The Communist Origin of the Modern Conservative Movement VI

What we tell ourselves about ourselves, the narrative, is as much a part of us as our body. In fact the narrative is the very essence of who we are. Our narratives define who we are, it determines whether we are moral or immoral. In my work I have encountered a number of people who are immoral and proud of it. Their narrative allows then to interact with people in a completely different way. Personal narratives, like religion, don't have to be true for the individual to believe them. We have all know people, whose personal narrative or self concept is so far from the truth that they almost seem disconnected.

The positive thinkers like, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, showed that if you could change the internal narrative you could change how you interacted with the world. "If you believe you can or you can't you are right." Robert J Ringer in his book "Winning Through Intimidation" demonstrated how someone' s internal narrative could be altered when one was intimidated by someone in a position of power. Ringer referred to his professor at Screw U as type number two. His professor owned a large apartment building in St Louis and Ringer offered to secure a buyer for the building. His professor told him how honesty was the most important quality of a businessman and he belabored the point. His professor explained that honest men needed no paper work or contracts. Ringer found a buyer and his commission would have been $200,000 but the professor was able to locate Ringer's buyer before the deal closed and the deal was signed without him. He had no written contract with the professor and had not registered the buyer. He sent his lawyer to settle but found out the professor had an ace in the hole it seems to receive a commission for selling real estate in Missouri you had to be licensed in Missouri. Ringer was not from Missouri and not licensed in that state.

Ringer narrative told him that in order to do business you needed contracts to protect yourself but his professor was able to convince him that only dishonest people needed contracts. If you can alter someone's internal narrative you can manipulate them. In the Middle East we have people that are altering the narrative of Muslims living in the United States. Just like Ringer's professor they want to alter these people's internal narrative. It would be hard to modify the internal narrative of the vast majority of Muslims living in America but they don't need to do that. If they can only modify the internal narrative of a tiny fraction of Muslims living here it will have a devastating effect.

All human beings are capable of both rational and irrational thoughts. The trouble is that we often convince ourselves irrational thoughts are rational thoughts. Irrational thoughts originate in the emotional mind born of fear, anger or jealousy. One local garage owner was so afraid that his wife might leave him for another man that he bought her to work everyday so he could keep an eye on her. Like the old joke where preacher was explaining to his congregation that not everyone thought alike. He explained that if everyone thought as he did everyone would want his wife. The old drunk in the back pew stood up and interrupted him and said, "If everyone thought as he did no one would want her." The garage owner really believed that everyone wanted his wife, the old drunk was no doubt closer to the truth. It is not uncommon to see someone killed over a property line dispute or some other neighborhood dispute. Anger builds up over a period of time and ends up in an irrational action. Someone acting out of anger seldom considers the consequences. Fear that you may harmed might lead you to shoot someone with a pocket knife sixteen times.

The emotional mind is not only irrational but it easily manipulated. Lynch mobs were not made up of monsters they were for the most part normal everyday people juiced up on anger and manipulated. In one lynching a black man had been caught by the mob for a crime he didn't commit. He was lynched while his very pregnant wife watched. When she tried to stop the lyching she was lynched alongside her husband and one man took a knife and ripper her belly open the baby spilled out to the ground. He took his heel and crushed the baby's head. Lynchings were still common in the first half of the 20th century.

Obama made a remark during his 2008 campaign about small towns in Pennsylvania that "And it is not surprising then that they get bitter they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who are not like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti trade sentiment as away to explain their frustrations." This was given quite a bit of attention at the time. Clinging to guns and religion made quite a stir because both guns and religion spring from the emotional mind. As the controversy swirls about gun rights we cannot keep but notice the similarities between the faith in guns and religion. Gun worship in America has become one of America's biggest religions. A gun is the ultimate phallus symbol even down to firing a projectile.

Both guns and religion spring from the emotional mind not the rational mind. If a rational choice was made about gun ownership people would take into account that family members of the gun purchaser are far more likely to die from a gun purchase than any imagined enemy but because gun worship is a religion facts make no difference. The fact is for every time a gun is used in self defense in a home, there are seven assaults or murders, 11 suicide attempts and four accidents with a gun. That gun does not make you safe it raises you and your family chances of being injured a 1,000%. There are only one set of real facts and facts have spoken but the emotional mind will generate more irrational reasons you must have a gun like you are going to have to fight the next American Revolution against jet fighter and tanks with your six shooter. I already know how that one will turn out. The Gun Manufacturers Association actually panders that ridiculous scenario. It lets you in on the fantasy life of a gun owner where his gun makes him the next George Washington. Irrational ideas are built on irrational ideas. The gun is the ultimate tool of the emotional mind. When the emotional mind congers long forgotten fears you walk through the valley of death with only your staff and your AK-47 to comfort you.

In Iraq they have the Shia and the Sunnis and in America you have the Gun worshipers and those who prefer reason. To get reasonable gun control in America we must approach it as if it were a religion because it is. Fear and anger are powerful motivators and like the guy with the knife at the lynching many have so much faith in guns they would crush their own babies head with their heel to have that gun.

Children before the age of three year olds are capable of solving problems with logic. They can use and understand the terms not, and, same, equivalent, and opposite. But no human being is ever required to use logic, it is optional and many people in our society depend on belief instead. Belief in our society is often substituted for logic. Belief was originally meant to be a short cut, once a problem was solved, there was no need to reinvent the wheel. So instead of using logic each time to resolve the same problem you substituted belief, you believed the solution to the problem to be what it had been in the past for similar problems. If a hunter followed deer tracks he found deer each generation need not relearn by experience they believed to be true because others they trusted told them it was true. This worked until mankind decided to solve the problem of his existence. Where wise men fear to tread storyteller rush in. Anecdotal experiences of people with Gods is no doubt wish fulfilment. If one day 2,000 years a hunter had told others that the best place to find a deer was in trees they would laugh off because of their personal experience. But if the same hunter told them of his personal experience with a God in heaven they could not disqualify the his story from personal experience. Everyone had been in the woods and no one had ever seen a deer in a tree but no one has ever been to heaven and who knows what might lurk in the imagination of men. A Christian might argue that if a tornado came by it would not assemble a car out of junk yard parts but he will accept the belief that general motors always existed and always will exist. It defies logic but belief was never stopped by logic.

