Originally Posted by KaiserD2

I would like to suggest that everyone take a deep breath and a good long think.

The idea that because we can't trust the government, we have to arm ourselves, is apparently very emotionally satisfying to people (like Nomads) who have always had trouble trusting authority, perhaps because the authorities they were first exposed to didn't deserve their trust. That's perfectly natural. The problem with this idea is that it means the end of civilization.

Yes, that's right. The whole idea of civilization is that instead of settling all disputes violently, man to man, or (more often) family to family, we all submit to a system of law which apprehends, tries, and punishes offenders. I would suggest that that idea has been key to all the progress that humanity has made over the last couple of millennia--however erratic it has been.

I would also like to suggest that the US government, at its most oppressive, has been relatively benevolent within a historical perspective. We focus (as we should) on the times that we have betrayed our ideals; but actually, we have done a pretty good job of sticking to them. When people say, as they say here, that our ideals are meaningless, they are opening the door to anarchy, or worse.

"I don't trust the government to do anything" is not a solution. We have no alternative but to try to make government work. Allow me to conclude with the end of Democracy and America.

"For myself, who now look back from this extreme limit of my task, and discover from afar, but at once, the various objects which have attracted my more attentive investigation upon my way, I am full of apprehensions and of hopes. I perceive mighty dangers which it is possible to ward off-mighty evils which may be avoided or alleviated; and I cling with a firmer hold to the belief, that for democratic nations to be virtuous and prosperous they require but to will it. I am aware that many of my contemporaries maintain that nations are never their own masters here below, and that they necessarily obey some insurmountable and unintelligent power, arising from anterior events, from their race, or from the soil and climate of their country. Such principles are false and cowardly; such principles can never produce aught but feeble men and pusillanimous nations. Providence has not created mankind entirely independent or entirely free. It is true that around every man a fatal circle is traced, beyond which he cannot pass; but within the wide verge of that circle he is powerful and free: as it is with man, so with communities. The nations of our time cannot prevent the conditions of men from becoming equal; but it depends upon themselves whether the principle of equality is to lead them to servitude or freedom, to knowledge or barbarism, to prosperity or to wretchedness."

It's up to us.

The Passing of Time(The Future) will provide a "Solution"; It always does.
"Que Sera Sera"!
http://www.youtube.com/embed/xZbKHDPPrrc

PoC67

PS: It's Alexis De Tocqueville's: "Democracy "IN" America".
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/toc_indx.html

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

"I don't trust the government to do anything" is not a solution. We have no alternative but to try to make government work.

Who's actually saying that, though?

In the time that I've been reading this thread, primarily over about the last week, I haven't seen that position really put out there. Dedelus said that experience has taught him that the police can't prevent crimes from taking place. Xer H made an argument for the government to do more, but do it more responsibly. The Rani basically echoed his sentiments. Copperfield seemed to mostly be boggled at the astonishing lack of knowledge on the gun-control side of the discussion. Justin has mostly been trying to educate Eric.

For my part, I've mostly been trying to call attention to the genuine failures in the system that allowed Loughner to get his hands on a firearm.

It's not like the 13ers in this discussion are coming across like feral children out of Mad Max or militia-type survivalists or anything. And nobody has been advocating settling disputes violently man to man or family to family or anything like that.

Meanwhile, on the "other side" of the debate, we have Eric the Green basically taking pride in his ignorance of how guns actually operate and M&L talking about outlawing cannons and decommissioned military vehicles.

I put "other side" in quotes, because I am actually kinda for gun control. I know enough to know that more than a few states aren't doing what they should to keep firearms out of the hands of people who would misuse them. I think it's alarming that, in 2011, it's possible for someone to make death threats and then go out and buy a firearm.

That's a pretty big deal.

But the stuff that people are saying here is mostly that guns (and cannons and decommissioned military vehicles) are scary, Red-state culture is icky, and really important distinctions between various classes of firearms are irrelevant. And now, with your latest contribution to the discussion, we learn that 13ers have yet to learn the value of civilization.

It's a pretty madcap discussion, really.

Originally Posted by Xer H

Where's The Cat, with his awesome YouTube find of Virginia Woolf?? (or something equally relevant)

Cue, dude!

The entire Paranoia accusation is Ridiculus and Irrelevant(much like the Accuser).

