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THE BANKS COUNTY NEWS • THE COMMERCE NEWS
WEDNESDAY, JULY 13, 2016
Editorial
Views
Perpetuating
the cycle of
gun violence
Americans are trying to parse the facts
from the latest round of fatal shootings
— black males by police in Louisiana
and Minnesota and five police officers
murdered by snipers in Dallas, suppos
edly in response to the shootings in
Louisiana and Minnesota. More impor
tantly citizens should be thinking about
the increase in gun violence and what
can be done to reduce the death toll that
reached 33,000 annually as early as 2013.
What should concern everyone is the
national obsession with firearms that
seems to be fueled by every new report
of a mass shooting. Gun and ammuni
tion manufacturers are making a killing
in the economic sense while those who
use guns in anger, in despair, in crime or
in carelessness are killing more people
every year than die on our highways.
The National Rifle Association and gun
advocates can argue to the contrary but
the pervasiveness of firearm possession
in America is among the greatest public
health risks. A disease that killed as many
people as die annually from gunshots
would cause a national alarm and result
in federal initiatives for eradication.
Why then, do we ignore the conse
quences of the epidemic of deaths by
guns? How can a country that responds
to outbreaks of the West Nile virus that
has killed less than 2,000 people since it
first arrived in 1990 with billions of dollars
be so complacent about the deaths of
over 30,000 Americans annually from
guns?
The answer is because guns and
ammunition are big business. Fifty years
ago, most firearms sold to citizens were
used for hunting. Today most guns are
bought with the idea that the owner may
have to shoot someone in self-defense, a
notion perpetuated by the gun industry
funded by the NRA and its allies and
protected by the U.S. Congress whose
allegiance to the Second Amendment
to the U.S. Constitution is commiserate
with the donations its members receive
from the firearms industry. According to
the Violence Policy Center, in 2010, there
were only 230 “justifiable homicides”
involving private citizens protecting them
selves, yet the primary motivation for gun
ownership is a self defense against other
people with guns, a perfect storm of
hypocrisy fueled by every new shooting.
The idea that the best way to prevent gun
violence is to make sure everyone has a
gun assures that the numbers of acciden
tal shootings, ragebased shootings and
suicides by firearms will increase.
The knowledge that mass shootings
— whether in a theater, an elementary
school or a nightclub — are good for
business is revolting. The tens of thou
sands of U.S. citizens who die every year
as a handful of Americans protect their
lives or property are too high a price to
pay. The increased danger Americans
face is a self-fulfilling prophecy created
by a politically protected industry whose
marketing is based on the very fear that
their products bring to reality.
Get used to it. More guns mean more
gun deaths and more demand for fire
arms. Isn’t it about time America had a
serious conversation about how to end
that vicious cycle?
Unless otherwise noted, all editorials
are written by Mark Beardsley. He can
be reached at mark@mainstreetnews.
com.
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The fantasy of political change
For all of the money air time and rhetoric the
2016 presidential election run-up has already
produced, one thing is abundantly clear: Not
many Americans will not get what they want out
of the 2016 elections.
The millions who voted for Donald Trump
and Bernie Sanders will not get fundamental
change in government they’re purported to
crave, because of two factors—the Citizens
United Supreme Court Decision that lets people
and groups spend unlimited amounts of money
on elections; and (partly due to that decision)
the fact that the 2016 election will have a negligi
ble effect on Congress.
The millions who voted for Hillary Clinton, at
best, will get a non-Trump who nonetheless will
face the same Republican obstructionism that
Barack Obama experienced for eight years.
And I will get none of the things I’d like to
see out of the federal government, regardless of
who wins the presidency. Those include:
• a president and a Congress who can see
the most vulnerable people in their constituen
cies, who will have compassion for them, and
who will be willing to take action to improve
their lives and their prospects for the future.
• elected officials who represent the people
who voted for them instead of their party hier
archy and the political action committees and
other special interest groups who finance their
election campaigns.
• politicians who actually want to solve
problems and who will work with like-minded
people toward that end regardless of party affili
ation, gender, sexual orientation, social standing
or race.
