#As in. Actively inflammatory or arguing in bad faith.

[frost-felon]

Playing Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice for the first time (note: like Dual Destinies, this is labeled as a "Phoenix Wright" game). I didn't like Dual Destinies, but outside of a few issues, Spirit of Justice was shaping up to be a better game than DD. That wasn't a hard bar to pass, but then I get to case 4 (henceforth referred to as "6-4").

Sweet GOD, this case sucks ass! As an Apollo fan (who knows some of the spoilers for the late game¹), I have anger, but I can't imagine the pain Athena fans likely felt, holy SHIT.

The way that this is written to be Athena's first big case on her own, where she proves that she doesn't need to be rescued or babied (as Phoenix was her 'savior' when she had a panic attack in DD). So what happens? Simon Blackquill, a twenty-nine-year-old man, has to rescue her during the trial. Not because she has a panic attack, but because she's CLEARLY too stupid to not need assistance, Your Honor.

This is after Blackquill had been pestering her into trying to get any sort of assistance from her (male, much older) boss, Phoenix, and her (male, older) co-worker, Apollo. She notes that neither could help her even if she wanted to acquiesce to Blackquill's concerns, as Phoenix is in a different country, and Apollo is on a theater stage as the boss' daughter's assistant.

Blackquill FREQUENTLY nags Athena about how he doesn't want to "nursemaid" (babysit) her during the trial, and often insults her intelligence/competency, insisting that she needs the help to successfully defend the accused.

The accused, whom Blackquill benefits from proving the innocence of.

Prosecutor Shithead also frequently insults Athena's intelligence and competence, and mocks her for her inexperience and age. She's 19...Shithead is only 25, the same age as her co-worker (and as we found out in 6-3, his adoptive brother).

Athena literally gets manhandled by Blackquill at one point, when he's frustrated that she's floundering. This is a unique animation using the 3D models, from Athena's perspective. This is a grown-ass man assaulting another member of the court, when he was the one to force himself into the Defense Bench.

The Defendant, who shows up drunk to the trial (and is only sober when he is found Not Guilty), mistakes Athena to be Simon's lover, due to a misunderstanding that Simon caused. Defendant: "Is she, like, yer fellow apprentice or sumfin'...?" Simon: "...Heh, something like that. I've known her longer than I've known you. You could say we're bound to one another." Defendant: "Ohhhh, m'kay... Well den. Guessh I better call 'er MIZ chickadee, den." Simon never corrects this during the case. (Not sure if he ever does afterward.)

In general, I feel like this case was meant to be the developers saying, "Hey, we didn't forget about Athena, guys!" (She was Apollo's assistant for Case 2.) And...seemingly to push Blackquill/Athena. I don't mind the fans of that ship, but that's a pairing I definitely don't want to see become canon. Especially if it's going to be like this.

Things that don't have to do with Blackquill below:

Prosecutor Shithead is particularly unbearable in this case. I believe that in general, he has some of the worst arguments of any prosecutors in the series, save maybe the Paynes and DeBeste. I'm not even sure if he's got better arguments than them, honestly.

Athena went into Law School abroad, but specializes in analytical psychology (particularly as to be used in court cases). One of the witnesses is revealed to have a certain psychological condition. Anybody wanna guess?! ...Yeah, it's a popculture favorite: Multiple Personality Disorder. The correct choice to reveal this is, "[The witness] has multiple personalities." Athena then correctly identifies the real phenomenon of Dissociative Identity Disorder...before using both that and MPD interchangeably. I actually don't think it's ever referred to as DID again, after that. The secret witness (the fourth personality of this witness) is revealed when the other three become unconscious, due to being alcoholic lightweights. This fourth personality, who is portrayed as a child, is not affected by the alcohol (at least insofar as how the case portrays drunk characters, including the other three personalities).

The other witness (besides Blackquill, who is actually a witness as well) is used for boob jokes (if you've seen the clussy memes with the balloon lady, that's her). She's also the killer.

The case is pretty easy...save for one or two issues. My primary one is with the murder weapon. The autopsy report notes that the victim suffocated, but "Nothing was found in his lungs." He is killed by...being smothered to death with uncooked dough. Even beyond what a pain it is to realize what you're actually supposed to point out, this...this is a painful revelation for the case. And by that, I mean it goes against almost everything that was established before, and is suspect, logically. My only defense for this would be that maybe he didn't inhale any of the dough, but ingested some, and the coroner just didn't check. In typical Ace Attorney fashion, the defendant is tried for this murder the day after the body is found...but still. Very frustrating.

