Shadows of Gothomgrad

 

In the bustling city of Gothomgrad, there lived two sisters as different as night and day. Catheryne, the elder, was a sharp-witted gal with a nose for opportunity and a heart set on triumph, no matter the price. Her motto, you see, was "Success at any cost." Emmelyne, the younger, was a dreamer through and through. She believed in following her passions and living life true to her spirit. Her motto was "Follow your heart."

Catheryne, with her keen eye for finance, climbed the corporate ladder faster than a squirrel up a tree. She amassed wealth and power, becoming a prominent figure among Gothomgrad's elite. Emmelyne, on the other hand, dedicated herself to her art. She painted, wrote poetry, and taught at the local community center. Her life was rich in creativity and fulfillment, but not in material wealth.

As the years rolled by, Catheryne's wealth and influence grew like a well-watered weed. Greed for gold and a lust for power drove Catheryne's every choice. Slowly, step by step, she amassed wealth and influence, tightening her grip over the struggling masses of Gothomgrad. Her empire grew like a shadow, casting a pall over the city. The more she gained, the more she craved, and the divide between the wealthy elite and the destitute widened into a chasm. The streets buzzed with whispers of discontent, and the air grew thick with the tension of a city on the brink. Emmelyne and her friends, once beacons of hope and creativity, found themselves at the heart of the growing unrest, their dreams suffocated by Catheryne's relentless ambition.

The tipping point came when Catheryne's company announced plans to demolish the community center to build luxury apartments. Emmelyne, devastated and desperate, became a leader in the burgeoning resistance movement. The protests grew larger and more intense, fueled by the anger and frustration of those who had been marginalized.

One fateful night, the protests turned violent. Emmelyne, driven by a mix of righteous fury and personal betrayal, led the charge against her sister's empire. The revolutionaries stormed Catheryne's mansion, and in the chaos, Catheryne was brutally murdered.

The aftermath was nothing short of tragic. Gothomgrad lay in ruins, a city once vibrant now scarred by the fires of revolution. Emmelyne, who had once been a beacon of hope and creativity, found herself consumed by guilt and sorrow. She had achieved her goal, but at a terrible cost. The revolution had brought change, but it had also left deep wounds on the city and on Emmelyne's soul.

In the end, Emmelyne lived in a shadow of shame and misery, haunted by the memory of her sister and the violence she had unleashed.  Catheryne, however, was but dust.

NRA: Not Representative Anymore

The National Rifle Association (NRA) has been taken over by the firearms industry and is promoting radical views to increase sales.  Hunters, hobbyists, and decent citizens are being fed propaganda from secret agendas of greed.

I want to exercise my second amendment rights.  I can no longer support the NRA.  We citizens have the right to own and responsibly use firearms.  It is enshrined in the constitution. The firearms industry has used the NRA to twist our rights into something sinister. 

Do not be fooled.  Not everyone against the immoral practices of firearm manufactures is trying to take your guns away.  Do not let your fear overwhelm your good sense.  Do not let the intentional polarization of the debate allow greed and fraud run amok in our land.

Way Back When

When I was very young we were not wealthy.  Dad supplemented our meager chicken coop meat supply with deer, duck, trout, and salmon. 

Generational bonding on the hunt

Grandpa shared his “The American Rifleman”, the NRA’s magazine, with me.  I read about adventure cuddled in a cozy army surplus sleeping bag.  Lusting after my own .22, begging for my own BB gun, watching dad load his own ammo or simply watching my grandpa clean his vintage M1 rifle were apart of my childhood.

Starting in 1977, as a soldier, I learned how to use many kinds of firearms proficiently.  Safe handling of pistols, assault rifles, and mortars became my profession. 

Throughout its history, the NRA had been a bipartisan group of liberals and conservatives that shared common interests in guns, hunting, and marksmanship.