No civilized society on the face of the earth lives in the perpetual fear that America does. Many of our citizens hear the twigs breaking in the jungle all the time and spend mot of their lives waiting on the tiger to attack them. In America we live with a phallus symbol worshiping cult called the NRA. If the NRA tells its members that deer live in trees they will accept that as the gospel truth. They need not use life experience or logic because they believe. We have to realize the gun cult in America is a religion and one of the most wide spread in America and treat it as such. Personal anecdotes replace logic as evidence in all forms of religion. This is how the cult of the gun was spread across America all it takes are a few personal anecdotes where granny gets her gun and chases off the bad guys. Bad the sad fact is that most of the time granny grandson got the gun and shot his little brother but those personal anecdotes are not repeated because they are counter to the gun myth of protecting you. What is a religion to do? Burn the books and the people who show the bible to be no more than myth. This is a common action of a religious cults. The NRA and the congressmen they own have defunded the gathering of gun statics. They don't want the public to know because they know the actual truth and they know the gun myth is an illusion. They need to make sure the public doesn't know the actual facts that the two year old grandson is ten times more likely to be killed by granny gun than any thief. The main purpose of any religion is to keep the public ignorant and protect the myth. The NRA is all about protecting the myth. Until America realizes that the gun lobby in America is cult and treats it as such we will not be able to stop the useless killings in America.

I watched a true story on Discovery ID channel last night where a common law husband shot his very pregnant wife in the head because he was jealous of her smiling at another man. She lived for a while and was able to describe clearing her brains from her throat so she could breath before she and the baby died. She was a mother of three. This is the real face of guns in America this happens over and over again. Guns make it easy for those who are in the throws of their emotional mind to act out. Gun safety should not be taught in school children should watch films of people scraping their loved ones brains off the ceiling after their 20 year old son committed suicide. The myth of killing the bad guy is just for the most part a myth the reality is far different. The children should also be taught that the NRA is no more than a religious cult that is pushing a myth.

Children before the age of three may be capable of solving problems by logic but at the same time their parents are teaching them magical thinking. The parents say look at all the things around you, the trees, the earth, the sky and even you and me were created by the flying spaghetti monster (or substitute any other magical creature you can imagine God, Mohamed, Batman, the choices are literally infinite). Then you tell your child that on Sunday you are going to church to church to worship the flying spaghetti monster. The child has been learning to think logically but now you introduce him to magical thinking all he needs is his imagination who needs facts when you can simply imagine any supporting material you need.

Most of the children raised to believe in magical thinking are easy targets for other cults. religious and otherwise. The NRA (read that National Gun Manufacturers Association) could care less who shoots who. They are not in business to protect people, the Police Department is. They just hope lots of people are killed, children, women or drug addicts it doesn't matter as long as the bottom line gets better. Whether it is a two year old killed, a teenage suicide, or a rape victim killed it is simply good for business. So far we have not seen widespread TV commercials showing off the latest AK-47 and telling the audience with this gun you can kill thirty burglars in thirty seconds or thirty school children it is your choice and the NRA simply doesn't care as long as it sells more guns.

Because people were trained as children to think magically facts have no impact on belief. When the bible said the earth was flat, the earth was flat and anyone who contradicted the magical thinking was a heretic. When anyone points out the fact that with a gun in the house does not make your family safer, in fact statics (at least those the NRA hasn't been successful in blocking) shows that a gun in the house makes it ten time more likely for a family member to commit suicide, be used in a domestic shooting, or be killed while cleaning the gun. Do you think the NRA cares if your two year old is killed by your four year old? No the gun manufacturers associations are far to busy counting their money and they simply don't care who has to die for them to get it. The NRA doesn't have to run commercials for guns because every mass shooting is a commercial that sells even more guns.

Why is gun owner far more likely to shoot a family member or an acquaintance? Simply because these are the people he interacts with the most. You may never find a burglar in your house but depression is common problem. Anyone that is married is subject to domestic arguments that can easily escalate with a gun in the house. These are the people who the gun owner is most likely to get angry with. These are the people he is most likely to kill when he is depressed. Murder suicides are far to common in our society. A recent murder suicide where four people died was over an argument over the daughter-in-law using the washing machine. As the emotional mind spins out of control ending the argument with a gun seems a reasonable resolution to an emotional mind. When I ran a goggle search to find the story on the recent murder suicide with four dead the search returned many other murder suicides involving four deaths the murder suicides with four deaths were so common that the one that took place on Monday did not trip the search engine. A murder suicide in Jacksonville Fla involving four people did. A domestic situation where the wife was moving out.

The NRA should have true content in their commercials. Your wife moving out? No problem this Glock nine -mm will solve all your problems. She may think she will get alimony but she will never live to collect it with this 9 mm. Child support? Not a chance. And this 9 mm will make it impossible for the police to catch you. They can't follow you where you are going. This happens again and again across the United States each year far more often than a burglar being shot. This is the real reality of guns is far different than the hero fantasy the NRA uses to sell guns. But the emotional mind is still to preoccupied with the twig breaking in the jungle and never see the snake in the grass that is actually going to kill you. Similar to what the Christian Ralph Reed said, The NRA has you and your family dead and in the body bag before you knew what got you.

When we look in the mirror most of us see someone with two arms, two legs and two eyes but a mirror will never tell us who we are. Our narrative defines us and tells us who we are, it is our essence. Most diseases attack the physical body but depression attacks the very essence of who we are because it alters the way we see ourselves. It changes and colors not only our perception of ourselves but of the world at large. The fact that our very essence can be attacked and altered by a disease should frighten all of us. You wake up one morning and read the mornings paper and find that a murder suicide has taken place across town. A man in his late twenties has killed not only his wife but his two small children. The neighbors are taken by surprise as they see the couple as a nice couple with only the ordinary problems. Someone seen as just an ordinary Joe just killed four people for no apparent reason. When a murder suicide takes place you can bet depression was the root cause but easy access to a gun made it possible. When you see a mass shooting were someone goes into a Post Office and kills his fellow employees you can bet depression likely played a major role.

