Taxicab Depressions

I have grown to truly loathe liberals in the last decade or two… they are the worst sorts of hypocrites, and frankly, just fucking stupid, and most of them simply can’t be reasoned with. I used to like debating them, thinking that I might, just might, teach them to think for themselves, but honestly, it is just getting old. When confronted with facts, they dither, lie, make up statistics, call people names, and try to change the subject. And the worse part is that they get to vote, and I then have their stupidity thrust upon me, ie shit like the housing collapse (directly the fault of Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, Franklin Raines, and their insipid ilk), the re-election of Obama, the introduction of Obamacare, et cetera, et cetera… its just endless. They draw false equivalencies constantly, never acknowledge a double standard, and excuse behavior from their own that no conservative could even approach.

Good example: Jon Corzine is one of these so-called “greedy corrupt banksters” that the “Occupy movement” screams about, and he is definitely in the “one percent”. But when he supposedly “loses” more than a billion dollars of other people’s money, he just shrugs his shoulders and says, “Gee, I dunno…” and that is the end of it… liberals just don’t care. But those same liberals still love him because he raises lots of money for Obama, and they are too busy screeching about “greedy corrupt Republicans that only care about the rich” to notice he just stole more than a billion dollars from people like their Aunt Millie.

Someone once was speaking favorably about the “Occupy movement” in my car, and I told this painfully stupid person that the “Occupy movement” is composed entirely of losers, leftists, posers, and parasites (subtle distinctions, I know), and I will take them seriously when they establish a lice-infested needle-ridden rape camp on Jon Corzine’s front yard, where they are pissing in his hedges and shitting on his Bentley for a month.

So I picked up a couple the other night going home to a well-to-do older neighborhood dotted with large Spanish style homes from the 30’s and 40’s. They are in their late thirties/early forties, well dressed, over-educated, professional people, but a little liquored up after dinner downtown. The guy seems nice and amiable, but his wife seems a little haughty and “bitchy”… maybe it is just the booze, but I doubt it. The radio is on low volume in the background, and the news story is, of course, the Connecticut shooting. The guy says, “Can you believe that shit?”

I said, “Just horrible… I have a toddler at home, and I can’t stand to think about it for more than 30 seconds.”

He says, “The story I heard is he stole the guns from his mother, shot her, and killed all her students, or something like that.”

His wife says, “Another nut with guns… America will never learn. Gabby Giffords, the Batman movie, Virginia Tech, Columbine… but no, the gun nuts and the crazies have to have their precious guns! The government needs to ban all guns tomorrow, or this will happen again.”

I actually spun my head around to look at her to see if she was kidding, but she wasn’t.

I said, “You do understand that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, right?”

She says, “That’s my point. If he didn’t have those guns, those 20 children would still be alive! He should not have the guns!”

The guy tries to inject some perspective, reminding her that he was obviously insane and he stole the guns. I said, “That is true… and we have a ban on stealing guns, do we not? We have a ban on shooting your Mom in the face, do we not? We have a ban on murdering toddlers and school teachers, do we not?”

I paused a moment and said, “Oh! Wait! How did this happen? Schools are gun-free zones, are they not? He flagrantly disobeyed the “No Guns Allowed” sign that was no doubt prominently posted at the door!”

My sarcasm did not go unnoticed. She says to her husband, “Oh, great… he’s one of them.”

I said, “One of whom?”

Her voice takes on a sneering tone and she says, “Let me guess… NRA member, right? Romney voter? Sarah Palin fan? Rush Limbaugh listener? Tea Partier, maybe? Am I right?”

I said, “Well, I did vote for Romney, I like Sarah, and I listen to Rush once or twice a week, but not an NRA member, I have never been to a Tea Party event, and I don’t have a “don’t tread on me” flag…”

She is feeling her alcohol now and becoming openly hostile, and her husband is just letting her go… I got the feeling that I accidentally touched a nerve, and he can’t help me now, lest he face her wrath later at home. His best play now is to just shut up.

Maybe mine, too…

She leans forward a little and says with a mildly accusatorial tone, “Do you have a gun?”

I paused a moment, looked at her, and said, “I have several guns.”

“Well, there you go…” she says. “You are part of the problem. Why do you need “several ” guns? Until we can get past this “gun culture” and right-wing gun kooks get to stockpile private arsenals, we will never move forward as a country and end this violence.”

I thought to myself, “move forward”? Like Obama’s campaign slogan? Like MSNBC’s weak-ass tagline? Like Lenin’s propaganda posters? I hate it when liberals use meaningless platitudes and distort language for political ends, but it just rolled off her tongue… a natural part of her verbal lexicon. I can tell that I’m pissing her off, but her moronic viewpoint and bitchy tone is starting to piss me off, too. However, a good customer experience is part of the service I offer, so I thought I would just drop it and try to smooth things over… opinions may vary, agree to disagree, honest differences, all that happy horseshit…

So I said, “Well, I apologize if I offended you, ma’am. I’m really not a right-wing gun kook, just someone who believes in the Second Amendment.”

I was ready to let it go at that moment, I really was… but with great drama and theatric disdain in her voice, she replied, “Oh, great! The fucking Second Amendment! Hello? Can you please come join us in the 21st century? Newsss-Flash: We don’t have muskets anymore, we have assault weapons, machine guns, and cop killer bullets today, OK? Twenty first graders got killed with a machine gun today, OK? Can we please advance the discussion and stop spouting NRA talking points, and do something constructive to get rid of these guns?”