The NRA was a rifle club.  It worked with the National Guard to improve member’s marksmanship.  Hunter education, marksman competitions, and hobby promotion were its main focus.  This hobby sporting group even advocated conserving natural habitat for game.  National training programs taught Boy Scouts how to handle guns safely.

Radical Revolution

While I was learning the weapons of war, the NRA became radicalized.  Fevered, angry Second Amendment fundamentalists using walkie-talkies, bull horns, and orange baseball caps staged a highly organized coup to take over leadership of the NRA. 

The organization went from a club for sportsmen, to a radical political lobby. 

Dissent shouted down 

The cause of the revolution was the Gun Control Act of 1968.  Incited by turmoil of the 1960s where multiple assassinations, street violence and riots drove Congress to regulate the interstate commerce of firearms. 

The Act made it illegal for convicted criminals, addicts, the mentally ill or non-citizens to purchase guns. Many conservatives, including Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, publicly supported the act.

The NRA’s new leader after the coup was Harlon Carter.  Mr. Carter had been convicted of murdering a 14 year old Hispanic boy in Texas while attempting to kidnap him. 

Carter proclaimed violent felons, the mentally deranged, and addicts had a right to gun ownership because it was “a price we pay for freedom”.  He even advocated giving grade school children pistols for self defense from bullies.

Fear Mongering for Money

Using fear and terror tactics, the new NRA leaders declared that the government was trying to take away all the guns from everyone. 

Harlan Carter

Any limitation on firearms was declared traitorous.  Everyone, at any time, and in any place should be able to have a firearm.  Adults, children, criminals and insane all should be free of any restrictions.  Church, school, funerals, and athletic events should allow the bearing of arms.

As professionals who work in advertising should know, fear sells.  Fear sells better than sex or greed.

Regular bulletins were mailed to members, each escalating the trepidation that guns were about to disappear.   Article after article, press release after press released followed.  Constantly repeating the threat to freedom and the imminent demise of the second amendment, terror was put into the hearts of men. 

Scaring people by saying things that were not true gave good people doubt.  Hearing lies told over and over again, many began to believe the deceit was truth.  A closed mutual support network of alarm amplified the messages even further.

Fear worked.

In only a few years, membership in the NRA had tripled.  The new members brought their cash with them. 

Selling branded apparel, bumper stickers and decals at high markup, the money rolled in. More money was raised by selling, cancer, theft, and medical insurance.  Like carnival hucksters, they dazzled members with overpriced trinkets and misdirection. 

Radical Lobbying

Another of the revolutionary leaders, Neal Knox, moved to Washington DC and launched a radical gun lobby effort.  Knox claimed that the assassinations and other tragedies of the 1960s had been part of a vast plot to control guns.  Saying “that some of the incidents could have been created for the purpose of disarming the people of the free world” he used NRA money to lobby for gutting the enforcement of the Gun Control Act of 1968.

Neal Knox

The money, lobbying, and campaign contributions paid off when Congress passed the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986.  The new law stopped government from tracking gun ownership and allowed ammo to be sent through the mail and across state lines unregulated.  The law stripped the ability for the government to know when a criminal, addict, or insane person had been sold a gun.

Some lawmakers said off the record that they would have voted against the act but feared retaliation from the NRA’s now powerful gun lobby come election time.

Corporate Money

Money from gun manufactures significantly impacts the funding of NRA’s lobbying effort.  Private gifts from owners of manufactures and from gun industry firms have been estimated at over $70 million per year.

Not very wise

Without firearm industry’s donations, the NRA would not be able to maintain its membership programs, much less lobby government. 

“The NRA is basically helping to make sure the gun industry can increase sales," Representative Carolyn McCarthy "No one is challenging NRA members' right to own guns."

Midway USA, Sturm, Ruger & Co. Smith & Wesson, and Beretta USA are all large funders of the NRA’s lobbying efforts. 

The $16 billion a year firearm industry uses the NRA as its spokesman.  The NRA no longer represents gun owners and hobbyists. 