Depression plays a major role because it alters a person narrative it changes the inner dialogue that defines us. If a chemical imbalance is not the only way that a person essence can be altered. We all try to influence others on a daily bases whether it is to talk your wife into going to the local fast food restaurant so you don't have to make the trip or a Madison Avenue advertising agency trying to get customers to part with their money for the latest fad. Come on it is your turn I went last time to you must have this car because it defines who you really are. Influence over others is gained by changing how they see their self. You try to make your wife feel guilty because you made the last trip. The car company points out that you need to buy their car because it defines you. Influence over other is gained by altering their narrative, how they see themselves.

Conmen instinctively know how to alter other people narrative, whether it is telling them what a good Christian they are or that they will give the first 100 customers to call a free roof. It is the art of taking advantage. When you want to take advantage of someone you must find a weakness that you can exploit. The NRA knows that in the narrative of most men in the United States they believe that protecting their family is one of their primary responsibilities so it is easy to convince many that they must have a gun for protection at least from other gun owners but one day the father picks up that gun and kills his whole family. Did that gun protect his family? This exact scenario has been repeated thousands of times over the past few years. Does the NRA have a program to protect you from this scenario? No, they consider that collateral damage.

"...and many social psychologists have concluded that the mind is not designed to grasp the laws of probabilities even though the laws of probabilities rule the universe." In other words one personal anecdote about a gun owner shooting a thief may make a more lasting impression than a thousand murder suicides on a perspective gun owner but in the end the laws of probabilities that rule the universe also rules gun ownership.

Obama's town hall meeting about guns was held almost within sight of NRA headquarters but the NRA turned tail and refused to formally participate. Why? Because they would have had to debate actuals facts and that is very much a losing argument. Of the 30,000 people killed in the United States each year only a tiny fraction are buglers, the biggest selling point for guns. The NRA is good to run half hour infomercials scaring people that the government is out to take their guns just prior to Presidential elections but participate in an open debate where they cannot control the content, never.

Though the NRA did not formally participate they did send those with anecdotal experiences. Anecdotal experiences are at the heart of guns sales in the United States. Statistics are hard facts that mean nothing to emotional mind. But fear is the life's blood of the emotional mind nothing is more emotionally thrilling than fear. Hollywood has been very successful making movies that stimulate the fear reflex from slasher movies to thrillers fear sells. The NRA plant in the audience was Kimberly Corban, she had been raped in college by someone that broke into her apartment. This was the typical would of, should of, could have story. If only she had a gun she would have never been raped. That might work if her rapists knocked on the door an announced that he was here to rape her. The victim could just say, could you please wait just a minute while I go get my gun? That isn't the way her rape happened. The victim is usually awakened by the rapist standing over top of her, he is juiced on adrenaline she barely awake. He has control of his victim almost instantly. She could have had a hundred guns hanging on the wall but if the rapist has controls of the victim the guns would not make a difference. It is another would of, could of, should of anecdote designed to sell more guns.

What you never hear is we had guns in the house and I was raped. With so many houses in America having guns in them it has to happen and happen frequently. Thirty four percent of homes in America have guns in them. One in six American will be raped and guns are often used to rape women. New Mexico has one of the highest rates of rape in America and one of the highest rates of gun ownership in America with forty-nine point nine percent of the residents owning guns but three times as many rapes take place there then in California which has the most strict gun laws. High gun ownership and high rape statistic, to hear the NRA guns prevent rape. Why is it we never hear the NRA pushing those stories about the fact that more rapes takes place in states with more guns? It would not sell guns. NRA never wants facts get in the way of selling guns.

Personal man on the streets narratives are the meat of advertising. Because everyone already has a personal narrative it is very easy to put ourselves in someone else's narrative. Companies pay a fortune for celebrity endorsements for a good reason they work. All the statistic about your athletic shoe mean little but if a celebrity endorses it sales go through the roof. In this new adopted narrative we are unlikely to play the part of the victim and we picture ourselves as Dirty Harry blowing the bad guy away. We sympathize with victims and want revenge on the bad guy. It is the wish fulfillment in every movie. The rape story reminds me very much of the "Death Wish" movies with Charles Bronson where both his wife and daughter are violently raped. It is obvious that the director is using the scene to manipulate the viewers emotions. The NRA is using this woman for the exact same purpose as the director, emotional manipulation.

Statistics are dull but personal narratives are interesting, statistics are stored in the rational mind but personal narratives are burned into the emotional mind. We don't experience life as statistic we experience life in incidences. But statistics are still the best predictor of future.

Our narrative is like many other creatures on the earth it has self defense mechanisms to defend itself. Once our narrative has taken a position on philosophy such as Christianity, pro gun or anti abortion our narrative will defend that position from invading ideas that would erode the validity of that position. Our life narrative is what we think of as our self it defines us, it is who we are. The self once it has settled on tentative position on a particular philosophy whether pro gun or anti-abortion will spend the rest of its time looking for pieces of information that will reinforce their already accepted position and begin defending itself from information that might impeach those positions.

We know that the emotional mind process information faster than the rational mind. To trigger the fight or flight mechanism quickly certain compromises had to be made and processing all the available information was never an option. Certain information, especially information with highly emotional content, the anecdote, appeals to emotional mind of others. We are all equipped with mirror neurons that let us read the emotions of others. Our mirror neurons let us know that we are in danger by letting us know that we are dealing with someone that is very angry or they let us sympathize with someone who has lost a child.

This is why the emotional tale of people like Kimberly Corban is so effective. We all sympathize with a rape victim it is power crime over the helpless. But remember the weakness of the emotional mind. The emotional mind focuses our attention at the expense of other information. First Kimberly was raped but the emotional moral of her story is that a gun will prevent rape which is easily disproved. In states with more gun owners more rapes take place guns don't prevent rape they cause rape and are more often use as a means of rape. The more guns you have the more violent the society.