Here's 3 irrelevant references:

Black Sabbath:http://www.youtube.com/embed/kz_6jagv_D4

The Kinks:http://www.youtube.com/embed/_WJ6FbcWYRU

RadioHead:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHiGbolFFGw

PS:

PPS: Almost forgot foxy Shirley Manson and Garbage:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/rpRiSb_Ir-s

Originally Posted by ASB65

I think there are other elements to the Xer view than just mistrust of government, although that is there too. But one thing that has become very apparent to me as I've read many different posts on all kind of different subject matters over the past year on this forum, is how very influenced the Xers were by all the post-apocalyptic movies, books and other media sources we grew up on. The image of a world destroyed, with gangs of thugs roaming around and having to have a gun to protect yourself and your food is very much ingrained in our minds and have become part of our psyche. I just think somewhere deep down inside we all have this fear those images we saw will some day come to pass.

We are the children of the cold war. Many of the early Xers or Jonesers lived under the constant knowledge that both Russia and the US had enough nukes to destroy the world ten times over. We weren't afraid of terrorist coming after us, like the millies are. We were afraid of the entire world being just gone in an instant. That's some pretty heavy stuff to have hanging over your head when you are kid. It's probably the Xers who are more likely to believe in all the 2012 stuff. As I've said before, when we were kids it wasn't really so much a question of if it was going to happen, but when it was going to happen. We have transfered the end the world scenarios from nukes to catastrophes caused by global warming or other types of threats to human kind.

So when people talk about having to arm themselves because the authorities may not be around to protect them, I have to wonder if they aren't subconsciously pulling out some of images they saw in the movies of that possible future and that is playing into it...Just a thought.

And remember, in all those movies we saw. If you didn't have gun. You were dead meat.

Remember the movie, Amerika. I believe it came out in 81 or 82 out of Liberal fear of an all-out nuclear war with Russia. Instead it went without a whimper which conditioning us for UN oversight.

We are seeing 1984, Minority Report and Equilibrium slowly coming about with the Demicans each and every day.

Or it could just be the late Bill Hicks was a wise man....

Originally Posted by Semo '75

In the time that I've been reading this thread, primarily over about the last week....Dedelus said that experience has taught him that the police can't prevent crimes from taking place. Xer H made an argument for the government to do more, but do it more responsibly. The Rani basically echoed his sentiments. Copperfield seemed to mostly be boggled at the astonishing lack of knowledge on the gun-control side of the discussion. Justin has mostly been trying to educate Eric.

About nothing. The important thing is eventually to reimpose the ban on "assault weapons." Senators Biden, Feinstein et al knew what they were dealing with when they wrote that law, which unfortunately included an expiration date. Nobody needs to know the details of what is semi, what is automatic, etc. because nobody except soldiers needs those weapons. That is what people need to know, not the details that only gun enthusiasts want to know about. The purpose of posts like Justin's is to convince people that some of these "assault" or semi/automatic weapons are not as bad as others and are OK. They are NOT OK, and should be banned like they were before.

Xer H said "I have so little faith in Washington's ability to create wise regulation that I'm opposed to anything they attempt to do." That's the sort of remark David is talking about.

...
I put "other side" in quotes, because I am actually kinda for gun control. I know enough to know that more than a few states aren't doing what they should to keep firearms out of the hands of people who would misuse them. I think it's alarming that, in 2011, it's possible for someone to make death threats and then go out and buy a firearm.

That's a pretty big deal.

But the stuff that people are saying here is mostly that guns (and cannons and decommissioned military vehicles) are scary, Red-state culture is icky, and really important distinctions between various classes of firearms are irrelevant. And now, with your latest contribution to the discussion, we learn that 13ers have yet to learn the value of civilization.

It's a pretty madcap discussion, really.

The main issue is to improve gun control, and also mental health care, etc. But gun control is part of larger political and cultural framework that also needs discussion, largely because opponents of gun control are always over-reacting, and are making guns easier to get and carry for anybody. And the whole question of our desire for and obsession with guns in America is something that needs discussion, in addition to the immediate (but not likely to be fulfilled) need now to get better gun control or "workability of the system." People need to awaken to the value of life, and that it is more important than the sport of hunting, and that the need for self-defense can be met in other ways.