The NRA “translates the industry's needs into less crass, less economically interested language -- into defending the home, into defending the country," said Tom Diaz of the Violence Policy Center.

No firearms here please

"The NRA clearly benefits from the gun industry," William Vizzard, a former agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. "There’s a symbiotic relationship. They have co-aligned goals much more than 30 or 40 years ago."

They "started out as a grassroots organization and became an industry organization," Vizzard also said, "The NRA is generating fear.  The industry has learned that the more controversy there is about guns, the more guns sell -- whether it’s a legitimate controversy over a bill, or a trumped-up one like, 'Obama’s been re-elected, they’re going to take away our guns.'"

In his book, Ricochet: Confessions of a Gun Lobbyist, former NRA lobbyist Richard Feldman said that the NRA had degenerated into "a cynical, mercenary political cult," that was "obsessed with wielding power while relentlessly squeezing contributions from its members."

Partisan Politics

With the new lobbying effort, the NRA came to be closely tied to the Republican Party.  What had once been a non-partisan hobby organization now was directly involved in one-sided election politics.

Responsible training is good

Activists began to claim that black helicopter carrying federal agents dressed like ninjas were coming to take the guns away.  Using the tragedies at Ruby Ridge, Idaho and Waco, Texas; Democratic control was proclaimed to be “jackbooted Government thugs” who wanted “power to take our constitutional rights, break in our doors, seize our guns, destroy our property and even injure and kill us.”

This was too much for even staunch conservatives like Ronald Reagan who wrote about the assassination attempt on his person “Lives were changed forever, and all by a Saturday-night special - a cheaply made .22 caliber pistol - purchased in a Dallas pawnshop by a young man with a history of mental disturbance. This nightmare might never have happened if legislation that is before Congress (the Brady Bill)... had been law."

George H.W. Bush, who resigned his NRA membership over this radical rhetoric, wrote "I was outraged when, even in the wake of the Oklahoma City tragedy when the NRA, defended his attack on federal agents as ‘jack-booted thugs'.  To attack Secret Service agents or A.T.F. people or any government law enforcement people as ‘wearing Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms’ wanting to ‘attack law abiding citizens’ is a vicious slander on good people."

Changing Tactics, Not Direction

A stunned ex-president of the NRA observed “We were akin to the Boy Scouts of America … and now we’re cast with the Nazis, the skinheads and the Ku Klux Klan.”

Guns and Moses

To change their growing negative public image, they decided to bring in an action movie star, Charlton Heston.  Heston put a new spin on the same rhetoric.  Predicting the loss of liberty, Heston recast the NRA message in patriotic terms.  Using images of Pearl Harbor, Concord, Lexington and farmers he called firearms “sacred stuff”.

Actively working for the Republican campaign, Heston helped sway sufficient voters in the swing states of Arkansas and West Virginia to very narrowly defeat Al Gore’s Democratic campaign for the presidency.

In the most recent election of 2012, the NRA lobbying group directly spent $20 million on federal campaigns alone.  With new Super PACs it is no longer possible to know how much was spent indirectly.  The NRA spends significantly more on issue specific advertising and soft money political action committees which effect elections results. 

Fourteen out of the 29 lobbyists employed by the NRA previously held government jobs.  90% of those were Republican appointees, prior to working for the NRA. 

Gun Sales Explode

According to the General Social Survey, the NRA’s partisan lobbying has radically changed gun ownership in the United States.

Households with guns by political party

Using Charlton Heston as a spokesman, gun sales exploded.

Number of background checks per year.

By spreading the fear that a Democratic President would take their guns away, the industries sales accelerated the trend even further.

Obama supports the Second Amendment and he's unabashed about saying so.  Those who say he is lying are trying to manipulate us. 

Number of firearms manufactured by year

The NRA is more interested in fighting than winning second amendment rights.  Fighting increases gun sales.  Winning would make us safer.

