When all is said and done, impeachment awaits Trump

I do hope we return to the days of respecting someone’s opinion, a more civil tone (and tongue) while discussing important issues and current events.

Thanks to President Trump, he’s a perfect example of how dangerous it is to elect a TV personality in the hopes he has the knowledge to handle various situations instead of treating issues as if he’s emcee of a reality TV show.

The president’s ignorance has shown through and now we as a nation must reject his “Do as I say or else” agenda in full.

We can cut through his lies, foul mouth and his erroneous, warped views of news as he sees it.

A ‘liberal-progressive’ is not the same as a 'socialist' 

With all due respect to my fellow Americans, most of us simply don’t know that a “liberal/progressive” is not the same thing as a “socialist.” 

A true “socialist” is someone who wants all of the businesses and workplaces to be owned and controlled by “the state” or “the government” or “the workers” or “the people”  and not by individuals and groups of people who run them for profit, as we have here in the USA.

The  overwhelming majority of Democrats want our federal government to spend more on social programs to help the lower and middle classes as they struggle to survive and pay their bills. They are not “socialists.”

They are “liberals/progressives” who want our market-based capitalist economic system to become MORE HUMANE  (and not replaced)  by having our federal government spend more to help the lower and middle classes.

They know all too well that there has never been a truly large-scale socialist economy in which socialism produced enough wealth to meet people’s basic needs. It has never “worked.” 

Thus, while most Americans seem to not be aware of this, and while conservative-Republican politicians and the conservative news media do not want the American people to be aware of this, most Democrats want our federal government to be more like those of almost every one of our traditional allies which spend more than we do, in proportion to their population sizes.  

None of our allies are “socialist” — and they know it. 

Crows and barracudashave WHAT in common?

It’s widely believed that crows are attracted to shiny objects, but did you know that barracudas are, too? 

A friend of mine related an incident while diving on a wreck in the Gulf of Mexico. He felt something hit an air tank on his back and turned around to see a fairly large barracuda erratically swimming off. 

On inspection, he learned teeth marks were on a shiny stainless-steel band that held the tank to its harness. The “cuda” had hit a shiny object, most likely thinking it was a fish while ignoring an edible 175-pound man wearing it. 

So, crows and cudas share an affinity for shiny objects just as gun control folks do. The shiny object for those folks is a weapon sometimes used in mass shootings — the “assault rifle.”

We all grieve for victims and families when these shootings happen, but are we correct when we pick a “shiny object,” or the easy thing to fault — -the weapon? A writer to another newspaper forum seemed to shout, “GUNS KILL PEOPLE!” 

After reading that, I went to a local gun shop and faced a rack of guns, including assault rifles and asked, “Do you guns kill people?”

There was no answer, so I asked again louder. There was still no answer, because guns don’t kill people, people kill people. 

So, I ask why do these shootings happen? Was it the weapon, an inanimate object, or is it a culture we have created in our society, such as violent movies and video games that inoculate our young to violence, or could it be ineptitude in dealing with the mentally ill, and communicating their names to law enforcement? 

I choose to believe it is not the assault rifle and so does FBI data. Statistics from 2016 show that people with knives actually kill nearly five times as many people as rifles. 

According to the FBI, 1,604 people were killed by persons using “knives and cutting instruments” and 374 were killed by people using “rifles” in 2016. These statistics were mirrored in previous years.

Why don’t we ban semi-automatic rifles (the shiny object) falsely thinking it will cure of us of mass murders? Because shooters with handguns killed 19 times more people than rifles, 7,105 versus 374 in 2016. 

Do we ban handguns as the next “shiny object?” How about murders by “hands, fists, feet, etc.” which killed nearly twice as many as rifles, 656 versus 374! 

Thomas Abt, research fellow at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, wrote, “Mass shootings account for less than 1 percent of all gun deaths annually, yet they dominate the debate on gun violence and distort the search for solutions.” 

This hardly comes from a conservative think tank. 

It is time to leave the easy conclusion that “GUNS KILL PEOPLE!” — a shiny object, and focus on the tough and larger issues affecting our culture of violence from movie and gaming industries, and our reluctance to admit there are people with emotional and mental issues among us that could do us harm? 

If you see something or learn something, then say something to people who can act. Ask our leaders on left and right to develop a way to communicate names of potential mass murderers and the psychologically dangerous to social workers and law enforcement. 

Don’t be a crow or a barracuda. Leave the easy way out and focus on the true issues in our society. 

As an aside, that same reader in another newspaper sarcastically was searching for a definition of patriot. Here it is: “A person who vigorously supports their country and is prepared to defend it against enemies or detractors.”