Kimberly story is a commercial for the gun manufacturers. Kimberly did not say that she successfully stopped anyone from raping her after she started carrying a gun. Why a gun? There are other weapons all houses have butcher knives. If Kimberly had just put a butcher knife under her pillow she could have plunged it deep into her attackers ribs. If she had just had a ball bat in her bedroom she could have beaten her attacker into a bloody pulp. Even a simple three inch hat pin could have discouraged the attacker. It is always the would of, could, of should of after the fact.

The emotional mind draws the connection that she was raped before she had a gun but she was not raped again after she started carrying a gun. The gun made her safe. The two don't logically follow each other. A stranger would not know whether she owned a gun and since she lives in Colorado and more than one in three in that state own guns the rapist must assume there is a gun in the house. So the rapist knows that his victim likely has a gun and it doesn't discourage him. Kimberly has only the illusion of safety but a very real reality of her or her children being shot by the same gun. To start with most women are raped by someone they know and being raped by a stranger is rare. So the odds of Kimberly being raped again by a stranger are rather long.

Kimberly has admitted she has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder a dangerous mental illness that has been linked to many incidences of murder suicide in America. She has a dangerous mental illness and a gun. Her emotional mind sees nothing wrong with putting the rest of us at risk because she was raped. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is blamed for the high suicide rate in cops. There is a significant chances that Kimberly will eat her own gun. Will the NRA say that the gun protected most of her life?

Our emotional mind is designed for making life and death decision in an instant based on very little information. The twig breaking in the jungle was indeed a tiger sometimes but most of the time a breaking twig was heard in the jungle it wasn't a tiger. Our ancestors didn't stop to consider the last 99 times they heard a breaking twig in the jungle there was no tiger. Their emotional mind considered only the 1 time in 100 that there was actually a tiger there. We still have the same basic mind that was designed to keep our ancestors safe in a jungle full of wild animals. Now our emotional mind throws us into fight or flight when we are cut off in traffic. reprimanded by the boss, arguing with a spouse or many other situation that do not require the strength to fight off a tiger. The trouble is that the chemical changes that give us the strength to fight or run from the tiger take place during these situations. All these situations can and do end up in the deaths of the individuals involved in rare instances. When the body goes into fight or flight it is much like flooring the accelerator on a car you are getting everything you can get out of the car. In a jungle the stress chemicals were dissipated during the fight or the flight in modern day the chemicals are for most part are not dissipated because the fight or flight doesn't take place. You just go back to work instead of punching your boss in the nose, you fight the urge to shove the jerk that just cut you off into the guard rail like your favorite race car driver dose, and you walk off angry into another room after a fight with your spouse. The stress chemicals don't dissipate naturally and it is like holding the accelerator down while the car is in neutral.

Anger is a luxury we can ill afford we all know people who were always angry at someone. Their health was usually gone by their late 40s, heat attacks, ulcers, high blood pressure and other health problems were the price they paid for their anger. The biggest predictor of a heart attack is not hereditary or diet but a type A personality that is constant state of stress. Staying in a chronic state of stress is like committing slow suicide.

The question is how much control can the rational mind exercise over the emotional mind? The term "I lost it" usually refers to someone whose emotional mind took control. We all know that emotional mind makes decisions for the short term without regard to long term consequences. In modern society the rational mind must have developed the ability to veto the emotional mind prescribed physical actions. This ability to keep the emotional mind in check varies with individuals. We live in a world where we blame others even for our own emotions one of the most common sayings in our society is, "He made me mad." Get hit in the head with someone's fist will trigger the emotional mind quickly but words are not fists and the rational mind must first process what the words mean and then you make a conscious decision as whether to become angry. A lot of the situations we face in modern society are those which we make a conscious decision to engage our emotional mind. Anger is a luxury that we cannot afford the price is measured in years.

"On March 13, 1996, Thomas Hamilton walked into an elementary school in Dunblane, Scotland, carrying two revolvers and two semi-automatic pistols. After wounding staff members who tried to tackle him, he ran to the gymnasium, where a kindergarten class was playing. He shot 28 children, sixteen fatally and killed their teacher before turning the gun on himself."
The School Master said, "Evil visited us yesterday and we don't know why. We don't understand it and I don't think we ever will."

The strange part of this shooting was that it didn't take place in America. America is known as the land of the "wackos" thoughout the rest of the civilized world. Mass shootings are no longer a surprise, in fact if you live in America you can expect to see at least sixteen mass shootings on the evening news this year. In America at least four people have to be killed in mass shooting to be worthy of making the national news.

The shooter was a mild mannered Scout Master. In America there are over there hundred million guns in Scotland there are only 5.5 guns per hundred people. Mass murder is all but unknown in Scotland. But what about our scoutmaster a man who had devoted his entire life to helping children? Was he pure evil of the biblical kind? Did the Devil make him do it? The Scoutmaster's personal narrative had been under attack. First Thomas Hamilton had been forced to resign as Scout Master because he was a suspected pedophile. Hamilton formed his own youth group that met in Dunblane school's gymnasium. Parents complaints about his odd behavior caused school authorities to deny him use of the gymnasium. "Days before his rampage Hamilton had sent letters to the media and Queen Elizabeth defending his reputation and pleading for reinstatement in the scouting movement."

Hamilton life's narrative was under attack. In Hamilton's narrative he was a hero helping children. If in fact Hamilton was a pedophile he would have adjusted his life's narrative to believing that he was doing no real harm. No doubt there are many pedophiles in Scotland and no doubt many are caught and suffer a lose of self esteem but they didn't have two revolvers and two semi-automatic pistols. Hamilton no doubt suffered a real lose whether he was guilty or not. He decided he had a right to settle the score with both the school and parents and more importantly he had the means to settle the score. Once the score is settled Hamilton escapes into the here after.