Find a Better Way

No civilized person should support or approve of the misuse, the criminal use nor deranged use of lethal weapons of any kind. 

We need to agree on a return to public civility on this issue.  We must be considerate of each other and address our violence issues as concerned, rational adults.

We must find a way to allow responsible citizens to keep and bear arms, while protecting ourselves from criminals, accident, and the mentally ill.

Perhaps arming teachers with Tasers is a better solution than handguns.  Perhaps better ways to identify criminals and the insane can be found.  Perhaps legal and medical professionals can help us find better ways to reduce violence.

I will not pretend to have the answers to solve this complex problem.  There are no simple solutions to violence.

However, I will not support the NRA until it returns to its sporting, hobbyist roots.  I will not support the NRA until it stops being a prophet for firearm manufactures profits.

Meme Wars (Part 4)

 A war for mind share is going on around us.  Ideas struggle for territory in our brains.  In Part 4 of Meme Wars we consider current technologies enabling memes to struggle for mind share.

Meme Wars: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3  - Part 4 - Part 5 – Part 6 – Part 7

Global internet map of connections between minds

American Information Revolution

Microprocessors, internet and social media technologies combined representing a new revolution in communications.  Effects of this technology, like printing of books, is radically transforming what it means to be human.

First with personal computers, expanded by internet, and then democratized by smart phones; we have destroyed distance and time as barriers to communication.  No longer do we have one way communication from a far-off past.  We speak and listen, almost exclusively in the now, everywhere.

Memes are forming from minds to machines and be transferred to previously unreachable brains.  Meme reproduction between minds has accelerated out of the ability for anyone to control.

With a revolution of book printing, thoughts of minds from a distant and formerly unknown past were broadcast far and wide.  Printer’s who owned presses had enormous power to choose which ideas were disseminated.  Moving from writing centers to reading edges, thoughts moved in one direction. 

This printing broadcast technology provided a means for church, king or others to control information.  Broadcasting allows filtering of memes prior to reproduction.

Writing ones thoughts can now be transferred to readers instantly by practically anyone with minimal economic stability.  Memes move about at the speed of light, reproducing uncontrolled.  We write our posts, send our tweets, share our links providing near instant communication.

Brains are connecting everywhere

Today we each can be broadcasters, speaking with anyone connected via novel technologies across the entire planet.  Our generation’s information technology revolution is about multi-point communications.  A chaotic and almost uncontrollable density of thought is transferred between brains.

People funnel ideas

Meme Overload

Readers have unprecedented access to others thoughts.  Like readers of the first printed Bibles, we are seeing new things for the first time and forming opinions quickly and easily.

We are overwhelmed with information.  There is more information on Facebook, Google+, or LinkedIn published in a day, than we can read in a lifetime.  We are forced to select which information streams we read, letting others go by unknown. 

With only limited space in our brains and time to process ideas, we are forced to create our own filters to stop the flood from overwhelming us.  Where centralized broadcast allowed filtering to happen for us, we now must do the filtering for ourselves.

These filters are not new, we have always tried to stay away from ideas we consider harmful.  As our bodies avoid disease and bad behaviors, our minds stay away from ideas that could infect us or lead to bad action.

In part 5 of Meme Wars we continue our journey into our current information revolution.

Meme Wars: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3  - Part 4 - Part 5 – Part 6 – Part 7

Meme Wars (Part 3)

A war for mind share is going on around us.  Ideas struggle for territory in our brains.  In Part 3 of Meme Wars we continue our journey considering the war of memes that occurred when printing technology became common.

Meme Wars: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3  - Part 4 - Part 5 – Part 6 – Part 7

Libraries held memes

Minds  Begin to Specialize

The secular world began to form as old minds were rediscovered.  A fight for control of minds was waged in books.  Facts and myths memes struggled for control of the human mind.

For many centuries it was possible to read all the books.  The total sum of human knowledge could be, and often was, put into individual brains.  With the advent of printing, knowledge accumulated.  Past voices piled up and libraries spread. 