Tha amazing thing about the TV report and the graphic on wikipedia is how in recent years it has become easier in those 37 heartland states to carry a concealed weapon. It is a striking demonstration of how we have been going backwards politically in the last 30 years, while other countries go forward.

Originally Posted by The Rani

Uh ... WHAT???
Civilization has gone on just fine with an armed citizenry for a long, long time.
You are grasping at strawmen.

Nothing like today in the barbaric USA. And guns have only been around a century and a half.

Originally Posted by Semo '75

Hopefully you've moved to a place with more competent law enforcemment.

I don't think that people should be firing baseballs out of cannons at passing trucks, but with the regulations in place, the best the guy could manage with his (presumably legally acquired) cannon was the rough equivalent of throwing chunks of concrete onto passing cars from overpasses, something that some number of people do every year. So, in a way, the existing regulations worked, although your local police obviously dropped the ball after that.

He lived in the country in Southwestern New York, which is very gun-friendly and not prone to the police interferring in some things. If he had been growing weed, he may have had a harder time of it.

The only reason I know about this myself is fact that he lived next door when I was 7-8 and he was 12-13. A friend saw the story in the paper and passed it along.

He was a mean SOB even as a kid. I'm sure he never mellowed.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

The idea that because we can't trust the government, we have to arm ourselves, is apparently very emotionally satisfying to people (like Nomads) who have always had trouble trusting authority, perhaps because the authorities they were first exposed to didn't deserve their trust. That's perfectly natural. The problem with this idea is that it means the end of civilization.

Of course. Everyone knows that.

It is very emotionally-satisfying to imagine that God doesn't exist, and that we are responsible only to ourselves and the communities we choose for our actions. The problem with that idea is that it means the end of all morality.

...or does the argument only work when it's your limitations being challenged?

The whole idea of civilization is that instead of settling all disputes violently, man to man, or (more often) family to family...

Of course, no one here is aiming for the resolution of all disputes by armed combat. That's just a silly strawman on your part. What we are doing is pointing out that the ability of a party to make use of a civilized means of dispute-resolution very often relies upon that party's ability to make uncivilized means used against him... pay off poorly.

As has been pointed out here over and over, the power of nonviolent means of justice rests on the threat of violent means as their only alternative. If some parties give up the threat of violence, they leave all the power to the parties that remain willing to crack heads.
That's just history... something I would think you aware of...

Originally Posted by wtrg8

Remember the movie, Amerika. I believe it came out in 81 or 82 out of Liberal fear of an all-out nuclear war with Russia. Instead it went without a whimper which conditioning us for UN oversight.

We are seeing 1984, Minority Report and Equilibrium slowly coming about with the Demicans each and every day.

I don't remember the movie Amerika. But I do remember the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" which came out around the same time. I also remember that there was note sent home by the schools with all the kids regarding that movie. It basically said, "We know lot of you are planning on watching this movie, but we just want you to be aware that there are a lot disturbing images in it, so make sure that if your kid watches it, you are with them." Which was kind of weird all it's self. Like they wanted us to watch it, but also forewarned us it could bother us...But if "Amerika" was like "The Day After Tomorrow" they were a dime a dozen back then. The list of the post apocalyptic movies that came out in the late 70's and through the 80's is too long to even list.

Originally Posted by Dedalus

Your attempt at character assassination is irrelevant to the argument. I wasn't asking you, but answer the question. You gonna break into the house with the armed owner, or the one with the unarmed owner?

Hysteria? Dude, I am an Xer from a blue collar city, we grew up with more violence than the howdy-doody childhood of the previous generation. Do you keep up with current events? Crime might be on the decline, but it isn't extinct.

I don't live in fear of crime, but I lock my doors and keep my wits about me.

Don't try to skirt the question by trying to paint the questioner as paranoid.

Do they have signs on houses where you live? If not, then how do the "bad guys" know?

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

The purpose of posts like Justin...

Whoathere. You didn't read my post, refused to read it even when recommended, then bragged about sustaining your ignorance.

And yet, you want to describe the purpose of it? What the fuck, man? You've go no idea what the purpose of my post is -- no more than I have any idea what the plot of Glee is.

