From the Pages of:   The Nutz Station Journal __________________________   May 12, 2000   Mark Thrice  

A million moms is a lot
        I admit it. I’m eating crow.
        The recent push toward dramatically stricter gun control laws had seemed to me like a bad idea. I had my reasons. All the crimes that sparked the current furor were committed in violation of existing gun laws. Why would more laws have made a difference?
        I’ve also been of the opinion that rights granted us by the Constitution should not be tossed in the trash just because they sometimes cost lives. Were the Union dead in the Civil War betrayed by the Constitution they died to protect? I never thought so.
        All the comparisons to the Yukay and other Yurropean nations left me cold too. They’ve never been free in the sense that Amerians are, so they’re more inclined to be obedient to all kinds of laws, including insane ones—or why would the Germans have consented to persecute the Jews, or the Brits to serve up a generation of their sons to the murderous generalship of Douglas Haigg? If the Yurropeans are so much more civilized than Amerians, then how come they've killed so many more of their own people in wars than we have? That was my thinking on the matter, anyway.
        Then came the Million Mom March in Wishington, DC. I’m not a mom myself, but I tagged along anyway. The experience was transformational. I have discarded all my old reasoning. Now I believe in gun control.
        It’s hard to say what happened to me. I’m not sure I heard any new arguments. It was more the feelings I came away with. My feelings are deeply, strongly, desperately opposed to guns. But isn’t that what they had in mind?
        Maybe it was the moms. A million moms is a lot of moms, even if there’s only seven hundred and fifty thousand to a million in mom numbers.
        Maybe it was their signs. They had a lot of signs. All of the signs were opposed to guns. And to the people who oppose being opposed to guns. And to the families and friends and neighbors and acquaintances of the people who oppose being opposed to guns. The signs were stern.
        Maybe it was their kids. A lot of the moms brought their children, especially daughters. The daughters were all opposed to guns too. They had signs that said so.
        Maybe it was the speakers. I concede, for example, that I was moved by the speech of Courtney Hole. She cares, that woman does. And she is adamantly opposed to guns. The other speakers were also opposed to guns.
        And maybe it was Rosabud. Actually, I’m pretty sure it was Rosabud. What a leader that woman is. What a commanding presence. What an inspiringly brilliant social conscience. As she ascended the dais to speak, I knew I was in trouble. Is she going to say that she is opposed to guns too, I wondered? A nameless fear crept over me. Then she spoke. I don't remember what she said. Not word for word. It was more the way she said it. You know. It's a kind of magic, I suppose.
        Rosabud is opposed to guns. She’s famous, she has her own TV show, she’s best buds with Madamma, and she’s opposed to guns. With all that going for her, how could I help but change my mind?
        Feelings swept over me. Tears filled the little ducts at the corners of my eyes. I felt all my thoughts and reasons and arguments evaporating away. I felt the presence of all those guns out there, their burning hatred of our children, their contempt for our efforts to control them. I felt the pathetic inadequacy of all those humans who got too close to some gun and just had to shoot somebody with it. I felt the pain of all the children who were shot or shooting in Ameria. I felt like somebody had to do something about this menace. More specifically, I felt like the government had to do something about it, because we are weak and helpless and in constant need of someone else to tell us what to do. I felt willing to surrender every power on earth to the government if they would only save the children from guns.
        I felt weak in the knees. I felt light in the head. I felt like my ass and thighs were enormous. I felt like a mom.
        Thank you, Rosabud. The crow tastes wonderful. Kind of like chicken. __________________________  

May 1, 2000   The Dog

In Re:  "What's best for the kid"?  Kiss my ass.
        I’ve had it with this godawful Gonzalo garbage. The next person who tells me it’s about doing what’s best for the kid is going to get it right in the mouth.
        It’s not about doing what’s best for the kid. It never has been. There are four distinct groups of idiots involved in this burlesque, and only one of them has given even a glancing thought to Ellio Gonzalo.