With this revolution specialization in knowledge began to occur.  There was more information available than a single person could know.  The concept of knowledge experts was born. The number of professors, physicians, philosophers, and lawyers grew exponentially. 

People of wealth and power had greater access to new, growing piles of knowledge. 

Those with freedom and time to read could explore others ideas, while most occasionally continued their lives as they were and read newly translated Bibles.

Catholic and Protestant meme's competed for minds

Past Fights Future

Fictional ideas competed with factual ideas for access to people minds.  Old power bases created ideas that kept their power intact.  New discoveries by inquiring minds demonstrated that the old power bases were wrong. 

Memes about King’s power struggled with thoughts about individual freedom.  Memes about human rights struggled with beliefs about Church dogma.  New art forms emerged that threatened traditional moral values.  Old taboos on corpses struggled with dissection and forensics.

To traditionalist and conservatives of the Renaissance era the world seemed to shift from under their feet.  Old, assumed values, the very nature of what was right and good and proper came into question.  Books were burned that had profane, secular knowledge.  Inquisitions from the Church tried to stop new and threatening ideas. A violent reaction from the status quo, threatened to unseat new ideas and discovery.

Erasmus created a humanist meme
leading humans to seek new learning

Martin Luther advocated abolishing Church control of marriage.  Descartes said that wisdom could come from discoveries outside Church teaching.  Galileo pointed out that the earth went around the sun.   The first stock companies and international banks formed allowing money and power to be accumulated without church or king.

The progressives and liberals of this time saw new hope for the future.  They advocated changes to society that were shocking and disturbing.  New ideas led to understandings that transformed views of what a human life could be.  Seeing the old order as a threat to new possibilities, a war of new ideas was waged upon the old thoughts.

The concept that each person must perfect their mind and body while on earth in order to achieve salvation became popular.  This humanism drove individuals to seek excellence by learning all they could.  New learning threatened the established order.

Copernicus challenged conservative thought
showing earth wasn't the center 

Meanwhile established order and power saw each advance of ideas as a threat.  Many thought the world would end or society crumble as it changed in front of them.

These struggles often led to violence and strife wars between new and old lasted for generations.  Mankind resorted to terrible actions to enforce their world views upon the other.  Religious wars between Catholics (old bible conservatives) and Protestants (new bible liberals) killed huge numbers of people and ruined many more lives.

Eventually a truce between conservatives and liberals evolved, allowing localities to identify with their own ideologies.  Parts of Europe remained largely traditional, adapting some new ideas where it did not threaten church or king.  North-western Europe adapted the new ideas and prospered until its culture spread around the world.  However, spasms of violence continued until the French Revolution finally over threw the conservative powers continent wide and the modern age brought a new kind of nation states into existence.

Meme’s Meet Reality

Some new ideas were not factual and failed or brought great disaster upon societies. 

Combining memes of progress and king
Conquistadors brought down civilizations

Conquistadors thought to grab wealth for personal gain and destroyed civilizations, ruining centuries of development and diversity.  Slavery, almost unknown in medieval times, restarted allowing people to become property.  Frequent, violent political upheaval in emergent city states caused populations to live in terror for decades. 

Many new ideas were factual and changed the world for the better.

The seeds of the scientific revolution where planted and fertilized by wide spread transfer of thoughts between minds.  Our sharing of knowledge about anatomy allowed more people to survive.  Improved farming techniques disseminated holding back famine.  Novels and plays could be performed and enjoyed far from their authors, by printing the words and actions into books.

Those ideas that aligned with the factual reality that existed did well.  Other memes that did not, slowly or rapidly failed.  The competition between ideas was fought on a battleground of reality and myth.  Ideas that succeeded tended to be based on facts.  Ideas that failed were often believed fictions.

In part 4 of Meme Wars we begin our journey into our current information revolution.