But what's HELLA FRUSTRATING is that this is the penultimate case. And it might as well be a Case 2 in terms of structure and difficulty, as well as overall plot importance. 'Cause this has NOTHING to do with the overarching plot, as far as I can tell. Case 3 literally left off with the plot ramping up. Apollo's got a ton of connections to the overarching plot. Athena has...a filler case that puts the brake on any forward momentum in the plot. I already thought that Dual Destinies either should have been an Apollo Justice game² or more appropriately, an Athena Cykes game. She didn't do anything to get shafted like this, good Lord. And it's not like this messy handling would appease the majority of players, either...right? Athena fans, you deserve better--as an Apollo Justice fan (of the game and the character), Godspeed.

I like literally none of the characters in this case, ugh. Connected to the last point, my feelings would probably be different if this was actually Case 2. But the Case that is Case 2...as much as I have mixed feelings on it, there is a lot more to enjoy there. AND IT'S PLOT-RELEVANT. Is...is 6-4 even thematically relevant??? It sure doesn't feel like it.

Alright, so last thing. The only justification this case has for being as late as it is--that would be Prosecutor Shithead's acknowledgement of Athena as a worthy adversary. With some tweaks, that could have happened at the end of 6-2 (if these cases were swapped). It would also have been way more interesting to actually utilize the information of Apollo and Shithead being adoptive brothers, instead of 6-2 having a hook at the end for that reveal in 6-3. In general...6-2 should have been 6-4, given what I understand to be going on with 6-5 (and even what I don't, as there are plenty of things I successfully avoided knowing due to my hiatus).

I'm very peeves about this case. It's a massive low point for Spirit of Justice, and I was already trying to be charitable. Thank you to anyone who read this far--hope you enjoyed my seething. 'Cause my God, the lead up to playing more of this game (watching playthroughs of Apollo Justice and Dual Destinies) and actually playing it have caused me to stew so, so hard.

¹That's got a whole backstory to it, so I won't be talking about it in this initial post. Feel free to ask in reblogs, replies, or my ask box, though. It's why I left the Ace Attorney fandom since around the time the game came out (2016).

²I have many feelings about Dual Destinies, and many of them are negative. Athena deserved better than debuting there, but similar to the above, I won't go into any of it here.

[smhalltheurlsaretaken]

if you're wondering why I kind of abandoned this blog, there's several reasons (fandom just doesn't feel fun anymore, I'm trying to cut back on screen time, I've been feeling like my faith is in contradiction to what I see/read/interact with on here is for years and years now) but the final straw has been what I see on my dash every day about Israel/Palestine.

I keep seeing people I used to interact with and used to like now peddling conspiracy theories, debunked claims, inflammatory headlines, and even bloodthirsty rhetoric with tens of thousands of notes (when corrections of those posts get ~500 notes at best), and reacting to nuanced conversations like they're calls for hatred, all while turning a blind eye to the very literal vicious hatred or sheer ignorance in many of those big posts. The level of black-and-white thinking is so strong that we are wayyyy past 'us-vs-them,' we're in the kind of discourse where even 'know thy enemy' (being interested in understanding the opposing arguments even just so you can dismantle them) is considered hatred - people can't be bothered to know what they're arguing for or against, nothing short of plugging your ears and screaming for the death of the Bad People is enough. This is a wave of just about the most hypocritical, callous and uninformed 'activism' this website has ever been guilty of and it's too much. I'm done with this.

And yes, this is about antisemitism. You can all shout 'not antisemitic, just anti-zionist' all day long but you have done jack shit to prove you don't hate Jews beside chanting 'punch a nazi' in the same breath you use KKK slurs and cheer for groups that have 'curse the Jews' in their slogan. I trust none of you anymore.

[pinelife3]

What’s this Pizzagate in the heart of nature?

The big tech story in Australia last month was Facebook’s decision to restrict people and organisations in Australia from sharing or viewing news content on Facebook. This was in response to the Morrison government’s proposed Media Bargaining legislation which is basically a Murdoch-serving law to try to get tech companies to pay media organisations for news content hosted/linked/displayed on their sites and, most galling of all, share details of their algorithms with Australian media orgs. The idea that Facebook would have to notify NewsCorp every time they want to tweak their algorithm is patently insane. So I admire Facebook’s petty, dramatic manoeuvre: “if the way we share news on the site is such a problem then fine, no more news for you”. After all the fuss, the Australian government agreed to amend the Media Bargaining legislation - evidently with terms more agreeable to Facebook, meaning news has been restored to Facebook down under. 

One of the key responses I saw expressed in relation to Facebook’s initial news eradication was concern that disinformation would be able to spread more easily on the site - and that people wouldn’t be able to rebut disinformation with factual news articles.