Mass shootings require a certain deadly combination of ingredients, some of the major ingredients are: someone whose life narrative tells them they have been wronged, depressive style thinking, and guns, guns and more guns. If we can stop access to one of the major ingredients may be the best way to prevent mass murder.

Mass killings have taken place throughout history and in most cultures.

"The terms amuck, a Malayan word, and berserk, a Norse word, have been used to describe people going on a killing sprees. Both terms have been around for centuries, which reflects the fact that mass murder is neither a modern or uniquely American phenomenon."

Grant Duwe Director or Research at the Minnesota Department of Corrections

That quote was taken from a gun nut sight and there is indeed evidence that mass killings do take place in other societies. Mass killing even take place in among the stone-age foragers of Papua New Guinea. Amuck is the Malay word for homicidal killings. These killings are often sparked by someone loose of self-esteem.

"I am not an important or "big man" I posses only my personal dignity. My life has been reduced to nothing by an intolerable insult. Therefore, I have nothing to lose except my life, which is nothing, so I trade my life for yours, as your life is favoured. The exchange is in my favor, so I shall not only kill you, but I shall kill many of you, and at the same time rehabilitate myself in the eyes of the group of which I am a member, even though I might be killed in the process."

From psychiatrist's interviews with seven hospitalized amuck mass murder in Papua New Guinea Hospital

The gun nut position is if mass killings happen elsewhere in the world it is not just a defect in our stars but just a defect in human nature that is best cured with a bullet to the head. The defect is certainly not in our guns, guns don't kill people, people kill people.

I built a rather large garage 15 years ago but in order to build it I had to move a hill side. I didn't start with a transit and it just looked like a gentle slope But by the time it was leveled I was 13ft into the hillside to get the forty feet width. If I had to dig that sight out with my hands I would still be digging. Using a mattock and shovel it would have taken five years. Renting a back hoe for two weeks shortened the project considerably. Mankind developed tools to make him more efficient we went from throwing a stone into the sky to landing a spaceship on Mars. Man also went from throwing a stone at a fellow human being to sending 500 pieces of lead at hundreds of miles per hour with one shooter killing 35 people in one mass killing.

In Australia on the 28 of April 196 Martin Bryant killed 35 people in one mass killing he used an AR15. Martin had a tested IQ of only 66 but with the right tool Martin set the record for the most people killed in a mass murder. by one retarded man.

If you wanted to stop people from building garages on hillsides banning heavy equipment might not stop all of them but far fewer would be built likewise fewer people would be killed in mass killings if gun nuts would not block reasonable gun control that kept high powered guns designed and built for one reason only, killing people out of the hands of born killers.

A one morning last week in Cincinnati a man heard a noise. He immediately got his gun an went to investigate. He was startled by and intruder and shot him in the neck. The intruder he shot was his 14 year old son who was suppose to be on the school bus. The entire 911 call is on the internet and the man can be heard asking God why? He should be asking the NRA why? God had nothing to do with it. The fact is the people that live in the house are far more likely to be in that house than some burglar. Chances of his son being in the house 1 in 5 changes of a burglar being in house 1 in 100,000. Every gun owner should listen to the man as his son dies. The call lasts for five agonizing minutes. This is the joy of gun ownership. I wonder if the man feels safer today after all safety is what the NRA is selling. The guns are going to keep you and your family safe from a negligible danger and increase real danger by a factor of ten.

That of course is just one occurrence but it is representative of actual statistical occurrences as who is most likely to be shot when a gun is in the house. In another incident a man's daughter sees a prowler on the property. The man gets his gun and puts it in his night stand. A few nights later he and his wife return from a ball game. The prowler shoots him with his own gun but just grazes his head and on the second shot the gun jams. The man hurries to his night stand to grab his gun only to find it gone. Good argument for second gun? Got to watch out for burglars? Nothing was taken but the gun. His wife had hired someone to kill him to collect on his $250,000 life insurance policy. He later killed himself with his new gun with some help from his wife. She was caught five years later trying to hire another hit man to kill her sister husband.

Kimberly Corban, the rape victim turned gun advocate, was recruited by CNN for the debate after the NRA had refused to participate. Kimberly has spent a lot of her time as a gun advocate. Clearly unhappy with the victims role Kimberly tries to convince others that a gun is the answer to rape. Kimberly is likely to be just like the father in Cincinnati. As long as she lives she will always hear the twig breaking in the jungle and believe that her rapist has returned. She will patrol her house with her loaded gun at the ready. By the time her children are teenagers the twig breaking in the jungle will likely be them sneaking in or out of or into the house and just like the dad in Cincinnati when they startle her she will likely shoot them. With her Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome she will only likely see the face of rapist from 20 years ago. They say and eye for eye and with a gun that is probably true but the trouble it is not eye of the offender that is put out but the eye of some innocent person. If you are raped and make sure that you have a loaded gun around the house it is likely your six year old will find it and shoot his five year old brother.

Kimberly told Obama she should have a right to buy a gun of her choosing even though none of the Obama purposed regulations restricted her purchase any type of gun. When researching the first post on Kimberly I ran a Google search on types of guns to get a correct name of a gun. I was surprised to find page after page of different guns and had no idea how many different choices Kimberly had but the fact is if they had 10,000 choices they would want 20,000 more.

Of course Kimberly like the NRA is worried that assault rifles might be banned again. What would a mass killer or terrorist do without a good AR15 or AK47? In 1994 assault rifles, the preferred weapons of mass murders and terrorists throughout the world, were banned in the United States. Both the sale of and the possession of assault rifles was banned in the United States but the ban was set to expire in 2004. In 2003 even president Baby Bush supported the assault rifle ban irking the NRA. The gun manufacturers were severely up set assault rifles are some of their highest profit items. The national gun manufacturers association makes an extremely good profit on death of 30,000 Americans each year. They spread the money around buying as many politicians as possible. The fact that they did not own Bush at that time was surprising but 2004 when the assault rifle ban was set to expire was an election year and the gun manufacturers were buying politicians like it was black Friday. After the NRA made one of the biggest purchases of politicians ever recorded political tricks were used to make sure the assault weapon renewal never made it out committee. You can not vote on it if you can't get it out of certain committee. When the NRA finds and honest politician they can't bribe they use their money to target him at election time.