Meme Wars: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3  - Part 4 - Part 5 – Part 6 – Part 7

Meme Wars (Part 2)

A war for mind share is going on around us.  Ideas struggle for the territory in our brains.  In Part 2 of Meme Wars we examine how printing technology started a war between memes. 

Meme Wars: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3  - Part 4 - Part 5 – Part 6 – Part 7

German Information Revolution

Hand crafted meme

Prior to Gutenberg’s popularization of printing presses, communication was largely by hand or mouth.  Scratching surface of clay, putting ink on papyrus, and carving in stone where skilled manual labors that few could master. 

Access to communication was limited to those with wealth or power.  This focused writing for future minds and listening to past minds on a small subset of humanity.

The printing press took the power of communication from the hands of a few and democratized it.  Meme’s could spread from central places to many minds.

Before printing presses (about 1450) there were only a few thousand books in all of Europe.  A hundred years after Gutenberg’s invention, there were 20 million.  By 1650 200 million books had come into existence. Literacy, listening to past minds and speaking to future ones, became common.

Before mass printing, Bibles where read almost exclusively by priests and nobles.  These fountains of wisdom were under tight control.  The Church doctrine was that lay people would not understand the Bible’s mysteries and should be sheltered from actually reading its words for themselves. 

It is no accident that a Protestant Reformation occurred when it did.  Among the first mass produced books were Bible translations from Latin into local languages.  Within three generations, Church thought control was challenged by Martin Luther. 

The meme’s of the Bible spread and flourished into fertile and unfilled minds.  This initial wave of meme growth had profound effects on culture, thought, and how people lived.

As literacy spread, wisdom became democratized.   Access to information promoted independent thinking.  As more people came to read past minds, they changed their futures.

Gutenberg's meme reproducer

Reading Past, Making Future

With the printing press came an immediate and overwhelming demand for new content.  Previously written books were mass produced profitably.  New content was rare, old content readily available. Ancient Roman and Greek books became the stock and trade of these new high tech printing firms. 

Reading the minds of the long ago dead became common and easy.  The ancients spoke to people about philosophy, mathematics, and politics.  Old ideas created revolutionary new memes jumping from mind to mind. 

Challenging Church’s interpretation of the Bible, people began to challenge other ideas.  Copernicus revealed the earth was not the center of the universe.  Columbus sailed beyond the known, finding new lands.  Northern Italy began to discover and translate Roman and Greek knowledge beyond the Bible.

With each new discovery of ideas from past minds, new ideas were explored.  When people read good thoughts from the past, society can benefit.  Good memes entered into to peoples brains and were passed around.

Machiavelli, after reading Plato and Aristotle, described a world of princes acting outside of religious doctrine and control.  Reading Roman thoughts from long ago, the first Republic in a thousand years formed in Florence.  The humanist movement sprung from revived ancient ideas that each person could study poetry, grammar, history, morality and rhetoric to advance their lives and their communities.

When people read bad thoughts from the past, society can be hurt.  Bad memes fight for a share of mind and communication with good memes.

Nostradamus published prophecies that distorted later minds with false ideas about the future.  Reading from the mind of Dante, irrational concepts of hell placed irrational fear into ignorant brains.  Ancient ideas of leech bleeding and laxatives killed thousands as old misconceptions about medicine became popularized. 

In part 3 of Meme Wars looks at power struggles between ideas/memes occurring in renaissance minds.

Meme Wars: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3  - Part 4 - Part 5 – Part 6 – Part 7

Meme Wars (Part 1)

There is a war for minds occurring, enabled by revolutionary technologies.  New ideas struggle with old ones to shape our destiny.  Our brains are the battleground between thoughts about how we should play, work and live together. 

Meme Wars: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3  - Part 4 - Part 5 – Part 6 – Part 7

Meme battleground

Idea creators build mental weapons that clash with one another in minds across the planet.  Mind share is the spoil of this war in this conflict of ideas.

