I read most of Tom Clancy’s books until he started writing about a secret, privately financed, vigilante organization…a bit over the top for even this old thriller writer.  Up to that point and independent of his politics, I thought he could spin a good yarn backed by enough techno-babble that it all seemed real (see the Clancy quote running across the banner of this website).  In fact, I’d wager that some higher mucky-mucks in the Pentagon weren’t happy at times with his description of U.S. and Soviet military capabilities.

More importantly, Clancy covered an era from Cold War to counterterrorism.  His first two books, Hunt for Red October and Red Storm Rising, portrayed anti-Soviet operations featuring the U.S. Navy (the latter is an interesting Tolstoy-length account of what World War III might have been like).  The last books I read focused on terrorism (did the Japanese pilot who flew his aircraft into Congress in Debt of Honor provide ideas for the 9/11 terrorists?).  In between, he even touched on the emergence of China (The Bear and the Dragon), although he didn’t predict the kind of fascist capitalism that has taken over in that country.

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“Want cream or a gun with that latte?”  Starbucks allows you to have a gun with your bad coffee when the gun isn’t expressly prohibited by state law.  While I don’t expect anyone to shoot the barista because the company’s coffee is so bad, allowing guns seems a bad policy.  Of course, it’s bad policy to allow people to carry guns in the first place, no matter where you live (OK, maybe on the edge of Damascus, but they won’t help you against sarin gas).  Only people in special occupations should carry guns.  Period!

Recent cases around the U.S. present good evidence for gun control.  A disaster like what happened in Newtown would have occurred in Decatur, Georgia, if the school accountant hadn’t talked that mental case into putting down his weapons.  She earned my complete admiration.  But she, or anyone else, shouldn’t have to do that.  The crazy dude stole his automatic weapon from a neighbor.  Why did the neighbor have an automatic weapon?  Because he could.  It’s his right to have it for target practice (Why not something more challenging than a target shredder?  Why shouldn’t the range only allow rented guns?) and hunting (Can we equip the deer and other game with something as lethal against humans?).

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Politician’s are known for irresponsible hyperbole—for example, Dubya’s famous “Mission accomplished.”  Now Obama is guilty of bowing to media pressure and ready to declare an end to the war on terrorism.  My distrust of politicians grows day-by-day.  While the public should never expect too much from people who are mostly failed lawyers, I’m amazed at how politicians are so accustomed to bend in the wind that they continue doing it when it’s no longer necessary.  Obama will not run for re-election.  So, why is he discontinuing one of the only successful policies that have taken the war on terrorism to the terrorists?

Much handwringing has been done about drone strikes.  C’mon!  There are no American casualties.  And the number of “innocent civilians” who are victims, the so-called collateral damage, is far less than the number of casualties involved in the boots-on-the-ground approach in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Moreover, terrorists are cowards who tend to hide behind their women and children, who, like bin Laden’s extended family, are too often willing participants in al Qaeda’s tactics.  The handwringing by the media and other mentally challenged people, who are aghast at the surgical lethality of the drones, is uncalled for and gives no rest to the victims of terrorist attacks and their families and friends.

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Dennis Rodman made an ass of himself as an NBA player.  Now he’s playing diplomat—rather, Kim Jong Il’s favorite pal—and continuing to make an ass of himself.  There have been articles in our enlightened media on how this “basketball diplomacy” just might work.  BS!  That  theoretical flatulence has been quieted a bit after Rodman’s trip because the boy wonder of North Korea postures and threatens the West, testing missiles as a way to threaten South Korea and the U.S. in general and in their joint defense exercises.

Rodman must have had one too many blows to the head as other NBA players returned the hits from his flaying elbows.  He’s now certifiably crazy.  Or, completely naïve.  In any case, the North Korean dictator, in a fascistic variation of North Korea’s “three generation rule,” learned from granddaddy mostly because daddy was a moronic recluse.  Garcia-Marquez in his Autumn of the Patriarch painted a picture of the archetypical South American dictator.  Kim Jong Il makes Gabo’s dictator look like a choir boy.

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It might seem like forever, but only two weeks ago the American public had to face two acts filled with terror.  One of them was avoidable; the other, probably not.  The avoidable one was the fire and explosion at that fertilizer plant just seventy plus miles from Dallas in West, Texas.  The unavoidable one was the bombing at the Boston Marathon.

It’s ironic but expected that the event in Texas occurred where states’ rights and minimal federal government intervention is strong.  Our federal inspection system has been anemic at best, traditionally starved for funding and personnel and filled with corruption.  The GOP in general and the Tea Party in particular don’t want to fund anything that even carries the faint aroma of meddling in the affairs of the States, unless that meddling implies sending bacon back home to their constituent areas.  The sequestering will only exacerbate this.

