The news is rotting my brain!! January 8, 2013 Musings by Del A six-year old child is sent home for pointing his finger at other kids in his class and saying "bang". A columnist pushes this stupidity to extremes in her spoof on dangerous 6-year -olds. Are we getting so crazy that 6-year-olds are that scary? And speaking of scary, three days after the Sandy Hook massacre of 6-year-olds and their teachers, in her own school, a teacher found the journal of a 17-year old boy, in which he plans his own massacre - six of his targets being Black schoolmates. Also, it was discovered that he was building bombs for this event, in his basement. We are a country (and maybe a whole world) gone mad! Yet the rhetoric continues, and people will soon forget Sandy Hook and all the rest that came before, probably without anything changed. Many people think that if we would just kinder to each other, get more psychological help, or if people are checked better when getting hand guns, or if we put a guard in each school, the carnage will stop. As far as I'm concerned, you'll never get all the crazies before they commit their monstrous acts. How about this thing we used to discuss called "structure is the key to change!" And what are the structures that need to come at the SOURCE of things, not at the various responses. How about some major changes in law that can begin to solve the problem of a nation that owns 100 guns to every 120 people! I would like to see Congress do three things: 1) Enact a law that no manufacturer can sell an automatic weapon to any individual, including any military person. They can only be sold to the military as a whole. 2) Ban all violent games; heavy fines and even jail time to any manufacturer of same. Laws make it more difficult to have child pornography get to children; why not the violence which is just as offensive and dangerous to young minds? 3) Put in place a stricter censorship of the movie and TV cable industries that limits showing gratuitous violence on the screen. Now, we already know these are bound to be impossible, don't we? This country is so driven by "individual rights" and the NRA lobby so strong, and our leadership so conservative, timid or hung-up on making sure Obama never gets anything he wants, that it neglects to do anything to protect society at large. Parents CHOOSE to not inoculate their children, so that later on their children can spread diseases that once went out of existence due to inoculation therapies. People who have AIDS don't have to have bloods tests or take meds, or even let anyone know they have it, so that they can spread the disease even further. Our quarantine system is a joke, practically non-existent, letting people walk around spreading whatever they have and choosing to do so by their own individual rights. Those whose pockets wouldn't be getting as full will have the final word, as usual, by insisting that our rights are being violated should Congress try to do anything to curb the spread of terror and disease. They'll insist that violence on the screen, whether in the home or in the theatre, doesn't do anything to children's brains and ideas. They'll insist on the right to have assault weapons (how many bullets does it take to bring down a deer anyway?). There seems to be little questioning as to why any individual needs anything more than a single-shot weapon. We continue to create laws that, so far, seem to protect the doer and not the "done-to" victim. The best and freest treatment, including surgeries, seems to be in the prisons. No wonder convicts keep going back in once they get out. Suddenly they have to pay for their lodging and food and TV and weight room and sports equipment, and pay for their own hospital care, instead of everyone else's taxes. Perhaps we should all find a way to retire in the prisons! We are a culture gone mad with our so-called individual rights. I am convinced that our forbearers did NOT have this kind of world in mind when it created our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Maybe it is time that those masterful documents be updated to the realities of the world we have been and still are creating. It is truly appalling to me that our own nation should be at the top of the list of nations in violent deaths - above the worst of nations who systematically kill off anyone who the leader disagrees with. No, we are a nation PROUD of the fact that we don't have such dictators - we just let anyone run amok, killing whomever displeases them. Do we believe that our killing rate is a mere drop in the bucket compared to the horrible things like various holocausts caused by other nations in the world. Do we really? Let's start adding up all of the victims and see whose total is higher, shall we? What do you want to bet that we would WIN! Del Del Hunter Morrill 3217 North Mason Avenue Tacoma WA 98407-5419 H: (253) 752-1506; W: (253) 383-5757 delhmor@wamail.net Web site: www. hypnocenter.com The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. (Joseph Campbell)