You have no fucking clue what the purpose of my post was -- and that's what you set out to achieve. Ignorance. Congratulations for setting a goal and sticking to it, I guess. But until you've alleviated your abject self-imposed ignorance, you're just spewing bullshit. (I don't pretend to have any meaningful opinions on Glee... that's just how ignorance works)

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

..guns have only been around a century and a half.

Wow. Did Cortez massacre the Aztecs with spitballs?

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

The main issue is to improve gun control, and also mental health care, etc. But gun control is part of larger political and cultural framework that also needs discussion, largely because opponents of gun control are always over-reacting, and are making guns easier to get and carry for anybody. And the whole question of our desire for and obsession with guns in America is something that needs discussion, in addition to the immediate (but not likely to be fulfilled) need now to get better gun control or "workability of the system." People need to awaken to the value of life, and that it is more important than the sport of hunting, and that the need for self-defense can be met in other ways.

I submit that better results might be achieved if we adopt a main issue of reducing violence in our society. Gun control needs discussion but is only a small part of the picture. From one of my previous posts:

Originally Posted by RyanJH

My original point is that effective attempts to reduce violence must not be reduced to a regulatory control argument. Professor Kaiser recently hypothesized that violence appears to have an urbanization component.

In addition to that, I hypothesize that violence is less a function of firearm regulatory controls and more a function of several other components including: urbanization, economic disparities, weakened civic institutions, cultural aspects, contact between disparate cultures - particularly if two or more are predisposed to violence and economic disparities unduly affect one or more of them, and Nomad archetypes passing through the ages of 14 to 24. I have not had time to research sufficient evidence for these but the post you quoted me did provide some evidence for the Nomad hypothesis.

Originally Posted by Semo '75

That's kind of a cheap shot, given that you've been arguing that cannons and decommissioned surplus vehicles should be outlawed outright because a guy once shot a baseball out of a cannon and some rich evil genius just might hire engineers to figure out a way to arm the vehicle again.

Who's paranoid here, exactly?

I have a hard time understanding why it's a good thing to allow anyone access to military weapons, but then, that's the business this country does best. Here's a jet fighter just sitting there. No huge investment needed. The armaments aren't that hard to acquire ... except for the Sidewinder missiles, of course.

FWIW, I never lock my doors. I have a dog. He barks. That's it.

Originally Posted by ASB65

I think there are other elements to the Xer view than just mistrust of government, although that is there too. But one thing that has become very apparent to me as I've read many different posts on all kind of different subject matters over the past year on this forum, is how very influenced the Xers were by all the post-apocalyptic movies, books and other media sources we grew up on. The image of a world destroyed, with gangs of thugs roaming around and having to have a gun to protect yourself and your food is very much ingrained in our minds and have become part of our psyche. I just think somewhere deep down inside we all have this fear those images we saw will some day come to pass.

We are the children of the cold war. Many of the early Xers or Jonesers lived under the constant knowledge that both Russia and the US had enough nukes to destroy the world ten times over. We weren't afraid of terrorist coming after us, like the millies are. We were afraid of the entire world being just gone in an instant. That's some pretty heavy stuff to have hanging over your head when you are kid. It's probably the Xers who are more likely to believe in all the 2012 stuff. As I've said before, when we were kids it wasn't really so much a question of if it was going to happen, but when it was going to happen. We have transfered the end the world scenarios from nukes to catastrophes caused by global warming or other types of threats to human kind.

So when people talk about having to arm themselves because the authorities may not be around to protect them, I have to wonder if they aren't subconsciously pulling out some of images they saw in the movies of that possible future and that is playing into it...Just a thought.

And remember, in all those movies we saw. If you didn't have gun. You were dead meat.

Every post-war Boomer grew up with this threat, too. As a '57 Boomer, I have vague memories of being in Kindergarten and having to go out in the hall for an air drill where we crouched and put our hands behind our necks. Now I know this was during the Cuban Missile Crisis. So this there must be other reasons for Xer points of view because most of us born after 1945 grew up under the threat of nuclear war.

Few "liberals" are trying to take people's guns away from them. That is a Big Lie. Many liberals I know have guns and the rest don't care.

Originally Posted by The Rani

Yeah, if you've never been shot, then why the paranoid hysteria about wanting to take everyone else's guns away?
And really, who is seriously afraid that someone is going to buy a jet fighter and start shooting up other people?

