A long time ago I read a book about a guy who could stop time (The Fermata by Nicholson Baker). Everyone and everything would freeze, including clocks, and he could walk around and do whatever he wanted. Mostly what he did was grope women and masturbate.
I think the book was supposed to be an extended metaphor about fantasizing. Basically, if someone fantasizes about you, sexually, do you have a problem with that? If a man stops time, grabs your boob, then starts time and never says a thing to you, did he do anything wrong?
Of course he did, some of you say. It depends on if I find out, others say. And the idea is, telling people they’ve been violated is a kind of violation, isn’t it. In the real world, someone could send you a text message, explaining all of the things they think about doing to you. That could be a terrible message to receive.
And while you can make an attempt to block such messages, you can’t block a person from having thoughts. Your only defense against that is to not think about it yourself.
Here’s my point: I think the vast majority of gun-loving Americans don’t want to think about all of the very rich people getting very much richer from gun sales. They’d rather think about patriotism and rights and freedom instead of imagining a man in a lounge chair in Acapulco masturbating with a fist full of hundred dollar bills.
The trillion-dollar arms business doesn’t care even a little bit if Joe Smalldick in Buttcrack, Idaho is able to exercise his rights, defend his family, or get drunk and kill a couple of brown people.
All it cares about it how profitable mass-shootings are.
And it’s using these gun-lovers to make that money. Money that gun-nuts might otherwise spend on improving their communities, getting educations, paying for healthcare. Can you imagine what life would be like in Buttcrack if, instead of spending millions of dollars on guns, they instead spent millions of dollars on their grade schools?
My point is: if I found out an industry was metaphorically rubbing up against me on a subway and getting off, I’d be mad. Someone needs to tell this people they’re being used.
Then again, the only people they listen to, at Fox, are sporting some turgid members themselves.