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Readers of this blog know that I’ve long supported drones and special forces as effective ways to battle terrorism.  Now these tactics are coming into question in the liberal media.  The criticism contains the usual complaint that innocents can be killed.  It also complains about due process, especially for those terrorists who are also U.S. citizens.  The Obama administration has recognized the effectiveness of these policies.  Ironically, both sides of the political aisle are criticizing.  Maybe not ironic, but absurd—it’s as if all those NRA supporters in Congress have suddenly become vocal sycophants of the ACLU.

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Although I doubt any gun fanatic reads this blog, if you think you might be one, read the following characteristics.  Please note that I’m not talking about a gun enthusiast (simple hunter, skeet shooter, authentic target-range aficionado, etc.).  Again, if you don’t understand the difference between fanatic and enthusiast, read on.  For other people, some of the characteristics below might be amusing, others just plain sad…because there’s always truth in humor!

1) Go to a gun show and watch how a buyer picks up and caresses the weapon, whether he buys it or not.  If the gun seems to be just an extension of you-know-what, he’s a fanatic.  Don’t be surprised at the number of men you see doing this, even if their bathrooms aren’t loaded with porno pics.  Note that this doesn’t apply to women unless she has a particular kind of Freudian envy.  Or, she caresses the weapon while smiling at him.

2) If you’re out in the woods and run across a deer hunter—or any kind of hunter, for that matter—and he tries to convince you he needs an assault rifle to bring down his intended targets, you have a gun fanatic.  This definitely applies to women too.  By the way, what the hell are you doing in the woods during hunting season?  Hunters kill other people, even ones dressed in those loud orange clown suits they’re supposed to be wearing.  Without that suit, you’ll just look like game to them, even if the hunter you meet is like that sharpshooting GoDaddy CEO who’s out to kill an elephant.  Although most hunters, like Dick Cheney, can only hit the broad side of a judge, you can’t count on that!

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How appropriate!  It snowed in the Middle East.  If that’s not symbolic of the Arab spring turning to the Arab winter, I don’t know what is.  Even if we don’t have confidence in nuclear power, solar energy, or natural gas (especially fracking), it’s imperative that the U.S. become energy independent in order to avoid all the turmoil in that part of the world.  The longer I live, the more I believe that the Middle East is a hopeless case, a patient who is terminally ill and better off dead.  If R.I.P. has a political meaning, we should apply it to these troubled lands.  The world needs to move on.

Ben Ghazi showed that Libyans can’t control their own people—or al Qaeda has corrupted the political process.  We now find out that Mohamed Morsi, current President of Egypt and wannabe dictator, is on record saying three years ago that Israelis are “blood-suckers, who attack Palestinians” and “warmongers, the descendants of apes and pigs.”  Maybe he was just playing to his Islamic fundamentalist base, but this doesn’t bode well for future peace between Egypt and Israel.

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The massacre of twenty children and eight adults (teachers, the mother of the shooter, and the shooter) is a tragedy.  In other similar tragedies, gun enthusiasts have warned us about getting too emotional and tampering with a fundamental right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment…so they say.  The NRA, well-heeled lobbyist organization that it is, often leads the charge.  “Not over my dead body….”  Yes, I’m emotional.  This time the stats are against the NRA.  Twenty children.  I repeat: twenty little, helpless, and defenseless children.

The “fundamental right” these right-wing gun nuts talk about is the “right to bear arms.”  The Second Amendment says:  “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”  That opening phrase is key:  “A well regulated Militia….”  The whole amendment has become twisted to the point where certain states have returned to the days of Dodge City and allow concealed carry “for protection,” meaning that people like George Zimmerman can shoot an unarmed black kid and claim self-defense.  It has become twisted to the point where anyone can go to a gun show and arm themselves better than SWAT members on a police force, as seen a few years back in an armed robbery in LA (a recent news report on ABC news quoted an FBI statistic: they performed background checks and registered more than 150,000 guns that were sold on Black Friday this year—c’mon people, that’s paranoid, perverse, and obscene!).

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Tuesday’s post was about the social singularity that appears in my books and is currently happening in the real world.  One aspect of this is fundamentalism in politics.  Whether human beings are by nature fundamentalist savages or not, it’s clear that fundamentalism across the world is bringing human rights and responsible government to their knees.  Let me elaborate.

The hope of the Arab Spring is being dashed against the rocks by the stormy waters of Muslim fundamentalism.  Mubarak might have been a psychotic sociopath (most dictators are), but he was secular and held the dark forces of Muslim extremism at bay.  The current Egyptian leader, clearly desiring the power of his predecessor, is the other extreme.  It’s obvious that he and his followers want another Muslim theocracy in Egypt.

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