Dana Blankenhorn

Park Row

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 30 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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The difference between a journalist and a blogger is a paycheck.

What I was taught at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism, back in 1977, was that “a journalist is someone who works for someone who buys ink by the barrel.” That was later updated to “a journalist is someone who works for someone who buys bandwidth by the gigabit.” Although the last should be amended, since most web sites are not journalistic enterprises.

The key phrase above is “works for someone.” A journalist is someone who works for someone. They're an employee. They get a pay check, maybe benefits and a retirement plan. They are subject to ethics imposed by their employer. The employer can pull their press card at any time. The journalist, in other words, is under the publisher's control. And the publisher is subject to business ethics, not journalistic ones.

Habitualization

by Robin Blankenhorn

Habitualization is just a big fancy word for creating habits based on stimulation in your environment.

One of the best examples children learn is of a dog who, when he heard a bell would come running because he knew that the bell mean food. Zookeepers do this all the time to get their charges to do simple things that help with veterinary check ups.

Another example from my own life is train horns. I grew up in the same house all my life. This house is situated a little over 20 meters from the closest train tracks. All day and night there are trains coming and going.

Breaking the Cycle of Gun Addiction

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 29 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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As drugs were to the 1970s, so guns are to our time.

Drugs like heroin, LSD and cocaine gave an illusion of pleasure and invulnerability to people 40 years ago. Guns today also provide an illusion of safety, and invulnerability.

The sense of invulnerability in the 1970s is exemplified by J.J. Cale's song “Cocaine,” from 1976.  

“She don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie...cocaine.”  

That's the main lyric. But, of course, cocaine does lie. It's always lied. It lied to John Pemberton (who included it in his original formula for Coca-Cola) and it lied to Sigmund Freud (who thought it therapeutic). It was lying to Eric Clapton when he recorded the song – he has since claimed that it's subtly anti-drug. (That's right, and Bruce Springsteen's “Born in the USA” was an anti-Reagan song. The music means what the public decides it means, not what the artist intends.)

Guns are a lot like cocaine. We know they're dangerous, but in a dangerous time those who are addicted insist they're not. Every week, little kids are dying from finding guns in parents' drawers and playing with them, just like crack babies died in the 1980s.

As a drug, guns are in fact more lethal than cocaine, than LSD, than heroin, because they instantly kill people who have nothing to do with them. For instance, a waitress near the New Jersey border with Pennsylvania was hit in the back by a .22 caliber bullet while working on the bar's deck. Just one of 45 incidents compiled by David Waldman by googling through newspapers.

A University of Pennsylvania study in 2009 showed gun owners more than 4 times as likely to be shot, and more than 4 times as likely to be killed, by guns, as non gun owners. You could say the same thing about cocaine 40 years ago – users were probably that much more likely to die young than non-users.

Arguments for guns sound increasingly like arguments against drug prohibition, with the added lunacy that the Second Amendment is “absolute.” (No amendment is.) They also sound increasingly irrational. But what do you expect when it's those who are addicted to something who are doing the arguing for it.

The solution here is not in the hands of the state, and it's not in the hands of non-gun owners. It's in the hands of gun owners. Prohibition didn't end alcohol addiction in the 1920s, and gun laws won't end gun addiction in our time.

The way forward is the same sort of 12 step program alcoholics go through. Admit you're an addict, find a higher power, make an inventory of the gun addiction and then start trying to make amends. You live without guns one day at a time. It's the only way.

What will it take for this to happen? What will it take for people to “just say no” to guns?

Based on history, it's going to take time. The drug culture raged throughout the 1970s, in large part, because people chose that culture over a mainstream culture that had rejected them.

When people dropped out of politics in the 1970s, they ceased caring of things outside themselves, and they found solace in physicality of all sorts – sex, drugs, rock and roll, even running. Most of those who dropped out had been liberals, they'd been against Nixon and against the war, they'd been for civil rights. But their views were rejected, soundly, repeatedly, and they dropped out.

The numbers on drug addiction, of course, didn't start trending decisively downward until the society began to age out. Addiction is, by and large, a young person's game. They can handle it, and they can lie to themselves that the damage they see in the mirror isn't real.