It's
Gospel
According
To Mark
By Mark Beardsley
• public officials who respect the institutions
they serve and who conduct themselves in a
manner appropriate to the office with which
they’ve been entrusted—with grace, respect for
others and humility.
• a revised political process in which candi
dates seek office by extolling new ideas, their
ability to work with others and who demon
strate experience in solving problems instead of
gaining office through the character assassina
tion of their opponents.
• a rejection by members of both political
parties of hateful and belligerent rhetoric and
commentary on social media.
• reform of the reapportionment process to
take it out of the hands of the political parties,
for whom reapportionment is a monumental
conflict of interest and which makes it almost
impossible for a challenger to defeat an incum
bent.
• elected officials committed to addressing
longstanding problems like the high cost of
college education, crumbling infrastructure, the
effects of climate change and the epidemic of
shooting deaths.
Truth be told, all of these faults could be
erased if the voters would take some responsi
bility, such as:
•All those “evangelicals” would read the
New Testament, particularly the words of Jesus,
and consider how His views on immigration,
race and treatment of the poor and marginal
ized compare with their politics and with the
attitudes and statements of the politicians they
support.
•being less hateful, judgmental, rude,
mean-spirited and short-tempered — antisocial
— on social media. Just because you have the
right to express hateful opinions doesn’t mean it
is helpful to express them.
• realizing that no single political party or
ideology has all the answers to or shoulders all
of the blame for the challenges and problems
facing this nation.
• resisting the urge to vote for a candidate on
the basis of party affiliation alone.
• resisting the urge to vote for a candidate on
the basis of a single issue.
Granted, I never harbored expectations that
the 2016 elections would fulfill any of my wishes,
but one must be allowed to dream.
Right now, I’d be satisfied if the elections do
not make things worse, or if they do that it will
wake voters up enough that real change can
occur in the next election.
I’m not holding my breath., but everyone is
allowed a fantasy or two.
Mark Beardsley is the editor of The Com
merce News. He lives in Commerce.
On the fireworks of history
By chance and by luck, I was on Broadway
over the Fourth of July weekend, at the Richard
Rodgers Theatre, seeing “Hamilton,” the musi
cal, winner of 11 Tony Awards. The occasion
was a friend’s landmark birthday.
An immigrant and now a citizen, she was
born on July 4th, so she wanted to celebrate
by going to the wildly popular musical about
one of America’s “founding fathers.” Since she
and a mutual friend had taken me to Washing
ton, DC, for my landmark birthday, how could
I refuse?
If you’ve ever been in church when the
organist literally pulled out all the stops on the
organ, so that you could feel the floor vibrating
beneath your feet, you have at least a slight
idea of the visceral effect that “Hamilton” has
on an audience. A dynamo of music and
momentum, a torrent of words and ideas, it
grabs you by the mind and heart and sweeps
you into the true story of a poor but brilliant
immigrant boy named Alexander Hamilton,
who arrives all alone in New York in 1772 at
the age of 15 with a scholarship to what is now
Columbia University.
Primed by having grown up in another British
colony the West Indies, he quickly catches the
American colonists’ fever for independence,
and leaves college at 17 to devote himself to
the cause. By the age of 19 he’s a captain in the
Continental Army and has recruited and led an
A Few
Facts, A
Lot of
Gossip II
By Susan Harper
artillery company into three battles for Ameri
can independence. At 20 he’s on Commanding
General George Washington’s staff, having been
reemited by Washington himself.
So as you see, Hamilton the man was a dyna
mo. His own momentum and intensity create
the pace of the play and his own torrent of
words and ideas can still be found in any copy
of what we now call “The Federalist Papers,” a
collection of 85 essays—the majority of them
written by Hamilton — that began appearing
anonymously in New York newspapers in 1787,
arguing for ratification of the U. S. Constitution.
Seeing all of this unfold onstage, 240 years
(almost to the day) after the signing of the Dec
laration of Independence, was a revelation to
me, for of course that’s what our Fourth of July
celebrates: the moment of resolve. The signing.
