Praying for Bernie
I am praying for a Bernie Sanders presidency. If we want our compassionate world to come truly, in our heart of hearts, then we say to each other we are ready to take the steps and say the words to invite that world. Bernie is the only candidate who is saying he will walk with us to that world of our creation. Every other choice is a variation on despair, bringing us a world in which we despair. I praise this uprising of the miraculous people — a people arising out of a collective coma to find we have the courage to feel our capacity. We have the discernment to not be deceived by surfaces and packaging “woman,” “socialist,” “idealistic.” We at long last leave the evil fear that extorts us to vote for the “lesser evil.” We simply say enough of the empire, the killing, the bribery and blackmail and corruption in the center of our sincere conversation. We say enough out of our respect for the sacred life and consciousness that we have the honor to share.
More guns for students means more safety
In “Two Years, Two Lockdowns — Guns and Campus Life” by guest columnist Tess Halpern, Halpern’s friend with a firearm license says he would have been able to “take care of the situation” [a lockdown following a report of a gun on campus.] The UMass perpetrator in question was brandishing a BB gun and if he had been confronted by someone with an actual firearm he would have ran or surrendered. So, her friend was right.
I challenge Halpern to monitor the University of Texas sexual assault statistics for the next few years and compare them with those of UMass. The first would-be University of Texas rapist that gets gut-shot by a woman carrying a gun will exemplify the new risk for all potential offenders. According to FBI statistics assault rates typically drop by double digits when such laws are instituted. Those are statistics that stand yet to be refuted by the various anti-gun Bloomberg groups.
“More guns are worse than less:” The State of Israel knows that gun-free schools invite terrorists. There are no gun free schools in Israel. Have we heard of any lockdowns or active shooters in Israeli schools in the past decade or so? A terrorist would be shot in the back by the guidance counselor or Hebrew teacher before they could get much done. Ten percent of Israelis on the street carry firearms.
Here in Massachusetts anyone who legally purchases or transfers a firearm in a sport shop, at a gun show, on line, or in a peer-to-peer sale undergoes a national criminal background check, no exceptions. Criminals, however, ignore this.
GMO veggies or hunted deer meat?
About hunting, I would like to suggest that we are on a new side of history where we hope to evolve into something better. When you take an animal from the woods under sustainable harvest measures, the animal is replaced in the eco-system within a couple years or so. When you take a tree from the woods under sustainable harvest measures, it can take up to 40 years or more for that tree to be replaced. In that 40 years, that tree would sustain numerous animals, plants, and fungi. When we feel as strongly about the death of a plant as we do about that of an animal, then we will truly be closer to nature. People have already disrupted the ecology. I would rather see someone eating healthy deer meat they hunted, than commercially processed GMO veggies. Deer starve in the winter because all the human-grown vegetation is no longer around to feed numbers increased by our farms and gardens. Since we have also taken out most of their natural predators, we have become the key ecological ingredient in insuring a healthy deer population.
