Lindy, crazy American gun nuts perhaps don't understand how pleasant it is to live in a place where people on farms have guns because they need to shoot animals sometimes [ducks, swan, rabbits, possums, deer, pigs, cattle] but nobody else does [unless they are a city-slicker who enjoys duck-hunting in season, or deer, or possums or pigs etc]. It's nicer to not need them than to win the arms race against the neighbours, school mates and work colleagues.
<Hey, it is getting awards from everybody around the Globe that does not like us, >
Lindy, the USA does have some very funny ideas, traits, and habits. But hey, some of my best friends have weird ideas, traits and habits, so I'm not racist. It's not illegal to laugh at Americans is it? There are some excellent American jokes around now. They used to be Irish jokes, or jokes about blondes, or poofters or other amusing stereotypes, but Americans are great! Perfect material for humour. Taking themselves far too seriously, puffing themselves up to be the greatest country the planet has ever seen with the greatest this that and the other and the highest and mightiest, the most perfect, with the most perfect people and most wonderful sense of freedom. Giggle....
Humans have been around a long time and hubris isn't a new word. Pride comes before a ? The bigger they are, the harder they ? Childhood wisdom is often forgotten in the transition through puberty and the frenzy of sexuality, which has gone totally ape [literally] in the USA. Heck, I now get swarms of females in my email who have obviously heard that I am one hot guy because they show me intimate details of their gynaecology and what they just love guys like me doing to them. Movies are full of it. The F word [not freedom] is used like punctuation in movies.
In that frenzy, it's easy to forget age old verities, tried and tested in the crucible of human survival and happiness for millennia.
My first culture shock on first leaving these shores on the Fairsky [a ship] way back in 1974 [I had seen tv and books and movies so had some idea of what reality might be like] was to see actual real people [police] with actual real 6 guns [or whatever they were] in holsters on their hips in Sydney. Later that year, we entered Turkey and the armaments we had grown accustomed to seeing were up to full size actual tanks hiding under haystacks with their muzzles pointing out and driving around the roads, but they were nearly at war with Greece and it was out in the countryside.
So, by the time I got to see real live tanks in surburbia in San Diego, with police cars driving around with shotguns and enough artillery to conduct a small war, with military camps and marine bases at the end of most roads I chose, I had grown somewhat accustomed to the madness. Driving around Oahu, all roads lead not to Rome, but to a large military installation. VERY large. They actually have multilane motorways which terminate right there in the base - nowhere else to go. Which I guess you have seen on your travels.
One of the disconcerting sights was drugged out [my guess from their demeanour] security guards in Washington museums with 6-guns on their hips. Even as recently as 1994, I could wander into QUALCOMM's building in San Diego. In 1976, we lined up and wandered into the White House with no security worries. Not now!!
I haven't been there since early 2001, so I suppose the place has gone completely nuts now, what with Homeland Security and all that.
It's time for some Yank jokes.
Mqurice
PS: We are catching up, but slowly. We now have cyanide and other terrorist threats. We have a guy in Paremoremo Prison [who is suspected of being an Al Qaeda type terrorist]. This is so much fun. Kiwis got killed in Bali and the Frogs blew up the Rainbow Warrior and killed a guy. We are getting into the Big League now. I wanna 6 shooter. I haven't had a gun since we played cowboys and Indians with cap guns back in the good old days, when John Wayne showed us what real men were like and the Ponderosa was profitable. Unfortunately, the government is banning things which go bang and swoosh, so we aren't allowed double happies [which were popular banger fireworks] or sky rockets. Where's Charlton Heston when you need him?
Actually, the only time I've fired a real gun was at Camp Pendleton on their skeet range. I can see how people get to love guns. It was such fun. I got 17 of 20 skeets or whatever they are called, which was pretty good. My gun-nut brother in law got only 11. They just fired one at a time but at another part of the range, they fired two at a time [but the silly old fools there didn't seem to hit a lot]. |