The date on which our forefathers said, “Let’s
do it!” And did. We call it the birth of a nation,
but it’s easy to forget what we’re celebrating,
nowadays, amid all the holiday barbecues and
fireworks — not to mention what the labor pains
were like. The patriots had already been fighting
for more than a year, and as David McCullough
notes at the end of his book “1776,” for the
men in the Colonial Army 1776 was a year of
“sustained suffering, disease, hunger... defeat,
terrible discouragement, and fear” — and also,
importantly, of “phenomenal courage and bed
rock devotion to country.” The fighting would
last another five years.
And all along, another battle was raging: the
battle to decide what sort of country America
would be, and how it would be governed.
Alexander Hamilton was in on that struggle,
too, and when the Constitution was ratified and
Washington became America’s first President in
1789, he chose Hamilton to be the first secretary
of the treasury.
The battle for our country goes on, as you
know. In a democracy the questions of how
and by whom its citizens shall be governed are
always present. But it’s deeply moving to see
with what passion they were considered from
the very beginning.
Susan Harpe■ is a retired editor, lecturer, and
local library director who currently serves on
the Jackson County and Piedmont Regional
library boards.
The phrase: 'take me with you'
At the moment, I am reading the most
fascinating book: “Travels with a Tangerine: A
Journey in the Footnotes of Ibn Battutah,” by
Tim Mackintosh-Smith.
Mr. Mackintosh-Smith is an Englishman
who has lived in San’a, Yemen, for the past
30 years. He read Arabic at Oxford and, at 21,
traveled to Arabia in order to learn to speak
the language. He never returned He is now
a renowned Arabic scholar and a recognized
expert on Ibn Battutah.
Ibn Battutah was a fourteenth century
Moroccan traveler who visited most of the
known Muslim world and wrote a celebrated
account of his journeys. He also left home at
21 in order to make the Haj, the pilgrimage to
Mecca and Medina, and only returned some
30 years later.
Mackintosh-Smith edited an abridged version
of the English translation of “Ibn Battutah’s
Travels” and then decided to make the same
journey himself. His “Travels with a Tangerine”
is the first volume of a trilogy recounting his trip.
He started from Tangier, where Ibn Battutah
lived (and which explains the name of the
book: Tangerine referring to a resident of Tang
ier, not the citrus fruit). On his last day there
he was eating breakfast in the hotel’s rooftop
cafe. The waitress asked him how long he was
staying and he replied that he was leaving as
soon as he had finished eating. The waitress
glanced around furtively leaned over and whis
pered: “Take me with you.” The author said
he smiled and then realized she was serious.
“Take me with you.” What an evocative
phrase. We have all heard it and it probably
brings back memories. Many times we have
heard the request from children, sometimes
phrased as, “Can I go?” And, if you read many
accounts of wartime Europe during the last
century you have heard of many people who
had the request put to them, as Mr. Mackin
tosh-Smith did, in similar circumstances. And if
you are a dog owner, you have had the request
made to you by your pet — perhaps the most
poignant case of all.
“Take me with you.” The request acknowl
edges your power. You have the ability to leave
and the other person doesn’t. You have the
resources and strength and the other is help
less. And yet, what consequences hang on your
decision. Mr. Mackintosh-Smith’s life might have
been entirely different if he had acceded to the
girl’s request. Possibly he wouldn’t have com
pleted his journey at all. Taking up an unknown
companion might be disastrous.
And yet, the pathos of the request hangs in
the air like incense at a funeral Mass. As you
reflect on those times when you heard the plea,
and particularly those times when you refused
it, you wonder: why are we so often in situations
where we are unable to do what we want?
There are always unwelcome constraints, even
if you are the one going away. It is not always
your choice to pick your traveling companion.
Maybe the choice is not ours anyway. Per
haps fate determines where we go and who
we go with. And yet fate is not a warm-hearted
caregiver and we somberly consider the situa
tion of the one left behind.
Once you abandon your mind to such rever
ies, strange thoughts are liable to arise. When I
am on my deathbed will my wife lean over and
whisper, “Take me with you”? In that case I will
be as helpless as she and the decision won’t be
mine. I might be apt to say myself: “Let me stay
with you.”
Willis Cook is a retired electrical engineer
who was born in New Orleans and grew up
in the Mississippi Delta. He lives in Franklin
County.