BELIEVE ME

I recently read an article about how teenage boys are getting recruited to the neo-Nazi movement in chat rooms associated with on-line gaming. A guy goes into chat with an anonymous partner in a game of alien blasting and finds out how he can put his murderous skills to work freeing America from undesirable people.

Cool!

In this article, a father is disturbed to find a lot of Nazi propaganda piled up on his printer, his son having forgotten to harvest the downloaded bounty. A conversation ensues, and so forth.

But don't fret. Before long, this kid turns out okay. The last line of the article points out the young fellow has taken to attending church.

All's well that ends well, right? What could come of church attendance that would cause a father to doubt its influence over an unformed mind?

Well...

You may recall a mass shooting in Pittsburgh, where a guy went into a Jewish temple and opened up on those he found there. His reasoning: All Jews must die.

On his anti-Semitic Web page, the man features a Bible quote from the Gospel of John. "Your father is the devil..." [John 8:44, King James Version]

So says Jesus to the Jews.

But there are many translations of the Bible. I believe the shooter's quote was more like: "Jews are the spawn of Satan."

Powerful words, brother.

If you're not supposed to suffer a witch to live (it's somewhere in the Old Testament), what are you meant to do with the children of the devil himself?

It seems the shooter was taking his orders from the Word of God: All Jews must die!

It's not clear, however, if the whole "Jews are Devil-spawn" thing is supposed to be taken literally. It might just be a rhetorical position, hardly more than a figure of speech.

Jesus is in the Temple, arguing with the Pharisees about his story. He was sent to Earth by God, right? But he's having trouble getting any traction with these people.

The Temple leaders say he is just boasting—and lying, to boot.

Jesus points out that when two witnesses say the same thing, it must be true. He's one of the witnesses, and God is the second. So there!

His audience is not convinced.

Jesus says he's going his way, and where he goes, they can't follow. Why not? "Ye are from beneath; I am from above," he says. They will die in their sins, precisely because they don't know him.

(Elsewhere in John it is stated the only way to the Father is through the Son.)

Jesus says: "If God were your Father, ye would love me; for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me."

Jesus then speculates on why these guys don't get it. "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it."

The Jews of the Temple can't believe the truth of God because they don't come from God. It's that simple. Jesus speaks the truth because his father is God, and of course God always speaks the truth (just as the Devil always speaks lies).

If you knew God, Jesus says, you'd know me. I know God, so I know the truth. If I said I didn't know God, then I'd be a liar like you guys.

The Pharisees had earlier claimed their father was Abraham. Jesus taunts them by saying: "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it and was glad."

The Jews are perplexed, saying Jesus is not old enough to have known Abraham.

Jesus says, "Before Abraham was, I am."

Well, that tears it. The Jews gather up stones to put paid to this nonsense, but Jesus has slipped out unnoticed. (They'll get another shot at him later.)

In all this, the logic of Jesus is flawed. When he appeals to the law of the land regarding witnesses, he's forgetting that the Jews are only getting the testimony of one of those witnesses.

But surely God wouldn't lie. And the Son of God would therefore also not lie, since he wants to please his father.

Jesus implies the truth is so obvious only the sons of the Devil would have trouble perceiving it.

It's reminiscent of the logical conundrum about the island where there are two tribes, one of which always tell the truth and the other always lies. If your time is spent in the company of those who always tell the truth, you'll get in the habit of believing anything those guys tell you.

Clearly, the Jews haven't been trained to believe everything they hear. They must therefore be from the cynical side of the island, where nobody believes anything.

Jesus knows he's telling the truth, so if those guys aren't getting it, there has to be something wrong with them. Something genetic.

(It is not permitted to consider the possibility Jesus might himself be mistaken.)

All of this is from the Gospel of John, the last to be written, and the one most anti-Jew. Perhaps his readers would have little trouble believing this stuff, since everybody knew (by then) Jesus was telling the truth about his origin. According to the story, Jesus was resurrected after his death on the cross. There's your proof, okay? (Even Doubting Thomas came on board.) Belief in Jesus as the Son of God predated John's Gospel by eighty or ninety years.

For the uninitiated, however, there would be problems with the logic of this episode. Unless you already hated Jews for some other reason. Then you might go along with it, taking from Scripture another fat data point on your graph.