It's also, mainly, a man's game. Yes, there are female addicts. But most women I know who went into addiction followed a man there.

The same is true for gun addiction. Gun addicts increasingly realize that society is rejecting them. Their politics are increasingly unpopular. Hiding behind gun addiction is one great way to ignore all that, and claim it's not happening.

But it's a lie. Addiction of all kinds is a lie you tell yourself.

How someone reaches the bottom here is unclear to me. Is it when their kid is killed after finding one of their guns, or when the cost of buyng guns and ammunition starts taking away from other things? Or does it happen slowly, as the gun owner realizes how much money is being wasted, and slowly tapers off?

I don't know. I do know that this is not something I, a non gun-owner, can solve. It's not something the state could solve, even if all guns were prohibited tomorrow. It's something only a gun owner can solve, by putting down the weapon, by separating it from its ammunition permanently, and eventually by walking away.

Hopefully, our nation's past experience with alcohol and drug addiction will accelerate that process. But I'm not holding my breath. When the solution to a problem lies in people changing, the only thing you can do is walk away, and wait.

 

The Riding Goes Deep

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 28 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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Back in April I wrote about the 4^th Riding of the KKK mainly in terms of the Republican leadership.

But leaders don't go where their followers won't. This riding of the Klan, like all previous ridings, is based in the grassroots.

The first riding was based on a real fear that blacks were taking over the government. Reconstruction made white voters ineligible to vote in the 1860s, so blacks did take over, and the purpose of the riding was to put blacks back in “their place,” a virtual slavery to replace what was now illegal.

The second riding, which coincided with the fall of populism early in the last century, was designed to enforce Jim Crow laws, and pushed millions of blacks into the new industrial ghettoes of the north, which had a brief golden age in the 1920s.

The third riding, starting in the 1950s, was in reaction to the Civil Rights movement, and was designed to minimize the gains of Dr. King and his followers. That movement eventually metastacized into an uneasy racial peace, with whites becoming Republican and suburban while blacks were given the crumbling cities.

The Problem with Pet Doors

by Robin Blankenhorn

Cat doors are a very interesting invention. Not only are they loved by many, they also cause problems.

An interesting historical fact about the cat door. Did you know that Sir Issac Newton took time out of his busy schedule to invent the cat door? It was something I wanted growing up, but now I know better.

As a child, I sometimes hated having to open the door to let the cats in. However, as an adult I now can laugh at some of the stories of the cats' intelligence when they wanted in. Knowing when and where to cry when they wanted in is the main one.

Not only that, we also have stories from our former next-door neighbor who had a cat door. Mostly involving our cats going into their home. Stealing slippers, eating their cats food, and even bringing in a dead bird.

There are many more unsavory stories as well. (Picture from the Humane Society.)

Recently in the UK, there have been stories of foxes terrorizing people in their own homes. Today I found one that talked about someone who actually watched the fox use the cat door to get in before going after their cat.

At the beginning of the summer, I meet an old friend of my dad's who lives in Texas and learned his story of a raccoon coming in and stealing a loaf of bread many years ago.

Those neighbors I mentioned earlier, one morning they woke to find that there was a burglar trying to open the back door by going through the cat door.

Consolation Prize

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 27 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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Let's see what's at the cinema:

• After Earth  – A father-and-son find they can only rely on one another after everyone else has been forced to abandon it.
• Man of Steel – Superman turns out to be a farm boy who must choose to fight for Europe against his own people.
• This Is The End – Rich Hollywood stars, and Hollywood, get the apocalypse they deserve. (right)
• World War Z – Only one man can save us from the zombie apocalypse.
• White House Down – A black President and his White House must be saved by a white tourist.
• The Lone Ranger – This time, Tonto tells the tale. And the white guy is still the good guy.
• Red2  – The CIA saves the world from nuclear disaster. 

 

Notice what all these films have in common? They're generally about rugged individuals saving a complex civilization through the use of their rude simplicity. When liberals appear, they're the butt of the joke.

They are all, fundamentally, conservative.