I asked a question. What's OK in the weapons department. No one answered the thermobaric and nuclear weapons questions, but you have to wonder why anyone thinks an artillery piece, to say nothing of a jet fighter, is something a civilian has any right owning. I feel even more strongly about 50-caliber sniper rifles. They are dangerous in and of themselves. I don't fly, but I've used artillery and sniper rifles. The aren't toys. They aren't even tools ... unless you plan to go out and break things.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Wow. Did Cortez massacre the Aztecs with spitballs?

Swords, actually. Swords and lances, deployed from horseback by men in armor. The muskets of the period existed and made loud noises, and even occasionally put a hole in someone, and I'm sure they scared and impressed the locals no end. But the horses and armor were even more impressive and impressed the locals even more. And were very effective weapons of war against Central American-level equipment.

As to what massacred them, I'm afraid you'll have to give a lot of the credit to some very nasty bacteria. Yes, there were plagues in amongst the more spectacular clashes to troops, and remember, virgin-field epidemics?

Originally Posted by annla899

Every post-war Boomer grew up with this threat, too. As a '57 Boomer, I have vague memories of being in Kindergarten and having to go out in the hall for an air drill where we crouched and put our hands behind our necks. Now I know this was during the Cuban Missile Crisis. So this there must be other reasons for Xer points of view because most of us born after 1945 grew up under the threat of nuclear war.

Few "liberals" are trying to take people's guns away from them. That is a Big Lie. Many liberals I know have guns and the rest don't care.

You are 8 years older than me. So there really isn't a whole lot of difference in the world we grew up in. You just probably have more of a clearer memory and understanding of some of the earlier stuff than I do. I don't recall any air raid drills in school. I guess by the time I got into school, they had pretty much decided if there was a nuke dropped on us, we were pretty much dead on the spot anyway.

And you are right about liberals and guns. I've said it before and I will say it again. I grew up in card carrying union worker, Democratic, UAW land. And all those factory workers who were staunch democrats hunted and owned guns. When I was in high school there was a hunting club that was a school sponsored, extra-curricular activity. Yeah, democrats own guns too.

Originally Posted by The Rani

I think you're talking about "The Day After."
Were people really "afraid" of nuclear war? I don't know anyone kid-wise who actually worried about it at all. It was more like we figured that it could happen, but what can you do? Gotta keep living your life.

That was it, the "The Day After". I think there was another movie that came out later called the "The Day After Tomorrow". I must have gotten the titles mixed up. I think we kids did worry about it to a degree. It was there, and we talked about the possibility of it happening. But yes, we did for the most part shrug our shoulders and say, "What will be, will be." But I do think those visions were part of our growing up experience and are those images are still with us to a degree.

Originally Posted by ASB65

You are 8 years older than me. So there really isn't a whole lot of difference in the world we grew up in. You just probably have more of a clearer memory and understanding of some of the earlier stuff than I do. I don't recall any air raid drills in school. I guess by the time I got into school, they had pretty much decided if there was a nuke dropped on us, we were pretty much dead on the spot anyway.

And you are right about liberals and guns. I've said it before and I will say it again. I grew up in card carrying union worker, Democratic, UAW land. And all those factory workers who were staunch democrats hunted and owned guns. When I was in high school there was a hunting club that was a school sponsored, extra-curricular activity. Yeah, democrats own guns too.

In the early 80s, for whatever reason, I thought that we would have the big one. And, as I think you've mentioned you did in another post, I want to be at the center of the bull's eye if the bomb dropped. Let me be a shadow on the wall.

I can recall a quote from a medical person who discussed the after effects of nuclear war: The living will envy the dead.

Guns are very small in comparison. Even at the screaming site of liberalism, the Daily Kos, there's a group who are big gun-owners and supporters.

It isn't simple, as you point out.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

Swords, actually. Swords and lances, deployed from horseback by men in armor. The muskets of the period existed and made loud noises, and even occasionally put a hole in someone, and I'm sure they scared and impressed the locals no end. But the horses and armor were even more impressive and impressed the locals even more. And were very effective weapons of war against Central American-level equipment.

As to what massacred them, I'm afraid you'll have to give a lot of the credit to some very nasty bacteria. Yes, there were plagues in amongst the more spectacular clashes to troops, and remember, virgin-field epidemics?