After the assault weapons were banned in 1994 mass shooting in America declined radically after the ban expired they shot up radically. After the ban Adam Lanza was able to kill 26 people (mostly children) with a Bush Master XM-15 legally purchased after the NRA successfully killed the assault rifle ban. Lanza gun was a Christmas present and he knew exactly what it was made for, to kill people. The shooter in the Colorado theater, James E Holmes, killed 12 people and wounded 70 with an assault rifle bought after the NRA killed the assault rifle ban. After the assault rifle ban went into effect in 1995 there were only three mass shooting targets, after the assault rifle ban was effectively repealed by 2013 there were 148 mass shooting targets. It goes to show if you that if you have enough money and access to the media you can sell anything, even death.

Why are anecdotes so effective? You could see how effective anecdotes were in the recent lottery. Everyone knew that the odds against winning were 290 million to one. Your were more likely to be killed by meteorite so no one should ever bother to purchase a lottery ticket if they considered the actual facts. No doubt over $2 billion was spent on lottery tickets much of that from people who could not afford it. In town we had an elderly grandmother that spent her time dumpster diving for cans to support her grandchildren but she spent a lot of her money on lottery tickets. If taxes had been raised by $2 billion there would have been an outcry from the public. But the anecdotes of people winning the lottery shown on television are far more powerful.

Anecdotes make up much of our personal narratives they are the language our personal narratives are written in. This is why an anecdote is such a effective way of communicating. The foundation of all religions are personal narratives and we no how effective they have been. The trouble with anecdotes is they don't have to be true but anecdotes are more likely to be accepted and they are seldom filtered by the rational mind. This is what gives the conman the foot up on his victim, he knows what works and gaining the confidence of his mark is his primary goal.

Anecdotes don't even have to have taken place, Kimberly Corban anecdote was that the gun would protector from being raped in the future while the actuals facts are the more guns the more rapes. Rape is not about sex it is about power over other people. Guns are all about powers over other people also, so the two are closely related and would attract people with the same mind set. The actual facts show guns are far more dangerous to own then any protection they offer. Kimberly constructed an anecdote just as someone would write a script for television show. Her rape did take place but that adds a counterfeit reality to the rest of her anecdote. Kimberly wasn't there against rape she was there to push gun sales in America. So we know that increasing the number of guns increases the number of rapes she was in effect pushing for more women to be raped.

Social psychologists call it the "Weapons Effect" studies have show that the mere presence of a weapon or even a picture of a weapon leads to more aggressive behavior, particularly if they are already aroused. Even a picture of a gun caused the effect. Two men in the next town were arguing about the property line one takes his gun out and kills the other. The presence of gun made the exchange more violent. Kimberly guns may be the very stimulus her next racists needs and it is far more likely her next attacker would take her gun and shoot her with it then she shoot him. The fact is he would be stronger and able to take any weapon away from her. Unless her Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome takes over and she starts shooting random men on the street because she imagines they are going to rape her. In Kimberly anecdote she controls ever aspect but real life seldom goes down as it does in her imagination.

When it comes to political philosophies people tend to see themselves as either liberals or conservatives. Though the lines of demarcation between liberal and conservative are somewhat blurred along the edges as a rule of thumb they describe a person position on the most important political issues of the day. During elections we hear about red states and blue states, the red states being reliably conservative and the blue states being reliably liberal. The fact that most Americans tend to accept their political positions on a group bases rather then a cafeteria selection procedure tells us our political beliefs are filtered by personal narrative. Once we establish a strong personal narrative, usually in our 20' or 30s, that narrative defines who we are. We will identify ourselves as either conservatives or liberals. Once we have identified ourselves as liberal or conservative we are far more likely to accept the liberal or conservative position on a new political idea based more on our identify as a liberal or a conservative than any subjective judgement.

Political theory predicts that people will vote their own economic best interest but in reality this doesn't take place because of the liberal and conservative bias. Reagan was widely identified as the conservative candidate but conservatives also believe in a balanced budget. Reagan ran on the platform that he would cut taxes, raise military spending, and pay off the national debt. Cutting your income, increasing your spending and paying off your debts is impossible. In the end Reagan tripled the national debt. Every president since WWII paid the debt down. Reagan tripled it in peace time. Reagan cut the taxes on the rich by 70% but raised social security taxes on the working man five time along with raising the retirement age. The increase in social security taxes was used to pay for his massive tax cut for the rich. You can claim deductions on income taxes but not on social security taxes the working man paid every cent of the five tax increases while the rich paid very little of it since the vast majority was exempt fro social security taxes. If you are either liberal or conservative you already have prefabricated position on political issues. Reagan to this day remains the premier conservative icon to conservatives all they need do is ignore reality.

Being a conservative or a liberal not only prejudiced our politics but also our judgments of politicians. The groupings of liberal and conservative also open us to be exploited by manipulators. High taxes on the wealthy had long been a priority of liberals while conservatives believe the rich provide jobs and should pay the lowest percentage of taxes and now billionaire hedge fund managers pay the lowest tax rates of people making who make miniscule percentage of what they make. The mask of conservatism worn by Reagan fooled conservatives all over America. The legend of Reagan is just that a legend with little truth.

The fact that we label ourselves liberals or conservatives in our narratives leaves us open to manipulation. Most political candidate say they are a liberal or a conservative to manipulate voters at election time. Both labels describe complex political positions and candidate need only adopt a conservative or liberal position on a few prominent issue to claim the mantle of conservative or liberal. A political candidate that is against abortion could have a liberal position on the death penalty but the fact he was against abortion would lead most conservatives to believe that candidate was a conservative. Bill Clinton was widely considered a liberal politician but made key change in the laws written during the Great Depression that kept Wall Street from becoming just another Las Vegas casino where you could place a bet on anything. This change was partly responsible for billions later lost on the stock market when brokers doubled down on their bets until even the large banks folded.

