Our government went to bed with corporate America during WW II and never left. Eisenhower's departure speech in '61 warned us of letting the M.I.C. take over. He was proven right. I have no idea how to get Congress's hands out of the corporate trough, and vice versa. I know that the Deplorables are being ignored, have been for decades. Our laws and founding documents have been been twisted, adjusted, denied, to the point where the FF would not recognize that which they created. Only Congress can declare war, yet the last time they did so, was Dec 8, 1941. Can someone please explain all the wars we have fought since, all over the globe, feeding our national war machine? Guatemala, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Korea, Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait, Panama, Afghanistan, and too many African countries to name? None of these conflicts are legal, by our own Constitution, yet we fund them to the tune of billions and the blood of our sons and daughters, for decades. Money, and people, that could have been utilized to improve our Pursuit of Happiness, also in the Const., here at home. Instead, we raise money every few years for yet another monument to our Fallen, in Washington. Town squares nationwide are full of such memorials. Ridiculous and un-justified. Our national defense budget dwarfs every nation on earth, yet we send 40m of our own to bed hungry every night. Our national electrical grid dates to the 1930s, our national highway system to ther 1950s, our air traffic control system to the 1970s. Our passenger trains mostly stopped running in the 1960s. Amtrak is a East coast-focused bottomless pit into which taxpayers have zero choice but to pour in billions. They have yet to turn a profit since 1970. "Since its foundation in 1970, the company has never generated a profit. Government subsidies to the tune of $46 billion have kept the company afloat since 1970." What population allows such tax dollar waste? Well, we do. We used to have dozens of airline company choices, retail choices, medical choices. Today we are at the mercy of a tiny handful of each, who do and charge whatever they want, despite the supposed existence of some anti-trust laws. Helluva country to leave to our children and grandchildren. We don't care, either. How long has it been since 60-65% of us voted in a national election? Try 1960-1968. Nothing close, since. I'm not bitter so much as I am disappointed in how we have turned out as a nation. Our 1963 coup d'etat turned this country in an entirely different direction, one we don't seem able nor, more importantly, willing to change. But, this is just me after two cups of morning coffee.

From a national news story on-line this Nov 12, 2018, about the youngest Thousand Oaks shooting victim, age 18, come her devastated family's comments:

We believe that there is a message that's out there."

"What's the message?" Cowan asked.

"To us, it's to be kind to one another. It's to put down your technology, put down your phones and look at somebody and have a conversation. It's not about gun control; this message is about doing something bigger, to be with your community, to love one another."

"All things that you don't have to legislate?"

"Right. Exactly," said Arik.

Adam added, "To get to the point where we can have a conversation about anything political, it has to start here [points to heart]. It has to start with the soul, because we've lost that."

Arik said, "What if somebody walked up to the guy and just asked him how he was doing that day and said 'hello' to him or did something that may have just changed his mind, instead of ignoring, or whatever we're doing?"

Cowan said, "You know what people are going to say, though – skeptics are going to say it's too simple, that that sounds great about being decent and kind and reaching a hand out, but I think most people are going to say it's too complicated."

"But I think it starts there," said Tamera. "You start with imagining, 'Wait a minute, what if that was my child, or my niece, or my cousin?' It will get you in a place of just having some sort of human decency."

If there's any doubt there's a deficit of decency, look no further than the family's social media.

Adam said, "You should see some of the tweets we got after Alaina died. Oh, I got one, 'You deserve it. You worked at Fox News.' And it got liked by about 78 people."

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I think it's not about the weapon used. But we've made it too easy in America to use a gun for all the wrong purposes. Screening guidelines, rules, and regs. have proven worthless time and again. Known mentally un-balanced people still gain access to weapons one method, or another. We are, nationally, a gun culture, perhaps like no other country in the world. I am not interested in international comparative statistics today. Means nothing.

This family received hate e-mail with almost 80 people LIKING the hate messages. Think about that. Who does that?

When I was substituting in a Summerville SC high school classroom last Spring, I asked the students in each class that I had that day, to stand up and name all their classmates. This was March. No student in any class could do it. They meander the halls in a daze, on their phones, cap-wearing, pants-dragging, elbow and shoulder-bumping, not holding doors for each other, and they don't even know their classmates. I would venture a guess that this scenario could easily be repeated in schools and communities across our nation. Meanwhile, administrators focus on test results and graduation rates, as if that was all that mattered.

I sit in traffic at green lights, because the moron in front of me yapping on the phone hasn't noticed anything. I honked at a female motorist last month, twice, to keep moving at various stop points, and she flashed her middle finger at me, all the while not once putting down her phone to safely drive. She was old enough to have h.s. age children. It's where kids get their behaviors from.

There isn't an older teacher alive that won't tell you our family structure in America is seriously broken. The rudeness, the open defiance, the impulsive anger, the standard dis-respect to any authority figure, is standard. Now, how did THAT happen?

Mass shooters could have used any object to wreck havoc and death. But from a hotel room high up on a strip, it's awfully difficult to throw knives and swing axes, etc. Just spend a week bringing an arsenal of weapons up to your room, and have at it. The Newtown Sandy Hook slaughter anniversary is almost upon us, and this family above, is absolutely right. Nothing has changed. No movement from Congress or the NRA or their fans or opponents.

A massive social more change is necessary, I believe. This love affair with all things gun-related simply has to stop.

Additionally, we need to take violence out of our culture via the various media forums out there. Video games, tv programs, movies, music, it's disgusting what is available, and what sells.

Additionally, our returning soldiers need a mandatory decompression week, minimum. No work, just spend time with fellow soldiers, counselors, totally relax, and importantly, talk about their experiences with other veterans, before being released to their families and to pick up their lives.

More gun laws aren't the answer. It's not the weapon. It's all of us, locked into our technology and not simply acknowledging the presence of each other, talking to and with each other, greeting each other, knowing who our classmates are, etc.

An increasingly impersonal world, guarantees more slaughter.

Just felt like calmly ranting. Thanks.