        Don’t get me wrong. I’m not losing any sleep over this kid myself. If they took one of their damn polls in the Third Wurld, they’d turn up maybe a half billion kids who’d leap at the chance to live next door to DizzyWurld, and cop a few meals a day, and have a chance to own an SUV when they grow up. So what. Life is a lottery. Some win. Most lose. And we Amerians are mostly content with that, because there’s a whole wurld out there that would vote—in a landslide—for us to share our goodies equally with all the have-nots. But that’s not the kind of democracy we have in mind when we talk about equality.
        Do you catch my point yet, you morons? It’s not the kid’s immigration problem that’s pissing me off. It’s our usual not-to-be-f’ing-believed Amerian hypocrisy.
        Four distinct groups, I said. First up, all you mindless zombies who keep saying, “The kid belongs with his father. He ought to go home. It’s that simple.” Nothing’s ever that simple, you lard-ass twits. What you’re really saying is, “Who cares? He’s another Spanish-speaking little creep who, if he stays, will be driving around in a loud-colored, rusted-out Chevvy in a few years, and who needs him? Send him back to the void.” You’re allowed to think that way. For now. Until a few more laws dribble out of Congress’s stinking butt. Just don’t lie to me about it. Don’t call it family values. Buy yourself a dictionary and look up the word 'xenophobia.' Then go away for a decade and work out how to pronounce it. But shut the hell up about your concern for Ellio Gonzalo.
        Next? All you kind-hearted liberals. You know. The administration. The mass media pontificators. You. The ones who love “our kids” so much you should probably be investigated for pedophilia by your beloved federal, state, and local social service organizations. You should listen to yourselves. You really should. You’re more nauseating than DizzyWurld. After a quarter century of spouting feminist delusions of female grandeur, you took one look at Ellio Gonzalo and discovered fatherhood. Why? Two reasons. Both of them corrupt.
        First, it’s a completely cost-free way to pretend that your long-term program isn’t the annihilation of fatherhood as a unique and valid component of the family. You’ll always be able to look back and say, “We’ve got nothing against fathers. Weren’t we adamant about little Ellio’s right to be with his dad in Cuber?”
        Second, you’re determined not to get caught in the trap of affirming some deep philosophical difference between Ameria and Cuber.
        Why? Because in Cuber, the state owns the children, and that’s exactly what you believe should be the case in Ameria. What’s more, it’s what you’re bringing about in Ameria right now. And the last thing you want is being forced to explain what it is that’s different about Cuben state ownership of kids versus Amerian state ownership of kids. What would those differences be? Which one eschews loony ideological propagandizing in the schools as a substitute for education? Which one protects the right of parents to bring up children as they see fit, without an informant-based system of government intervention to flatten politically incorrect rearing methods? Which one isn’t in the full-time business of manufacturing powerless, obedient, income-producing drones?
        I understand your reasons. BUT DON’T TELL ME YOU CARE ABOUT ELLIO GONZALO. YOU DON’T. AND I CAN PROVE IT.
        You see, you’re the ones who have ruthlessly exterminated from this culture any opportunity for “the kids” to discover values in life apart from strictly materialistic desires. You are the ones who define virtue as free pills for every toe ache, free warehousing of aged bodies waiting to die, and free lunches for everybody who’s too dumb, too lazy, or too uncivilized to compete for the goodies. Your Ameria is about stuff. Mountains of stuff for everybody. Well, what’s the thing that’s most conspicuously missing from life in the Marxist paradise of Castrol’s Cuber? Stuff. THEY DON’T HAVE ANY. No childproof minivans. No 1000-Watt car radios. No health warning labels. No computers to cross the ‘Digital Divide.’ No bicycle helmets. No Nikeys. No child-seats. No nose-rings. No Medivac helicopters. No VCRs. No cell phones. No ritalin. No DizzyWurld. No condoms. No nothing. Every thing you define as part of a kid’s rightful way of life in a ‘free’ society is not there. And there’s no way in hell Ellio’s daddy will ever be able to buy it for him. You people are a joke.