So far as I can tell, the proliferation of disinformation online wouldn’t matter if people didn’t believe it. And most especially, if people didn’t want to believe it. After all, the web is full of persuasive writing and people who want to convince you of things - for whatever reason, conspiracy theories just seem to be very alluring. So rather than trying to protect people from their own stupidity by hiding disinformation... maybe we could look at why people are so credulous in the first place. Deep state? Jet fuel can’t melt steel beams? CIA Contra cocaine trafficking? The great replacement? Pizzagate? 

I’m going to class conspiracy theorists into three categories of my own making:

I believe: well meaning, uninformed people who have been fooled or duped. The fraudulent 1998 Lancet paper by Andrew Wakefield which started the vaccines cause autism conspiracy was actually written to support a class action lawsuit. Wakefield knew the results in his paper were not true: in addition to his conflicts of interest, he had falsified data. The paper was eventually debunked and retracted but the conspiracy had its roots and has continued to grow. I think a lot of the people who believe that vaccines are dangerous are parents who are just worried about their kids - and also want to protect other kids from a threat they believe to be real. Why is one debunked article more persuasive to people than a million proving the efficacy of vaccines? It is literally beyond reason.

It suits me to believe: people motivated by self-interest who adopt a conspiracy theory to support their larger world view. Their self-interest could be anything from their own ego to gun rights. The conspiracies around the Sandy Hook Primary School shooting are interesting because you can see a clear motivation for people to subscribe to that theory rather than the truth. If you’re a keen gun-owner, arguining that the shooting was a hoax to generate anti-gun sentiment and thereby allow the Democrats to pass harsher gun restrictions is neat and comforting. No one could argue that the events of Sandy Hook weren’t inhumanly terrible  - so the only option is to argue that they didn’t happen at all. Plus, in this worldview, no kids are getting hurt so you can sleep easy knowing you have seven semi-automatic weapons in the house.

I need to believe: the world is disorganised, scary, unknowable. Ocean deep, sky vast, dark impenetrable - and meanwhile our skin is so thin and delicate. So. Wouldn’t it be comforting to think that there’s a race of reptilian overlords that control the planet by whipping their tails against a complicated system of levers and pullies? That would explain a lot of the chaos in our world. Or maybe the problem is an elite coterie of Satan-worshipping cannibalistic pedophiles? If only we could defeat those accursed pedophiles then life would be peaceful. Luckily, Q and a septuagenarian reality TV host are here to save us. 

Across these categories, there are two unifying features: 

Rejection of widely accepted truth 

Investment in the conspiracy

As a comparison with the conspiracists above, here’s my take on a conspiracy: I think it’s quite probable that Epstein didn’t kill himself. I think that some powerful, shadowy entity took him out to protect itself. But I’m not obsessed by this idea. It would not surprise or upset me if this was officially confirmed - similarly crazy shit happens all the time. I haven’t devoted my life to revealing this truth. I guess I fit into the “I Believe” category: all official information says that Epstein took his own life but my scepticism of the unusual circumstances around his death and Epstein’s powerful connections leads me to doubt the official information. The difference is I don’t do anything about it. I don’t really care if I’m right or not - I’m not that invested in the conspiracy.

And that’s why it seems ludicrous to me that Facebook should be tasked with combatting the conspiracy theories spiralling across our culture. Simply being exposed to bad information does not radicalise you, does not conjure an investment in the conspiracy. If a normal person reads something creatively wrong or misleading they discard it from their mind. If it hits a chord with them, they may adopt that opinion themselves - see: astrology, Armie Hammer as cannibal, tarot cards, essential oils as serious medical treatment, etc. But the evolution from agreeing with a thought to militaristically insisting that the rest of society also agree with it is an abnormal progression. That strange impulse runs deeper in people than their Facebook timeline.

Most people have fears for the planet or believe there are major issues plaguing humanity - and we never do anything about it because it would be mildly inconvenient or because it’s too hard to care about every issue under late capitalism: 

"But sorting my recycling is boring”

“Yeah yeah fast fashion is problematic but H&M is just so affordable" 

"Of course I hate R.Kelly! But ‘Ignition (Remix)’ is my jam” 

“At least they have suicide nets in the Foxconn factories now”

“I only buy free range chicken thighs because I care about animal welfare”

“I retweeted that thing about anti-Black racism. Yay racism solved!”

There are probably lots of people who believe in conspiracy theories but are ultimately apathetic about doing anything: they can’t be bothered talking about vaccines and politics all the time, can’t be bothered going to a protest, can’t summon the interest to care much. So what’s interesting then is that across the three categories of conspiracy theory belief (I believe > It suits me to believe > I need to believe), what a person believes in, and perhaps even the reason for the belief, doesn’t create any impetus to enact real world change. On both the left and the right, the impulse to do something about an issue is rare. Do you think conspiracy theorists, like the left, have a problem with performative activism? 

