Paranoia and Prayer

By Robert Campagnola 03.01.2009

Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you! Henry Kissinger said that, I was told, and I am quite sure he spoke from experience.

Yup, it’s a fact. There is a lot to be worried about nowadays. Even if you managed to save your money to pay off your mortgage and loans, even if your bank did not go under, and even if you still have a job, you could lose everything when persons holding or managing your investments steal your money or lose it due to negligence.

In Alachua county, where I live, there is a record sale of guns. The Gainesville Sun reports this morning that although business is down in all sectors, it is way up for gun dealers. The story states that people who never owned a gun before are coming in and buying up the shop. They are afraid that if the newly elected President is assassinated there will be race riots and they will need to defend themselves. Others worry that the new government will wait a bit and then enforce gun control so they must load up now.

Gee. What would I do with a gun? I do not know how to use it. I would have to learn how not to blow my toes off and then practice my aim since there is no use having one of these things unless you can hit what you shoot at. Considering my wonderful eyes, I would first have to see what I was supposed to shoot at and then figure out with my super duper double vision which one of them would be the better candidate for my bullet. I don’t think it would work so well. I would rather hide out and be absorbed in a meditative prayer if worse came to worse.

We know some people who just had an argument. Both were saying, “thank God the guns were somewhere else otherwise I would have shot the bastard!” Amen.

Are there statistics on this? How many regular folks living in the USA have been protected by their firearms as opposed to harmed by them when they went off accidentally or when they got all riled up in a fight or when drunk and spent the rest of their days in jail? I think I will take my chances and skip the gun thing. I don’t like loud noises anyway.

Considering the law of attraction, having a gun seems to me to be a magnet that attracts others with guns. In our house, we are great fans of The Wire, one of the greatest TV shows of all time. It opens your eyes to see what guns do and how their proliferation ruins lives.

Having lived in Europe for many years, I have seen how it feels much safer with its gun restrictions. Most countries do not allow guns at all, and the few that are allowed are for hunting. A confrontation or dispute may end up with broken bones, but almost never in fatalities. The police have a much easier time dealing with situations since they are almost never fired upon. But the US is based on different principles and there is good and bad in all political structures.

I pray that in this upcoming year, 2009, that rather than an increase in tensions there shall be a decrease in irrational passion. Considering the way events are shaping up, I might join my dog in his hideaway under our bed sometime in March. Is it possible that before the public understands violence ends violently, cheating and fraud usually get exposed and harm all of us, and greed knows no boundaries, we have to go through a period of intense chaos? If so, then I also pray that we make it through safely. And I pray that if we do make it through the pain of learning the hard way, that the environmental threats that loom over this planet will be successfully addressed by the wisdom we have gained.

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 1080