D'oh! I should've known better than to go back that far. I was thinking of Tenochtitlan, though. That one was one of the few ones where firepower mattered (altho the artillery, to be fair, was a bit more significant than the arquebus).

---
-edit-
Tho smallpox did its part there, too. And no small part they had, those pesky white-man's microbes.

Ehrenreich: A call to protest ignites a call to arms

By Barbara Ehrenreich
Posted: 01/28/2011 01:00:00 AM MST

Why are Americans such wusses? Threaten the Greeks with job losses and benefit cuts and they tie up Athens, but take away Americans' jobs, 401(k)s, even their homes, and they pretty much roll over. Tell British students that their tuition is about to go up and they take to the streets; American students just amp up their doses of Prozac.

The question has been raised many times in the last few years, by a variety of scholars and commentators — this one included — but when the eminent social scientist Frances Fox Piven brought it up at the end of December in an essay titled "Mobilizing the Jobless," all hell broke loose. An editor of Glenn Beck's website, theblaze.com, posted a piece sporting the specious headline "Frances Fox Piven Rings in the New Year by Calling for Violent Revolution," and, just two weeks before the Tucson shootings, the death threats started flying.

Many of the most provocative comments have been removed from the site's comment section, but at one time they included such charming posts as: "Bring it on biotch (sic). we're armed to the teeth." Or: "We're all for violence and change, Francis (sic). Where do your loved ones live?"

If the dozens of Beck fans rhetorically brandishing their weapons at Piven were all CEOs, bankers, hedge fund operators and so forth — i.e., the kind of people who have the most to lose from mass protests by the unemployed — all this might make more sense. But somehow, and I may be naive about these things, it's hard to imagine a multimillionaire suggesting that "folks buy battle carbines with folding or collapseable (sic) stocks and 16(-inch) barrels so they can be more easily hidden under jackets and such. Also, buy in NATO-approved calibers (5.56/.223, 7.62/.308) so you can resupply ammo from the bodies of your enemies too."

One of Piven's would-be assassins even admits to being out of work, a condition he or she blames, oddly enough, on Piven herself, adding that "we should blowup (her) office and home." So perhaps economically hard-pressed Americans aren't wusses after all. They may not have the courage or the know-how to organize a protest at the local unemployment office, which is the kind of action Piven urged in her December essay, but they stand ready to shoot the first 78-year-old social scientist who suggests that they do so.

Americans were not always so myopic that they saw the world through the cross-hairs of their rifle sights. During the depression of 1892 to 1896, unemployed workers marched to Washington by the thousands in what was then the largest mass protest this country had seen. In 1932, even more jobless people — 25,000 — staged what was, at that time, the largest march on Washington, demanding public works jobs and a hike in the inheritance tax. From the '60s to the '80s, Americans marched again and again — peacefully, nonviolently and by the hundreds of thousands — for civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, economic justice and against wars. In fact, this has been a major focus of Piven's scholarly work over the years — the American tradition of protest and resistance to economic injustice — and it's a big enough subject to keep hundreds of academics busy for life.

There are all kinds of explanations for how Americans lost their grass-roots political mojo: iPods have been invoked, along with computer games and anti-depressants. And, of course, much of the credit goes to the so-called populist right of the Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck persuasion, which argues that the real enemy of the down-and-out is not the boss or the bank but the "liberal elite" represented by people like Piven.

But at least part of the explanation is guns themselves — or, more specifically, the recent and uniquely American addiction to high-powered personal weaponry. Although ropes and bombs are also mentioned, most of the people threatening Piven on Beck's website referred lovingly to their guns, often by caliber and number of available rounds. As Joan Burbick, author of the 2006 book, "Gun Show Nation: Gun Culture and American Democracy," has observed, "The act of buying a gun can mimic political action. It makes people feel as if they are engaging in politics of political protest." She quotes one gun enthusiast: "Whenever I get mad at the government, I go out and buy a gun." Jobless and overwhelmed by bills? Hunker down in the basement and polish your Glock.

Never mind that there are only a few ways you can use a gun to improve your economic situation: You can hock it. You can deploy it in an armed robbery. Or you can use it to shoot raccoons for dinner.
But there is one thing you can accomplish with guns and coarse threats about using them: You can make people think twice before disagreeing with you. When a congresswoman can be shot in a parking lot and a professor who falls short of Glenn Beck's standards of political correctness can be, however anonymously, targeted for execution, we have moved well beyond democracy — to a tyranny of the heavily armed.