Imagine that you agree that Sandy Hook was a false flag, that ‘they’ hired crisis actors to publicly grieve as if their pretend children had been murdered... do you then get in your car and drive overnight to Sandy Hook and start harassing those crisis actors at the pretend funerals? What do you call someone like that? The hero of their own story.

Just wait!

In their worldview, QAnon are unironically trying to save us from pedophile cannibals. Given what conspiracists believe to be true, they are acting in good faith and doing the right thing. If you believed this shit, you’d be upset too. The fact that they’re doing something about it is kind of admirable: they don’t want our babies to get autism from the measles vaccine, they don’t want a deep state to manipulate our democratic governments. It’s existential for all of us - we just don’t agree on the threat. 

Can you imagine how electric the riot at the Capitol Building must have felt for the people who led it. Brave, romantic, a grand gesture: it was like their Storming of Tuileries. Remember this day forever! 

Modern conspiracists are actually similar to the sans-culottes in terms of being avid consumers of propaganda and inflammatory reporting. Disinformation and stirring rhetoric are not new - but shouldn’t people today be less clueless than 18th century peasants?

Why are there are so many people who believe things which are untrue? They exist on this planet with us but interpret it so differently. These questions really are existential: an ancient, echoing maw pointing to the heart of human nature. The struggle for a more perfect world, whispers about where the danger comes from at night, arguments about how to protect ourselves. 

Has there ever been a society where people didn’t have differing views on how best to shape the world? It’s the central conflict of human existence: epic, older than language - and now we want Facebook to fix it?

[caden]

we’ve all frequently busted out the old “I’m not debating you I’m mocking you” line and it’s always very funny and satisfying but like... im starting to be more and more skeptical of that mindset because i think it gets us into some really counterproductive habits. If you run a small personal blog its whatever but for people with more than one or two thousand followers who specifically wanna focus on politics... either debate people or ignore them. Leftism isn’t supposed to be a secret club where we just pass around inside jokes making fun of people with the wrong opinion. It’s fine to have small insular communities, but if your behavior is encouraging inaccessibility and hostility towards outsiders it makes me question what your real goals and values are, or at least how responsibly you’re handling your platform. 

Debating fascists generally just spreads their propaganda to a wider audience and doesn’t do much to sway them or their followers-- if a fascist is screaming ‘debate me, debate me!’ unless you have a very comprehensive and strong argument against the shit they’re saying, you can just ignore them. In general I think it’s good to debate when they’re spreading demonstrably false statistics and narratives, but make sure to clearly cite actual proof that what they’re saying is wrong. If you see a bigoted meme or a dogwhistle, signal boosting that stuff doesn’t help-- you’re just giving them what they want, even if you have a three paragraph long response about why it’s bad. It’s fine to ignore them.  But, like, ignore them. Spreading reactionary shit and just adding a minor burn on the OP is worse than doing nothing. It gets their propaganda out to all of your followers, and the only substantial counter-argument you’ve put there is one that will only appeal to people that are already 100% on your side. Variants of this are replying with “stfu bootlicker”, screenshotting the hentai on their blog/ their cringey blog description, just saying “learn to read” when people are misrepresenting your argument, a picture of the OP looking like a reddit fedora atheist, essentially any reaction picture but a common example would be the no-brain drooling wojak, etc. Like I know it’s fun but i also think it’s kind of shortsighted of us. Ultimately, it is necessary to educate people, to debunk false narratives, to show people why one answer is right and the other is wrong. And again I’m not saying you should be debating the fascist incel guy who’s posting bad-faith inflammatory horseshit. You’re NEVER debating that guy-- obviously you will never ever make someone over the internet directly admit that they are wrong. But you can convince the dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people reading the post that your argument is the correct one. If you engage in the debate, you’re doing it for the sake of the audience, not to actually sway the other person. And posting leftist in-jokes won’t do anything to win the audience over.  Also, obviously no one post is gonna convert someone’s followers from fascism to leftism. It’s only after repeatedly seeing legitimate doubt cast on that flawed ideology that their followers will start to slowly come towards our side, or even just open their minds to the idea that there are other ways of thinking. This goes double if the person you’re debating is liberal or center-left, where they’re actually arguing in good faith and genuinely aren’t that far from being able to understand our point of view.