        Who else has been talking about “doing what’s right for the kid?” Another hilarious gang of retarded nincompoops who normally call themselves conservatives. They’ve been all over the talk radio, browbeating callers and beating their sunken chests about fatherhood. What’s that priceless nonsense comment I keep hearing like the punchline of a bad TV movie? “Fatherhood trumps country.” Bullshit.
        They think they’re making some kind of gallant stand against the incursions of feminism. Here’s their chance to tell the wurld about how important it is to be a father. Why? Because they think they are fathers. What they are is bullshit. They’re male parents who are too bone stupid to realize they’ve already swallowed the whole feminist line without realizing it. They’ve been taught—and now they believe—that fatherhood is motherhood with a penis. Daddy wants to snuggle with his little snookums and change his didie and play catch with him on videotape when he's a little older. BULLSHIT. That's not caring. It's cooing—fine for moms maybe, but way short of the duty owed by a father.
        If they knew anything about fatherhood, the neofeminist conservatives would know that Juan Miguel is a bad father. A good father would want his son to have a life better than his own, no matter what the interim emotional cost. But Juan Miguel is ready to reclaim his son, at gunpoint, as a trophy for a tyrant—a six-year-old doomed to be molded into a PR stooge for slavery. How many hugs are worth such a lifelong price?
        You see, fathers are supposed to think past right now and how much they enjoy wrapping their arms around this little fleshly proof of their own male fertility. They’re supposed to look past the cute unformed face to the adult countenance of a person who will need more than kisses to fulfill the promise of manhood—he'll need freedom or a fair enough field of battle to die fighting for it with a chance of winning.
        If Juan Miguel had stood up in defiance of Castrol and said, “They can do what they want to me, but I want my son to be a free man possessed of the opportunity to share his talents with the wurld,” there would be a better case for returning Ellio to Cuber. For it would be clear that his father was a man capable of raising his son to be a man, despite the despotism of his country.
        Does this mean that at some level fatherhood really does trump country? No. It doesn’t. The pampering "my kids above everything else" father is a decadent, short-term luxury, found only in the fattest and most complacent of lands. Everywhere else, fathers teach their sons that refusal to die for one's country on behalf of all one's countrymen is dishonor to the family. And in every country where naked tyranny reigns, freedom becomes the most indispensable necessity of life. Every son born to every family in chains is born as a soldier in the fight for freedom. If the father is a good father, he will raise his son to be the best possible soldier, brave, resolute, and fully prepared to give his own life—and others—in the cause of freedom. In Cuber, a good father would destine Ellio to fight for the liberation of the Cuben people. The only decision is whether or not his best opportunity to fight lies in Cuber or in Ameria. If it lies in Ameria, as seems nearly certain, all the hugs and kisses should be foregone.
        Which brings me to the Cuben-Amerians. They’re the ones that every other group is jeering and sneering at. Why? Because they’re the only ones who know what it is like to live in both Cuber and Ameria. They’re the only ones who know what it is to feel that unquenchable thirst for freedom. And, yes, they are hypocrites too. But only in a partial sense. They don’t want what’s best for Ellio the way the others define it—a camcorded childhood full of big sneakers, bad music, and safe sex. They want Ellio to attain the fulfillment of joining their fight for the restoration of freedom to Cuber. And in the meantime, they fully intend to use Ellio as one more warrior in the cause. Keeping Ellio away from Castrol is a victory in itself. Teaching Ameria that every freed son is this important is another victory.
        But it’s a victory they’re not going to win. Why? Because everybody else is trying so hard to do what’s best for the kid. Right. I’ve said my piece about that. Just remember. All those folks had better heed my warning. Right in the mouth. And I won’t be hurting my hand over it, either. I’ve got a set of brass knuckles in my pocket. All ready and waiting.   __________________________  

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