Totenkopf

--Marine Reconnaissance Division patches

Peace is for Queers 
--Seven Psychopaths (2012)

We're not fantastic motherfuckers,
but we play them on TV
It's a dirty word Reich,
say what you like
 --The Golden Age of Grotesque,
Marilyn Manson 

Here’s the smell of the blood still:
all the perfumes of Arabia
will not sweeten this little hand.
Oh! oh! oh! 
--Macbeth (V, i) 

But when I swing my swords
they all choppable
I be the body dropper, the heartbeat stopper
Child educator, plus head amputator 
--Liquid Swords, GZA

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Ranger recent piece on the video game "Assassin's Creed" received a reply regarding the perception that assassins kept democracy free form the forces of evil.  Despite the glorification of assassinations in pop culture productions like video games and Tarantino's film Kill Bill (a glorified video game), democracy is not promulgated at the tip of an assassin's sword.

Assassination is not a democratic principle.

Yesterday, while cruising eBay for some sterling silver jump wings Ranger came across a Special Forces crest with its noble-minded motto (De Oppresso Liber) -- sporting a death's head over the logo; talk about cognitive dissonance. Yet it took him back to the day that he wore a death's head on his uniform.

He also remembered another memento of his SF time, the Zippo lighter with a death's head MACVSOG crest which was presented to graduates of the One-Zero Combat Reeconnaissance School (B53 May '70). Ranger has written of the death's head before, but each time he encounters it on United States military paraphernalia he considers the matter anew.

Soldiers must kill to perform their combat mission, but why does the military and civilian leadership allow such symbolism our patches?  Such gruesome heraldry is understandable on an SS Nazi uniform, but how can he accept this on a U.S. uniform?  Yet at one time Ranger wore one, just as do present day military men.

Despite the ubiquity of the symbol on U.S. unit patches, Ranger has never seen the image on a Vietcong or North Vietnamese Army patch ... weren't they the bad guys who did not value human life?  The U.S. used body counts as a gauge of success during most of the Vietnam war -- doesn't this "poundage of death" metric of success indicate a slip between the theory and reality of winning hearts and minds?

Death is never a measure of a successful operation, as a Commander may not kill his way into a successful victory -- so why the proliferation of nasty death's heads in the service of a liberal democracy?  Oddly, the hooah military sites celebrate these death-oriented symbols while at the same time calling our adversaries barbaric and inhuman.

And we remain surprised when another member of our society revels in another bloodbath worthy of an assassin, a person who would celebrate the symbology of the death's head.  These wayward "nutters" hold the mirror up for us, all members of a violent society.  The neo-assassins are us, externalized.

The champions of the death's heads would say, their violence is controlled, is targeted at those who deserve the wrath of a democracy, but there is no controlling the murderous impulse once out of Pandora's Box.  How is a kindergarten shooting spree more doleful than the violence applied with alacrity (from der Homeland) in the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©)?

Are dead kids bad in the Continental U.S. but acceptable when killed by a Hellfire missile in some foreign land we ostensibly bless with our democratic principles?

Making a Killing Making a Killing

______________________

Some brief thoughts on the issue of gun control in America.

There is a problem in modern society allowing for grandiose spree gun killings.  While the complicit are multitudinous, and not all (or even most) may be amended, their consideration is sophistry; something must be done in the breach.

Gun owners fear that constrictions upon ownership are but a slippery slope to confiscation of their weapons.  To the concern that no one needs a black rifle they say, "Yes, and no one needs to drink soda, but they do."  They say cars are deadly weapons, too, and can cause mass deaths; they do, but the deaths are usually unintentional.  Ditto if one decides to gorge himself on either food or possessions -- one is responsible for oneself only, and the price of such indulgence will be paid by him alone.

Murder is the ultimate deprivation of human rights; once dead, there is no amending of the action. No atonement will undo the offense.  If we claim each life is sacred, then it is grotesque hypocrisy to say that spree killing is the price of freedom.  Crimes of passion, gang killings, revenge and the whole sorry lot of it can be understood; however, random spree killings cannot be rationalized.

The gunnies will tell you the 1927 Bath school killing --which killed 38 elementary school students and six adults -- was done with explosives, and they are correct; there are many ways to kill.  But for this moment, there is a problem which may be reduced via proper control of the machine used to kill.  The United States should manage the training, licensing and authorization of those who wish to be armed. 

Just as freedom of speech is reined in to protect the innocent (with libel and slander laws), so must the right to bear arms be controlled inasmuch as possible in order to protect the innocent.  Of course laws only work as protection when society agrees to comply, but perhaps the deterrent value of guaranteed jail time would ensure that many of these weapons would not make it into the hands of the deranged or malignant.

Canada does not often get a nod from the United States, but some of their policies regarding gun ownership are correct.  Since guns are sold with locks in the U.S., it should be mandatory that they are locked once in the home, and the gun and ammunition should be secured. If there is a member of the household with a known mental health issue, there should be a special mandatory sentencing of that gun owner should that weapon be used by that household member in a criminal manner.

The Second Amendment has customarily been equated with the right to individual gun ownership. While I do not see the reason for anyone to own a semi-automatic weapon, I also support the Constitution and all rights which issue therefrom.  While the right itself should not be infringed, the manner in which weapons are licensed, sold and stored should be amended to ensure the utmost protection for our citizens, and that is not currently being done.

Mandatory firearms safety training courses for anyone buying a gun, better background checks, securing the weapon and ammunition in the home ... these are starting places, but changes must be enacted lest we are willing to live in a real-life violent video game.  The gunnies say spree shootings are a price we must be willing to pay in order to live free.

That is not the sort of freedom I recognize.