Smaller personal blogs don’t have a huuuuge responsibility to bother with any of this, but nowadays I pretty wholeheartedly feel that if you have a mildly to considerably large follower base it’s pretty irresponsible to have the attitude of "my goal on here is to make the people with the right opinion feel good that they’re right and the people with the wrong opinion feel bad that they’re wrong”. Just the small change of saying “my goal on here is to state the right opinion in a way that will encourage more people to have that right opinion” would make a tangible difference in what kind of content you output. I’m not trying to promote anyone making themselves less radical, or watering down their ideas to appeal to centrists-- I’m saying you should be in a constant cycle of explaining your goals and ideas in simple, honest terms, and making some effort to do so in a way that’s accessible to as many people as possible. 

PS: The one exception to the ‘in-joke memes won’t win people over’ thing is that i DO think some of the semi-coordinated bullying campaigns against right wing shitbags have worked to great effect on here. That’s not me necessarily saying I 100% approve of all of them morally, I do think using targeted harassment as a political strategy is playing with fire... but communismkills (just for example) went from being someone with genuine sway over thousands of people whose opinions were taken relatively seriously to being a TOTAL joke who now actively hams it up just to stay relevant. The “kung pow penis” campaign was slightly less successful in that it was very easy for the guy to spin into ‘the pathetic sjws are targeting me’ and therefore most of his followers quickly sided with him-- ideally, you would want the person’s followers to say ‘watching this dude humiliate himself is embarrassing, maybe i shouldn’t have ever taken him so seriously’.

Anyways, I’ve said this a bunch of times before but I’m having less and less tolerance for people who devote hundreds of hours to arguing on here but rarely say anything substantial past “I’m right because I said so, you’re wrong, the end”.

[anxietyspace]

Community Guidelines

These guidelines helps Anxiety Space keep to its mission of a community for the half a billion people worldwide who battle anxiety. With this in mind, everyone has to follow these guidelines when participating on the Anxiety Space.

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[lapsed-bookworm]

Someone got the “should kink be at Pride?” topic going again on my other dashboard, and I really wish people would think of two things before pulling out the capslock, “oh, so you think it’s okay to [blank] in front of children?!” tirades:

1) Are you and the other people in this conversation on the same page about what type of Pride event is being talked about?

Is it a small town “we only have one event so it’s got to be family friendly” situation?

A larger city with multiple events, so that there may well be a family friendly parade and an adult parade already? (I think Columbus Pride did this?)

One of the really big metro areas with a ton of events throughout June and long established kink communities, which may mean family friendly events, sober events, adult as in drinking/at a bar events, and separate “there’s going to be kink, no minors allowed” events? (Idk, like San Francisco?)

Is the event a ticket only attendance affair (may happen with certain adult events), or can anyone regardless of age very easily stop by to watch?

2) Are you and the other people in this conversation on the same page about what “kink” means in this context?

Person A: Involved in flag discourse and upset about the Leather flag at Pride, which leads to specifically going after people dressed in leather and walking behind the Leather flag in a parade, even if nothing else is “adult” about the situation.

Person B: Keeps talking about exhibitionists and public sex, which leads to equating kink with “too much exposed skin/nudity/literally having sex where others could see” when it comes to discussions about Pride parades.

Person C: Brings up leashes and collars and probably talks about some subcommunity of pet play or animal play (ex. puppy play). May get around to “scene in public” discussion points, or may get stuck on calling these people freaks, which can set off defensiveness and shut down discussion.

There may be lack of clarification on whether the photographic evidence of people on leashes in a parade are from incorrectly labeled family friendly events, adult events, or actually kink specific events (held in June or some other time).

Person D: How do we address sexual triggers in a way that keeps people safe without entirely removing everything kinky from Pride? (While there’s often a focus on children and teens, there may also be discussions about non-age related kink free spaces for the adults who may also need those spaces. Because there can be a number of reasons why someone needs a space like this, and CSA survivors don’t somehow stop needing trigger accommodations once they’re adults.)

Generally speaking, these are smaller conversations about creating separate events, if possible, and making sure labeling and advertising are clear, so attendees can avoid certain portions of the parade, if that’s the place of concern. Often don’t wind up getting a ton of notes, which means they probably aren’t derailed yet may not get seen by very many people.

Person E: Kink critical, anti-kink, or bad faith arguing. May specialize in a certain area of kink to criticize (so that they define kink as only what they’re criticizing), and may overlap with other arguments here at times. It’s possible someone just has a poorly worded question from the other arguments, but Person E may just skip over the pretense of a discussion and go straight for “doing a safe-for-public activity at Pride is the same thing as abusing a child”. Y’know, inflammatory and just not helpful in an actual discussion.