During a political campaign a candidate can take old money or new money. Old money was made on traditional manufacturing like auto and steel but new money comes from high tech industries and Wall Street. Billions of dollars is spent on political contributions each election cycle with one end in mind getting the politician to pass legislation that favors a particular group of individuals (think Hedge Fund Mangers who have special tax legislation in place that allows billionaires to pay a very small percentage in income tax) or special tax breaks for industries. What a candidate is saying on the campaign trail to manipulate voters is far less important then what he is not saying.

When Reagan tripled the national debt that would have paid off during Clinton term in office if it had continued to be paid down at the same rate as the six presidents after WWII. The debt should have been renamed the Reagan debt as it was no longer a debt for waging WWII. Vice Presidents Cheney was famous for saying, "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." and that was obvious during Cheney term in office as huge tax cuts were granted to richest Americans while wars of fortune caused the Reagan Debt to skyrocket. Now paying down the national debt is seen as a key conservative objective but then Reagan told us 35 years ago he was going to pay off the national debt and we know how that worked out.

One of the big issues in this years election will be our greed based health care system. During Obama's term in office we took a small step toward correcting an out of control health care system. The conservative candidate will no doubt run on turning the healthcare clock back eight years. America has by the most expensive health care system on the face of the earth but what do we purchase for all that money? We do not have the best health care system people live longer in many other countries but what we do have is the biggest doctor bills. In my life time I can remember when health care was reasonable when a good insurance policy cost $720 a year now a policy which only pays a part of your medical bills is over $20,000 a year. If the cost of medical insurance continues to increase as the rate it did between the years of 1974 and 2004 by the year 2034 the cost will be over $250,000. If wages continue to increase at the same rate of inflation as they have over the last 30 years the yearly wage would be about $220,000. You will need two jobs just to pay for your health insurance. As health insurance becomes more expensive employer paid health insurance will become a thing of the past just as defined benefit pensions have all but disappeared and been replaced with a few thousand in saving account known as a defined contribution pension.

The conservative political position is that greed is the answer to every question so the answer to health care problem is of course greed based health care system where each doctor can charge whatever the market will bare. Greed based systems work in markets where the consumer has many different choices and information about the best prices. A consumer looking for a big screen TV can look at several different stores and on the internet if the prices are to high he can decide not to buy the product. The retailers who sells too high will have to lower their prices or lose market share. Someone having a heart attack is not going to check for the best price he will be taken to the nearest hospital where they can charge whatever price they please after all they have a captive audience.

Free markets work best when the consumer and seller have the same access to information about the product being purchased or sold but with medical issues the doctor has years of training and if the doctor tells the patient he has cancer the patient will believe him. On Dateline on Sunday they did a story about a doctor who told people they had cancer and they needed expensive chemo therapy. Doctor Fata collected $17.6 million from Medicare and private insurance companies for treating 553 patients with chemo therapy when they didn't need it, killing many and injuring hundreds more for greed. In a neighboring city we had a heart surgeon that preformed countless open heart surgeries on people who didn't need it just so he could make more money. If they die on the operating table they are just collateral damage in pursuit of a good profit.

When I Googled "unnecessary open heat surgeries" looking for the name of the local doctor that had preformed them within twenty miles of my home I was surprised to come up with another doctor in a neighboring state and an a 1974 congressional report stated that 2.4 million unnecessary surgeries were doe in the United States each year resulting in 12,000 unnecessary deaths. When greed is the reason for operating it seems that big house on the hill is better motive than any health problem the patient may have. The fact that the congressional report was from 1974 when greed was not the primary driver of healthcare in America.

Have you ever watched the video of the guy that gets out of his car to feed grizzle bear in Yellow Stone? When he runs out of food the bear eats him. That is the way our medical system is the fraud is rampant. In a national health care system a doctor doesn't have literally millions of reasons to kill you in an unnecessary operation. The doctor is paid salary to provide good health care. He has no incentive to kill you for a profit.

At one time doctors entered the field because they had a calling to help people now children decide to be doctors because it is the surest path to become multi-millionaire. A search for the average income for a doctor in America ranged from a $141,635 for a general practice doctor to $209,726 for an emergency doctor but remember these are average salaries for employees. The net worth survey over 20,000 physicians shows a completely different picture with the orthopedist, gastroenterologist. and urologists had the highest percentage of those with a net worth of over $5 million. Now in America one serious illness will take your entire lifetimes net worth even if you had medical insurance. At one time in America you could buy medical insurance that would pay the bill once you met a your deductible it was a $100 up until 2004 on my policy. Medical insurance protected the insured if a woman has breast cancer you can look forward to a half million dollar in medical bills. Before the insurance company paid the bill short a small deductible. Now the patient is responsible for $100,000 of the bill. That $100,000 represents a lifetime of work for many Americans and throws them into bankruptcy. The medical insurance policy protects the doctor not the patient, the doctor recovers his expenses and the bill collector takes everything that can't be protected by filing bankruptcy.

Medical insurance like other insurance was designed to protect you from catastrophic losses. Now catastrophic losses with medical insurance are now common in America the medical bills are now the biggest cause of bankruptcy in America. In America this year 1.7 million will file for bankruptcy because of medical bills. Bankruptcy because of medical bills is the number one cause of bankruptcy in America surpassing bankruptcy caused by credit cards or mortgages. If someone owned a house worth a $100,000 they would buy insurance to protect the asset but that same Americans are exposed to that same loss of $100,000 in medical bills without protection and it is not going to get better. Medical insurance is now insurance in name only, the protection is gone. It makes no difference to you if you owe a $100,000 or a million if you lose everything you worked for in a lifetime in a medically induced bankruptcy.

True national health care is the only answer. Watching the American Medical system is like watching a tree dying in the woods it eventually becomes so rotten and collapses under its own weight.