Another reason to oil up your weapons and catch a ride to the Temple.

NOT NEARLY ENOUGH

Less than two weeks ago, at the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, CA, a gunman walked into an event called College Country Night and killed a dozen people, including a Deputy Sheriff.

This is something that happens now, more and more often.

Folks wonder what to do about it. And in support of the idea of doing something about it, a local sports team wore shirts with the word "enough" on it.

See, we've seen this stuff before, and we're tired of it. Enough is enough, right? Let's take action to make sure it never happens again.

A happy sentiment, but is it even possible?

Folks have a wish list. They want better background checks. They want no more easy access to assault rifles. They want smaller magazines for guns that use magazines. And so forth.

(The shooter used a handgun, not an assault rifle, but he had an illegally large capacity magazine.)

Outraged folks want to see fewer guns in circulation.

Others think more guns is the answer. Donald Trump, for instance, suggested armed security guys could have reduced the number of dead at the Borderline Bar & Grill. He'd also like to see teachers packing heat in the classroom.

Let's take a quick look.

There are two ways to pack a weapon: concealed and revealed.

Determined gunmen will have to add this to their plans: blast all armed security personnel right up front. Plain-clothed security, however, could be a hiccup.

You might think letting everybody in the joint carry concealed weapons would be an absolute deterrent, but shooters are generally okay with dying at the end of the night. More guns in the building might boost the challenge factor for these suicidal folks.

In the case of school shootings, teachers would necessarily be shot in greater numbers, just in case, since they might be strapped. No need to see bulges under their shirts, just take 'em out on spec.

I worry this might be the rule of thumb: The greater the number of guns in play, the larger the body count.

Still, having some "good guys with guns" is likely to catch on, especially if insurance companies get involved. But as soft targets morph into hard targets, we might simply see fewer singletons and more team efforts aiming to hit the headlines. (Posthumously, of course.)

Also, consider this: The more soft targets there are, the more relaxed potential shooters might be. But if lone gunmen see the trend heading in the wrong direction, they might decide the time to act was sooner rather than later. As the whole enterprise becomes too difficult, expect a flurry of hastily-planned shootings.

The fact is, soft targets soak up shooters, getting them out of the game. Eventually the number of possible participants will go down—but at an enormous cost.

So much for more guns. What about fewer guns?

It's problematical. There is already a shitload of guns out there right now. Many champions of the Second Amendment have substantial arsenals. Every notable shooting incident spurs gun owners to descend upon gun shops, looking to upgrade their collections before much touted draconian laws can slam the door in their faces.

(They needn't worry. After every outrageous shooting, state laws tend to loosen up, in favor of more guns. And federal laws? Fugettaboudit!)

As for enhanced background checks, most would-be shooters are not messed up enough to be hassled by such measures. Besides, parents and neighbors are an excellent source of firepower, and those guys never get uptight about a gun they don't know is missing.

Here's the thing: Dedicated shooters will probably always find a way.

Plus this: Reducing the number of available guns means going well beyond gun control. We're talking gun confiscation.

And that way lies madness. And oceans of blood.

(As the saying goes: "Out of my cold, dead hand!")

This is clearly a gun-toting nation, and changing that might be impossible.

Gun enthusiasts think owning guns is protected by the Constitution. They're wrong, but it doesn't matter. The Second Amendment suggests this country might need a bunch of armed citizens to defend it, but that's no longer true. We have a standing army now, and the National Guard, so we don't need private gun owners to mount the barricades.

The Second Amendment is obsolete and should itself be amended. But the most likely fix would be to remove the first half of that sentence, eliminating the conditional phrase that causes so much trouble. Gun people already ignore it, possibly because they can't understand it. Cut that part, and we're good to go.

I expect we will remain a nation of guns for a long time. Even the Borderline shooter, who posted to social media during his outing, predicted nothing would ever be done to stop folks like him.

But hey, put on your "Enough!" shirt. Wear it proudly.

Sometimes the shooters need a focal point to start the ball.

OUR GRUMPY PRESIDENT

In his press conference following the mid-term election—the same one where a reporter threw a female intern to the ground and stomped on her face (according to the White House, sort of)—Donald Trump declared victory, as he is wont to do.

That's right, he's sitting on top of the world, everything going his way!