[thisdaynews]

I Was an NRA Lobbyist. Here’s My Road Map for Gun Reform.

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/i-was-an-nra-lobbyist-heres-my-road-map-for-gun-reform/

I Was an NRA Lobbyist. Here’s My Road Map for Gun Reform.

I’m a long-time gun rights proponent with pretty solid credentials. I lobbied for the NRA. I am the president of the Independent Firearm Owners Association and I even gave Ronald Reagan his first shooting lesson with a customized AR-15 when I ran the Firearm Industry’s Trade Association in 1992. I am also someone who has worked successfully on bipartisan gun control measures, specifically a child safety lock agreement supported by Bill Clinton, which explains in part why I am also aformerNRA lobbyist.

Even at this highly charged moment, when emotions are at their peak after the shootings in California, Texas and Ohio, I believe there is a way to achieve meaningful gun law reforms without alienating millions of responsible gun owners who don’t believe that criminals, unsupervised children or mentally ill people should have access to any kind of weapon.

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When I began my career as a lobbyist for the gun rights community back in 1984, it was not uncommon to hear prominent Democrats champion gun rights as vocally as their Republican colleagues. House Commerce Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.), House Judiciary Chairman Jack Brooks (D-Texas) and Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho) all argued that our identity as Americans was encapsulated in the rights enshrined by the Second Amendment. But those moderate Democratic voices have all but disappeared, lost to redistricting and changing demographics, and in their place the pro-gun and anti-gun rights groups have filled the void with inflammatory culture war rhetoric—all to the detriment of average gunowners.

Democrats, the presidential field in particular, aren’t exactly helping things. Democratic candidates desperately need to realize that tens of millions of us gun folk view our participation in this democracy of ours through the lens of the gun issue. We wonder why we ought to trust politicians who want to limit our rights and our implied freedoms because some demented lunatic, or terrorist or common criminal misused a gun we wish he had never been able to access in the first place. If we continue to demonize legitimate gun owners we will fight tooth and nail to protect our property and our rights, preventing all of us from reforming what we can and bringing collective attention to issues that desperately need fixing.

Instead of bumper sticker sloganeering, why not approach this issue not as enemies but as compatriots? Let’s focus on our common goal to disarm (in advance) individuals we all agree ought not have the guns, and concurrently and forthrightly protect the ability for the rest of us to own them for any lawful activity. Here’s how to approach some of these issues in a way that is going to appeal to independents and blue-collar gun owners.

1. Stop saying ‘universal background checks.’

Today’s current gun control mantra is “universal background checks.” The Brady law passed in 1993 mandated background checks for gun purchasers at retail gun shops. These transactions are commercial in nature and generally between strangers—the firearms dealer and the buyer. Twenty years ago, the firearms industry (and even the NRA) supported these checks at gun shows as well as retail gun shops,but the original legislation extended only to federally licensed dealers, with no attempt made to extend that jurisdiction to nondealers.Today, you’ll find gun owners support background checks for all commercial transactions. That includes gun shows, flea markets and internet sales purchases.Strangers can’t possibly know the backgrounds of the buyer and these checks can prevent the unintentional transfer of a gun to a disqualified individual.

But when the word “universal” is used, gun owners rebel. Why? They don’t want to be turned into criminals for giving a firearm to their wife, their kids or their parents without a background check—which is exactly what they fear could happen if a law mandates background checks for all gun sales in the U.S.

So why not extend the Brady background check to all commercial sales, including gun shows, internet sales and flea markets, while carefully and responsibly crafting exemptions for relatives, friends and co-workers whom the seller has personally known for more than a year? And in cases where there is some doubt about the relationship, let’s encourage people to get the checks by giving them the same liability protection when crimes are committed with those guns that retail dealers have now. Compromise, that dirty word, means we both get something in the transaction that’s useful to us.

With these exemptions in place, opposition would be diminished, and legislation based on sound policy not “gotcha politics” will more easily be enacted. Most importantly, disqualified individuals would find it harder (though admittedly not impossible) to obtain guns. Isn’t that what we seek?

2. Help stop illegal gun sales.

Rampant trafficking of stolen weapons is another area of potential common ground. If we seriously desired (and why wouldn’t we?) to curtail the 700,000-plus annual gun thefts in this country, we could do it without too much controversy. Home thieves sell their stolen guns (and jewelry and everything else) to fences. Fences take those stolen guns over state lines and sell them back to dealers who have no simple means of knowing that they are in fact purchasing stolen merchandise. When a retailer buys a firearm he must record it in an “A & D” (acquisition and disposition) book. Even if the gun was reported stolen by make and serial number, the dealer wouldn’t know it. But if every dealer purchase were automatically run through NCIC (the National Crime Information Center run by the FBI),then local police, informed about the pending purchase of stolen property, could question the seller, leading to immediate arrests. Why steal what you can’t sell? Would a program like this end the theft of firearms? No. Would it cut down dramatically on those thefts? You bet it would.