When I read, I listen to past minds.  When I write, I speak to future minds.  This is true for all forms of communication.  Our literacy of what was said in past times will limit our future thoughts. 

The printing revolution allowed past minds to speak to many future minds.  Our current information revolution allows all current minds to speak with each other in almost real time.

As books created rebellions from medieval ideas, this new revolution of communication will lead to changes in how we live our lives.  The winners are not yet clear, but our culture and the nature of the human experience is in the balance.

In this series, we will consider past battles for brains and see how they might help us better understand our current mental wars. 

Memes and Memetics

Ideas striking the brain

Memes are ideas that spread from person to person in a culture.  Memes reside in our brains and affect our understanding of the world.

Memes are the mental equivalent of genes in the cell.  They have structures that create understanding in the minds they occupy.  Ideas can change the very structure of our brains and therefore our actions.

Memes reproduce by spreading from brain to brain through communication. Printing provided a means for memes to spread widely from a central source.  Printing could be thought of as a new method of meme reproduction.

Each mind can only hold so many memes.  Memes compete with each other for human minds like genes compete for resources.  Memes struggle for limited mind share in people’s brains.

In part two, we will consider Gutenberg’s printing technology revolution.  Examining how old ideas created new ones, we will illuminate battlegrounds and combatants in a war for minds.

Meme Wars: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3  - Part 4 - Part 5 – Part 6 – Part 7

Insurrection Erection

The beautiful lady liberty.

As far as we know, the Greeks where the first to attempt a democracy. A few individuals used force of arms to cease power and become a “tyrant”. A tyrant is one who "rules without law, looks to his own advantage rather than that of his subjects, and uses extreme and cruel tactics against his own people as well as others". Tyrants did not have congresses or courts. Tyrants gain power and used power by raw force. In the United States, the closest we ever had to a tyrant was Abraham Lincoln because he issued orders putting aside many personal freedoms in a time of civil war. John WilkesBooth, who theatrically portrayed my namesake Mark Anthony, declared “Sic semper tyrannis” (thus always tyrants) before inflicting a mortal wound upon that president.

Factually inaccurate

To say our current president is a tyrant is incorrect in fact, theory, and ethics. No rational definition of Barack Obama's behavior can even remotely construe him as a tyrant. Staying within the boundaries of law, no matter how unpopular the action, does not make one a tyrant. There is no credible evidence that Barack Obama is attempting to use the power of our government for the betterment of himself or his family. We still have civil order and reports of the raw use of force upon our citizens are either lies or fanciful exaggerations.

There are many today who believe they have a right to keep and bear arms, our constitutions 2nd amendment, so that the general population can be armed to overthrow a tyrannical government. Talk in some corners has been escalating with angry words and fierce intention. Handguns, rifles, and other personal firearms and ammunition are selling out across the land. People dress in camouflage and train in militias, holding the desire to violently overthrow our constituted government.

Advocating armed revolution

There are those among us who are angrily considering an armed revolution. Using phrases like “the blood of tyrants” and “from my cold dead hands” they talk with one another angrily. Murmurs and rumors are reverberating in coffee cafe's and internet forums. Men speak of their handguns. Descriptions of how to make booby-traps and roadside bombs are written. Serious thought is even going on about how to wage a new civil war in some quarters.

Childish patriotism

This use of the word “tyrant” is similar to what children do with other bad words on an elementary school playground. A part of freedom is the right to dislike or even hate our current leader. A part of freedom is to hold non-factual opinions. A part of freedom is right to call out “bullsh*t” on those who have non-factual opinions. We do not, nor have we ever had, a real tyrant. Those who think we do, are ignorant of what tyranny is and I am calling “bullsh*t” on you.