In a free market there is seller and a buyer. The buyer has the option to buy from the lowest cost seller or if the price is too high he can decide to that he will not purchase that item or postpone the purchase until the price comes down. This gives the consumers the ability to regulate prices for consumer goods. Prices will always be compromise between what the seller wants and what the buyer is willing to pay. The supply and demand curve shows that the higher the price the lower the demand.

This system works good for consumers products but medical care is a different beast. Consumers of medical care can and do decide to postpone going to the doctor because they can not afford it often with catastrophic results for patient who ends up losing his life but the cost of his medical care goes from a few thousand dollars upward towards a million dollars or more. Postponing needed medical care does not save money it often increases the cost exponentially. It is actually a good business practice to have patients postpone as most places would rather have customer who is buying a million dollars worth of medical care rather than two hundred dollars in medical care. Think of the 2.4 million unnecessary operations each year. It is not personal it is just business. The fantasy is that there is all these people running to the doctor all the time when it is not necessary and if we could just stop them from going to doctor the cost of medical care would go down. Economics 101 the supply and demand curve, less doctor visits lowers demand and has to lower prices, right? Wrong, while there are a few people who go to the doctor more than needed the vast majority don't. Those who do need a different type of doctor.

When health insurance began to go out of sight I sat through meeting after meeting on the cost of insurance and the possible solutions. The solutions always focused on one thing how to get the employees to use less medical care. One of the things they beat into us was avoid going to the Emergency Room, always go to your regular doctor. I was getting ready for a triathlon and wrecked my bike doing about 25 mph on a Sunday afternoon. Even though I was in a good deal of pain I waited to go to my doctor on Monday morning. After X-Rays were taken they told me I had a collapsed lung and a separated shoulder and that I needed to go to the emergency room. It cost me $900 out of my pocket to be told that I needed to go to the emergency room. The time in hospital cost another $10,000 of course that was another $2,000 out of pocket. The insurance companies were naive an expected the medical field to behave like a market for televisions.

In 2008 when the city was arguing what to do with insurance and their solution was to raise the deductible from $250 to $1500 I told them this would result in higher medical cost because people would not go to the doctor until their problem was so severe the cost would go through the roof. The city saved money for the first couple of years but when the long term illnesses kicked in a number of people died and others ended up with million plus medical bills. Now the cut rate insurance is breaking the city and costs millions more than the good insurance policy did. It was a mutually assured destruction pact. This demonstrates conventional economic solutions will not solve our healthcare problems.

The recent $1.5 billion lottery attracted a lot of attention but there is another much bigger lottery in America that transfers far more wealth every day and we are all entered. Forget billion this lottery has prizes of $2.9 trillion yearly. The problem is it is a reverse lottery and if you win you must pay. If you win you can end up paying a 1/2 million dollars out of pocket in addition to what your insurance pays. All you need do to win is come down with a major illness. Suicides will be much more common in America as people realize that their sickness will quickly consume everything they worked a lifetime for leaving them and their spouses paupers for the rest of their lives.

A according to a recent survey 46% of Americans say that it is a hardship to pay for even basic healthcare and that was up 10% from a year earlier. The cost of medical care is going up faster then inflation. Last April the cost of hospital services went up 1.9% in a month, at that rate hospital services would increase by 22.8% a year. A $500,000 hospital bill would go to $614,000 in a year at that rate of increase. The theory behind the Affordable Healthcare Act was that the number of uninsured people were driving up the cost of medical care. The cost of the uninsured is a cost of doing business and if they can not pay the insured patients must pay the cost, just as shop lifted goods are paid for by other customers who pay. As more people got insured and could pay for their medical bills the cost of medical care should have got lower but it didn't. The extra money was simply a windfall for the hospitals and doctors who continued to increase services as high as a 22.8% yearly rate. No matter how much money is pumped into the medical system they will always want more, there will always be a bigger house or a more expensive car. Greed corrupts everything and the fact that 25 million more were insured and could now pay most of their medical bill made no difference at all the medical inflation rate in America is like the 1958 horror movie, "The Blob" it consumes everything in its path.

One of the things that makes the free market work is that you have only one person purchasing a product, so you have only one payer but with medical care you have at least two payers in most cases and in the case of many others there are three payers paying for the same service. If you have medical insurance and you get sick your medical insurance will pay a portion of the bill and you will be responsible for the rest of the bill. Most people on Medicare have a supplemental policy to pay the other 20% of the medical bill but then they are responsible for a deductible and the service Medicare no longer pays for. The $500 a month supplement to Medicare does not pay for anything Medicare doesn't pay for. Each year the republican congress cut out many Medical services that Medicare paid for so the Medicare Supplement should then pay for those services? Wrong, each time the republican congress cuts the medical care services Medicare pays for it is a multimillion dollar windfall for private insurance because the private insurance no longer has to pay for those services.

Insurance policies are typically written as to what they will pay for and must pay for those services but a Medicare supplement can be changed at the whim of a politicians who have their pockets lined with insurance company money. When congress decides it will no longer cover a medical procedure, if the insured decides to have that procedure he must pay the entire bill despite the fact he is paying for two medical insurance policies. Not only that but the insured has paid weekly for Medicare for last 49 years. The first insurance policy in history that collected premiums 49 years in advance and then you must pay an additional monthly premium once you sign up.
If there were three payers for a television set it is likely television sets would cost $10,000 because of the large pool of money that could be used to buy television sets. The free market would be distorted because of the three payers.

Even the Medicare premium are a two payer system as the employee must pay 1.45% of his salary and the employer must pay an additional 1.45% into that means there is 2.9% paid on each employee and employee making $50,000 would pay $750 and the employers would pay an additional $750. Of course this was another tax that Reagan raised by 12% on the working people after he cut taxes on the idle rich by 70% this was in addition to the five times Reagan raised social security taxes not to mention the amount of earnings subject to social security tax. When Reagan took office you only paid social security tax on the first $29,700 by the time Reagan left office you had to pay social security tax on the first $45,000. Reagan heralded the beginning of the Greatest American wealth shift in history for the next 30 years America wealth would be shifted to the idle rich. Never in American history had so much wealth been shifted so quickly to so few by government action.