Why have you never heard anyone talking about this before? It’s simple; there is no political advantage to solving this (or any) gun related problem if we can’t make political hay from the controversy. Issues are only useful when they are “us or them,” “black or white” with little to no nuanced middle ground. Isn’t that a large part of our problem in this country? We really are a rather centrist nation, but the enthusiasm of purists seems to dominate the debate. Perhaps we need enthusiastic moderates now and again to represent those of us who aren’t purists.

3. Remember: Not every gun owner is crazy.

“Red Flag Laws” are getting a lot of attention, but I prefer the term Gun Violence Restraining Orders (GVROs). Something about the words “red flag” reminds me of “red herring.” But there’s a good reason for them. The theory behind this initiative is that people sometimes give us useful signals that they intend to commit violence—whether it’s against themselves or others—and if we act upon those signals by removing their guns we might sometimes prevent tragedies. But gun owners have legitimate fears that the system can be abused to their detriment. In order to amplify the good and minimize the bad, we need to build safeguards against a surveillance state that, in the wake of 9/11, has proved susceptible to overreach.If the process becomes punitive, not salutary, faith in the stated objective is defeated and people loss more respect for the laws and any changes are seen as new retributions to be opposed from the get go.A detailed description of a workable and fair policy can be found in David French’s article “A Gun-Policy Measure Conservatives Should Consider” from National Review of February of last year.

4. Learn what “assault weapon” really means.

Now let’s address the hottest hot button issue of gun politics, the dreaded “assault weapon” controversy. This is semantic doublespeak at its finest. Talk about two handy pejoratives— “assault” and “weapon.” Any gun can be an assault weapon if that’s your intent. This is just misleading labeling. These firearms are simply autoloading guns that fire one bullet each time the trigger is pulled. They have been around since the late 1800s and more than a third of the 400 million-plus guns in the hands of American citizens are semi-automatic. Fully automatic firearms (machine guns) are heavily regulated and rarely seen by police or used in crimes. I even gave Ronald Reagan an AR-15 in 1992, and, while he fired it, I don’t believe it turned him into a mass murderer.

The AR-15 rifle, the semi-automatic version of the military M-16—with their black polymer frames, and folding stock—may look scary to uninformed or misinformed pundits, but they function identically to grandpa’s old hunting rifle. Outlawing the sale of AR-15-type rifles might (over time) lower the number of incidents involving AR-15 rifles. But what would be the value if criminals and crazies alike merely substitute a far more powerful hunting rifle in a .308 or .30-06 caliber for the relatively underpowered .223 caliber common to the AR-15?

All guns bear certain common features that make them firearms. They are all capable of firing a bullet in the direction the barrel is pointed and they do so only when the operator of the device pulls the trigger. Any loaded firearm pointed at me is an “assault weapon,” and any loaded firearm in my hands is a defensive device that I can and will use to protect myself, my family and my community. In short, the issue is never the gun per se, but always, “in whose hands is the gun”? If we start asking the right questions in this conversation, we stand a chance at coming up with answers that have the support of gun owners—and that is key to any solution. We can then do something useful. But if we continue to engage in polemics over real policy, the center will not hold and nothing that benefits our nation will occur.

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[braindamageforbeginners]

Day 56

So, another teachable moment. As I've mentioned, having a dangerous, chronic disease is a full-time job. Healthy people tend to scoff when I say that. I've been told that people in my position have careers, kids, etc. and still find time to manage their disease. Which always makes me a little defensive - given that GBM has 50-85% mortality rate, I'd argue that at least half of us don't successfully do that. Which isn't to say that you can cure cancer with will-power, or that only the weak succumb; merely that we live in a system that requires massive time and effort to successfully navigate. Yesterday, I refilled one prescription, completed more paperwork in my on-going feud with the California Department of Motor Vehicles, and tried to get the pharmacy to release the next round of chemo drugs (it's not like they're medically necessary). That was it. That literally took seven hours - I timed it. And I'm still waiting to hear back from CVS and the DMV. I didn't even play with my pill organizer. If any of my neighbors hear wailing and gnashing of teeth coming from my vicinity, it might be a medical emergency. Or it might just be me realizing I have a 48-page form I have to fill out and sign in my physician’s blood to get the okay for some treatment or another.