Read The Denver Post's Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse

Originally Posted by ASB65

I don't remember the movie Amerika. But I do remember the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" which came out around the same time. I also remember that there was note sent home by the schools with all the kids regarding that movie. It basically said, "We know lot of you are planning on watching this movie, but we just want you to be aware that there are a lot disturbing images in it, so make sure that if your kid watches it, you are with them." Which was kind of weird all it's self. Like they wanted us to watch it, but also forewarned us it could bother us...But if "Amerika" was like "The Day After Tomorrow" they were a dime a dozen back then. The list of the post apocalyptic movies that came out in the late 70's and through the 80's is too long to even list.

This is actually one of the more interesting generational differences. I grew up ducking a covering in the DC suburbs and watching atomic tests on TV. (I was rather flabbergasted about a dozen years ago when I met a Boomer exactly my age who grew up in Utah--one morning her father had taken the whole family to a mountain top to watch an atomic test. She still remembers it vividly.) Then came the missile crisis, the test ban, and, under Nixon, SALT, and the Awakening, and I relaxed. When Reagan came in and started beating those drums I was incredulous. "Are you kidding?" I thought. But for a 15-year old like Amy I suppose it looked like the real thing.

I remember watching a few minutes of Amerika, which actually was a miniseries on TV. It was boring beyond belief.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

This is actually one of the more interesting generational differences. I grew up ducking a covering in the DC suburbs and watching atomic tests on TV. (I was rather flabbergasted about a dozen years ago when I met a Boomer exactly my age who grew up in Utah--one morning her father had taken the whole family to a mountain top to watch an atomic test. She still remembers it vividly.) Then came the missile crisis, the test ban, and, under Nixon, SALT, and the Awakening, and I relaxed. When Reagan came in and started beating those drums I was incredulous. "Are you kidding?" I thought. But for a 15-year old like Amy I suppose it looked like the real thing.

I remember watching a few minutes of Amerika, which actually was a miniseries on TV. It was boring beyond belief.

Yes, it did for me. Maybe my perspective is different from others born around the same time as me. That is possible. There was no real love for Reagan in the town I grew up in. (Another thing that separates me from other Xers who, from what I hear, supposedly grew up under Reagan worship). In my town, when we kids listened to adults around us, they talked about how hawkish Reagan was and they insinuated to us kids that he would lead us into war. (And that war would be a nuclear between us and Russia) I was a senior in high school when the Grenada invasion happened. I remember my friends and I were freaked out about that because it was the doing of the "evil war hawk" Reagan. And that, of course, turned out to be nothing. But that fear even carried over into adulthood for me with war. When we got into the first Gulf War, I was worried. I didn't know what to think. The only real memory I had of war had been sketchy memories of Vietnam as a young child. I was really scared when the first Gulf war happened because my husband and all my male relatives, including my brother and all my male cousins, were all between the ages of 18 and 26 at the time, and I was really scared there would be a draft and they would get drafted.

So maybe it is just me.

Originally Posted by The Rani

I think you're talking about "The Day After."
Were people really "afraid" of nuclear war? I don't know anyone kid-wise who actually worried about it at all. It was more like we figured that it could happen, but what can you do? Gotta keep living your life.

Here's what I remember regarding "The Day After".

ABC Discussion w/Ted Koppel post movie-airing. I remember The Sagan saying: "Oh this movie is nothing; In reality it would be WAY WORSE! WTF!!!!!!!!(LOL)

"Nuclear Winter"! Brrrrrrrrr!(LOL)

Here's a link to part 2:
http://www.fuzzymemories.tv/index.ph...videoclip-1822

Boy, the vocabulary that these guys(uh, gentlemen) use is so sorely missing these days.

Let's see what Generation these guys are:
William F Buckley Jr(1925)
Hank Kissinger(1923)
Carl Sagan(1934)
Elie Wiesel(1928)
Brent Scowcroft(1925)
Bob McNamara(1916)

GIs and Artists. What a Panel!!!!!!
I love how The Buckley refuses to alter(dumb-down) his vocabulary for an understanding from a wider audience.

Why can't we have these discussions currently? News Commentary is completely embarassing compared to these guys.