Comparing our current government to Hitler, Stalin, and Mao has no factual credence. Hitler ordered the death of 6 million Jews and launched a war that sucked in the whole world. Obama has peacefully ended one war and is almost stopped another. Stalin forcibly relocated 20 million people, many who starved to death for the good of the “state”. Obama has deported more illegal immigrants than any other president in our history. Mao forced his entire population to quit their jobs and wear the same exact uniform in his “Great Leap Forward”. Obama sends bills to congress and argues laws under a constitutional framework, soliciting the opinions of its citizens in a civil manner. I am no big fan of President Obama., but to say he is a tyrant and to compare him to men of great evil is to speak with ignorance and talk like a fool.

"I, Mark Anthony Bloom, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."

We are citizen soldiers

Since 1789, members of my family have sworn this oath. We have served in the Navy, Marines, and Army as enlisted men. My daughter's family arrived on these shores as pilgrims on the Mayflower. When we swear allegiance, we have some history. When we swear allegiance, we mean it. Those who would oppose our country by force of arms fit the precise dictionary definition of traitors; being “persons who betray a friend, country, and principle”.

In 1979, while most of my friends were either in college or working their first low paying jobs out of high school, I was sitting in a tank gunnery range close to the border of what was then Eastern Germany. We knew that Soviet observers watched us. It was a Cold War, where we were training in full view of our enemies so maybe they would not start World War 3.

Old fashion armor

If you have ever been near a main battle tank when it fires, you know that the biggest bang from a firework show is tiny pop. Fifty yards away you can feel the ground shake under your feet as high explosive race out of the 105mm barrels of the M60A3 weapon. Its laser rangefinder and ballistic computer made this weapon deadly accurate at over two miles. Young testosterone filled gunners often bragged “If we can see it, we can kill it.” The M60A3 has been out of service for many years now, replaced by the much faster, more accurate, longer ranged, and highly dependable M1 Abrams main battle tank.

Our armed forces then used what is called the “Combined Arms Doctrine”. This method of warfare integrated different branches of a military; infantry, tanks, and helicopters in combination, supporting each other in swiftly deadly fashion. This doctrine and its weapons have been able to overcome every military force that dared go against it. Most recently in Iraq, new weapon and information systems have reduced highly trained armies quickly and efficiently.

Apache helicopter

Since my time in the United States armed forces, the weapons and tactics, doctrine and planning have become highly experienced in waging war and controlling populations of armed citizens who oppose them. In Iraq and Afghanistan their ability to overcome insurgencies of armed militias has been tested with hard won practice.

Any person or group in our country who thinks that their second amendment rights are about the ability to overthrow our government by force of arms do not understand the nature of modern warfare. Even if some portion of the soldiers were to revolt and take military weapons with them, they would quickly overcome by loyal, oath abiding citizen-soldiers using drones, satellites, helicopters, aircraft carriers, submarines, and secret intelligence capabilities most do not know exist.

Musketted soldiers

The days of muskets, when a civilian population could overthrow their government by force are gone. The technology of war has changed so radically since the founders that their original intent is archaic in today's world.

Our honorable National Guard is the closest we can come to having what our constitutions framers meant when they wrote “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” for the purpose of overthrowing our government if it every does become tyrannical. Even the best commercially available automatic weapons and high explosives are inconsequential for the purpose of combating our own military.

The National Guard uses cast off weapons systems from our active Army. The National Guard is almost uniformly loyal to the constitutional power our voted in government. The National Guard is not capable of overthrowing the government by use of force.

The right way to change government

For change in our government, we must rely on civic and peaceful means. Voting, organizing, rallies, demonstrations, standing in the town square and yelling at the top of your lungs are all reasonable methods for us to change our government. Force of arms no longer works to this end.

To those citizens of our beloved land, who are angry and wish to take up arms against the current government I say; take a step back, calm down and rethink. Please do not take up arms against your homeland because you dislike its political direction. Please do not cause the death of innocents in your emotionally fearful state of mind. Please do not throw your life away against a machine you do not comprehend. Please find a way to get along and move on until the next election when we can together decide what to do next.