I figured I’d illustrate this point visually. In the top photo, you’ll note a file folder containing this month’s billing problem (technically, it’s November’s billing problem, the hospital just didn’t feel the need to inform me of it until mid-January), atop a packet of the latest doctor’s orders/appointments for me atop an envelope containing several attractive financial aid/insurance/desperate ploys (and the latest round of DMV medical paperwork) that I’m very certain I’ll be filling out in the near future. At this point, death itself is not looking too bad (although, given my luck, there is an afterlife, and it’ll require 4000 pages of paperwork to get in)(Or have I just accidentally described Purgatory? Someone with formal theological training let me know). Not pictured in that is the on-going crisis to get CVS to release my damned chemo drugs (I know, I usually go to great pains to protect the anonymity of my caregivers, but I think if a large, faceless chain accidentally kills me due to bureaucratic incompetence or negligence, I want everyone to know).

Good news on that one; I did find out that my insurance company has some special form they require for a chemotherapy renewal, and I did manage to track that down and send it on the the Warlocks’ administrative team. And, better news, I have apparently gotten the attention of CVS, because I’m getting calls back - from an actual human being, mind you; not She-Terminator, robo-representative of the Health Industrial Complex - assuring me that I ain’t got no problem, they’re on the motherfucker. Which means that my current strategy of calling them every few hours and politely asking if there is anything I can do to expedite the process might pay dividends (I have a little more faith in the Warlock’s administrative staff who e-mailed me this morning saying that they’d received the forms, and would contact CVS and the insurance company directly). The lesson of today is, when you, the unwashed masses show up and offer to help people do their job - in any capacity you can - you would be amazed how competent they become. That’s not even intended as a jab; I just called the Warlocks’ administrative nurse (not Research Coordinator, it should be noted) to ask about getting the next round of chemo, who gave me the direct line to CVS, who noted there was some sort of insurance hold-up, which led me to dredge though the depths of my e-mail, and found some arcane prior authorization form from my very evil insurance company (I’ll get around to describing them with very some very florid language), which I then sent back to the Warlocks and their staff, and now I’m getting calls from CVS telling me to leave them alone. Which means I’ll repeat the process tomorrow. And the day after. Until one of us gives up (perhaps in a rather dramatic sense, in my case). Or - and there’s a solid chance of this - the Warlocks and Mad Scientist Oncologist use their considerable juice to convince some local apothecary to provide me the next round of chemo. Again, even though it is slightly pejorative, I do refer to them as necromancers because, as someone who’s been traversing the medical system his entire adult life - in various roles; mostly from the patient side - I have never seen anything like their ability to instantly conjure up whatever I need to stay alive immediately. Which makes me feel like all I need to do is help out with the paperwork as best I can.

I also did get my teeth cleaned; the dental staff were all lovely and indulged my new-found X-ray phobia (if you’re reading, hi guys), although I’ll ask Radiation Oncologist about that next time I see her (avoiding X-rays as a permanent life stragegy, I mean). And no new cavities, and I’m at low-risk for cavities, so, that’s one less thing to worry about.

And the new, lucky chemo shirt arrived yesterday (also picture above). I figured if I’m going to refer to it as the Captain America serum, I might as well look the part. Thanks to Donna, who sent me the original lucky chemo socks, which planted that idea in my head.

ANYWAY… WEIGHT: 213 lb (I guess I underestimated the weight-gain effect of those steroids) CONCENTRATION:Pretty good - good enough to wade through more and more paperwork. APPETITE: Good ACTIVITY LEVEL: Good, but I’m definitely starting to feel the wear and tear of the past few months. I woke up exhausted, and now I feel unbelievably tired. Still, I did go to the gym and complete most of the tasks before me (well, the immediate, must-do-today ones). SLEEP QUALITY: Excellent. I’m starting to dream again, which is something that’s been depressed - to some extent - after each surgery (and I’m still in the recovery period for that; let alone all the radiation and chemo fun). COORDINATION/DEXTERITY: Excellent. MEMORY: Still improving, but still patchy. I can’t multitask anymore - not that I really could beforehand, but now, if I don’t complete a task, there’s a chance it’ll take me a few minutes to remember to come back to it. PHYSICAL: Okay. I’m feeling fatigued, and I still have headaches, but I’m also successfully cutting back on the Tylenol without problems. And tomorrow, I’ll be completely off of steroids; I’ve been on a 1 mg-a-day dosage for the last week and functioning, and, logically, if I’m no longer on anti-inflammatory drugs (apart from the Tylenol, which I think even a healthy person would mainline if they had to wade through the paperwork I’ve been tackling this week), things should be improving. Which just means, given my luck, my brain will explode tonight. SIDE EFFECTS: Nothing new.