Okay, maybe a couple of glitches coming out of the Democrat-controlled House, starting this January.

Trump was asked if he could compartmentalize events from the House, let those guys start investigations of him and still act in a professional manner when legislation came his way.

He said he would not. If the Dems attack him, he would apparently refuse to do his job.

Now, I'm no expert of Constitutional law, but that grumpy fellow might have right there committed an impeachable offense.

How can he refuse to be president and expect to remain president?

I don't know if he was asked about the impending tax break for middle-income folks, but he seems to have stopped yapping about it during chopper-talk moments. Before the election, he kept saying they were going to "put it in."

I think he meant there were going to put it into a big wooden box so it could be stored in that warehouse where they keep the Ark of the Covenant.

We'll probably never hear about it again.

(At least, not until just before the 2020 election.)

He's also quieted down a lot about the impending migrant "invasion" from Mexico. (This was the subject the reporter was asking about when he took a moment to strangle the young intern and hide her body in the White House basement, thereby losing his library card and the persistence discount on his car insurance. Pretty sure that's what Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.)

Didn't get him everything, but for all we know, the Republicans picked up a couple Senate seats out of Trump's shameless fear-mongering speeches about the mounting threat from the South.

(The Republicans pulled the same trick a few years back, when they promoted a world-class [and award-winning] lie in an attempt to sink the Affordable Care Act, insisting the legislation included "death panels" to decide which members of our elderly population would get treatment.)

As I've said before, the best way to keep folks from crossing our southern border is to make Mexico an economic paradise nobody would dream of leaving.

Along those lines, one thing we'd have to do would be to create a US that is free of foreign drugs. If there wasn't so much money to be made supplying Americans with dope, Mexico would not be terrorized by gun-happy entrepreneurs.

Good news! We're already making a start on this: homegrown (and legal) pot is making its mark (despite federal laws), plus Big Pharma is stepping up to flood the market with tasty opioids for our citizens to nosh on.

Not willing to wait for this process to do its job, Trump is still insisting Congress fund the building of his border wall. (He no longer mentions the requirement for Mexico to pay for the thing.) As he's made clear in the past, he's prepared to shut down the government unless he gets his way.

Fold this position into his petulance over a Democrat-ruled House, and we may be in for a couple more years of turmoil and inaction.

Exactly what the doctor ordered—for China and Russia.

SHOULD YOU VOTE?

On the eve of the mid-term election, this question comes up: Why vote?

The answer is—or should be—it depends.

If there are local measures on the ballot, you might want to stomp on that flaming bag of poop before the whole neighborhood goes up. Or vote to keep things going in the right direction.

In a perfect world, you wouldn't even have to do that.

And I don't mean a literally perfect world, a supernaturally perfect world, where God or some such authority guarantees the Best of All Possible Worlds.

I mean a world where the machinery operates the way it was designed.

We in America have what is called representative government. In such a system, it matters not in the least which one of those dirt-bags gets elected. Their opinion on any subject is irrelevant.

(Unless it is the idiot's opinion that government is itself irrelevant, which means your newly-minted representative plans not to do a lick of work in Washington.)

Theoretically, the critters who occupy the Capitol are supposed to do what their constituents want them to do. In every case, world without end, amen.

What that willful creature would rather do doesn't matter.

And by constituents I mean the people residing in the appropriate geographical area. All the people who live there, not just those who voted for the geek.

See, you shouldn't have to vote for the bastard to own his ass. That guy or gal is your bitch. They have to do whatever the eff you want—as long as what you want is what the majority in your area wants.

In this lovely world, you don't need to vote the ding-dong in, you just need to be able to fire his ass when the time comes.

(And to make this easier, we should probably have seriously short term limits. Like one term for senators, maybe two terms for representatives. Any more time in office and they might start trying to grow a brain. What a mess that would be for a properly operating representative government!)

Unfortunately, the system has been hijacked by hangers-on and lobbyists. Folks stay in Washington way too long. They start lording it over the newcomers, as if getting reelected over and over is some sort of accomplishment.

It's mostly our fault. We pick people based on how they represent themselves to us, then let them do whatever they want. That's a complete abdication of our rights.

Power shifts as the money flows. Influence is king. Representation is out.

Everything is held together with duct tape and boogers.

Now should you vote?

I don't know. Could be too late...