evil.  I didn't think so at first, but it is the only explanation for the inexplicable and uncanny illogic of the world today.  The attack on Christianity began in this decade, and it is the reason why billionaire, adolescent, entrepreneurs carelessly are working on projects that are meaningless to our survival as a race.  We will not live in space.  We need to learn to drive better ourselves, before we allow technology to drive for us.  We do not needs aerial drones delivering our parcels.  A lack of Christian responsibility is what has spawned this lunacy.  Certainly we do not educate our populace anymore.  Certainly we do not care about engraining in our youth moral or ethical value.  That would mean Wall Street would have to be honest.  Watching this iconic institution falter with a complete and total lack of moral or ethical value should be a lesson.  Chaos is not that far away, and there is a reason why Americans want their guns.