For some reason, the phrase “advance the discussion” really pissed me off. It is a prime example of the perversion of language that liberals always use. I first noticed this phenomenon in the early 90’s, when I noticed that the “Personnel” department at a place I worked suddenly became “Human Resources”. I asked the head of the new “Human Resources” department, “What the fuck is that? “Personnel” refers to the people that work here. Isn’t a resource something that is used up, consumed, burned to create an end product, like coal or lumber or iron ore? We have HUMAN RESOURCES? Really? That sounds terrible…”

As it happens, I didn’t work there long, but that was kinda predictable.

Anyway, back to the liberal idiot in my car. “Advance the discussion”… What does that mean, exactly? Are we to “advance the discussion” past the part where I object to her ill-informed gun control lunacy and “move forward” to the part where the liberal gets her way, no matter how moronic she is?

I said, “Well, let me ask you this… If that lunatic had killed those kids by chaining the doors with bicycle locks and burning down the school with a couple gallons of gasoline, would you be calling for bans on gas and bike locks? Maybe an Assault Lighter Ban?”

“Gun nuts always do this,” she whines. “Change the subject instead of facing the fact that guns kill innocent people every day in this country.”

At this point she’s really pissed me off, and fuck the tip, I feel a compelling need to send her home knowing what an idiot she truly is.

I said, “Advance the discussion? OK, let’s advance the discussion. Let’s say that you get exactly what you want, that President Obama calls a news conference and says that “we can’t wait for Congress to act” and hands down an executive order that says possession of a firearm by a private citizen is a felony, punishable by 20 years in prison. Turn in your guns and bullets to your local Sheriff by January 31st, or you are a felon.”

“That sounds good”, she says.

“That will end the violence, won’t it?” I ask.

“Well, it wouldn’t end violence, but it will certainly be better…”

“No unintended consequences?”

She thinks for a moment and says, “No, as the guns disappear, we will all be safer. Society wins, gun nuts lose.”

I said, “And you don’t see any problem here?”

“No not really… what is the problem?”

I said, “Well, here’s a small problem… I will not disarm.”

She seems puzzled… “What?”

“I will not disarm. I will not give up my weapons just because socialist douchebags like Barak Obama and Diane Feinstein and Michael Bloomberg say I have to. My right to self defense and the protection of my family is God-given, and “the debate is over”, as Al Gore likes to say. I do not consult bureaucrats and petty dictators on that matter. It is non-negotiable. I will not disarm.”

She seems shocked… “Oh, so you are some badass-Rambo type… so you would shoot the cops if they came to arrest you?”

I said, “That is a question no law-abiding American should ever have to ask himself, because in America, no law-abiding citizen should need to worry about his government turning tyrannical and seizing his personal weapons. These people that wish to disarm everyday law-abiding citizens are surrounded by heavily armed and highly trained security personnel 24 hours a day. Of course, these liberal elites don’t need a gun… But you can bet that Obama’s daughters are protected by men with guns right now. Is my daughter somehow less deserving of similar protection? Are Obama’s daughters somehow more important than mine?”

She doesn’t respond.

“Fuck Obama’s daughters. It is curious how the Obama girls don’t go to a fine union-controlled public school in Chicago, where criminals and gangbangers and monsters kill and defile little girls all the time, don’t you think? I remember that Sarah Palin was famously asked what newspapers she reads… well, it seems that Obama sure as hell doesn’t read the Chicago Tribune, because there are dead little girls in that mullet wrapper every Monday morning…”

“And here’s another little problem… if I had to guess, there are MILLIONS of like-minded and law-abiding citizens just like me that would also not disarm… if I had to venture a guess, I would guess twenty million of them… certainly no less than ten…”

She looks baffled, like I’m insane and babbling…

“Soooo… you got ten or twenty million deer hunters and military vets and rural ranchers and conservative urbanites and concealed carriers and security guards and senior citizens and pizza delivery guys and gitterduns from Texas and cranky taxi drivers that are newly-minted felons, are decidedly NOT turning over their guns, and now view their own government as their enemy… what could go wrong?”

She looks incredulous… “So you gun kooks are going to take on the federal government…? The government that has stealth fighters and drones and tanks and atom bombs…?”

I said, “Speaking of reading a newspaper, have you read the paper at all in the last ten years? Newsssss-Flash: there are a few thousand of these illiterate goat herders and child rapists in this place called Afghanistan that have been holding off the most powerful military ever known for better than a decade now, and doing it with Soviet-era AK-47s, which really counts as World War II technology. Atom bombs and drones and stealth fighters have not gotten the job done so far, although we have gotten very good at lighting up Pakistani houses with 20 kids inside with Hellfire missiles from a Predator drone being piloted by some Nintendo jockey in Nebraska, so we got that going for us…”

She doesn’t say anything. A very awkward silence…

“So, is your plan to unleash the US military on peaceful, law-abiding duck hunters and Gulf War vets and backpackers and women with pretty little pink-handled revolvers that don’t want to get raped in a dark parking garage? Would you go after those people with drone strikes and tanks, or would the borderline suicidal task of raiding the homes of ten or twenty million well-armed Americans fall to the local Sheriff and his SWAT team? How many of those ten or twenty million law-abiding Americans are you willing to kill in order to achieve your goal? How many more millions of their wives, children, and neighbors are you willing to let die in the crossfire?”

“And how many police officers will you allow to be killed before you decide this whole idea was a really bad mistake? Most cops are union guys, and I’m guessing you are pro-union… the union bosses wouldn’t like that at all. That would cause a significant drop in monthly dues after a while, doncha think…?”

Stony silence from the back seat… but fuck it, I abandoned this tip a long time ago.

“But then again, after a few hundred cops get slaughtered in unconstitutional gun confiscation raids across the country, I’m guessing the ranks will thin out pretty quick anyway… A lot of cops are ex-military and actually support and believe in the Second Amendment, you know, so they would be useless… But what cop is going to volunteer to serve on gun raid duty when 10 or 20 or 40 men in his department have been killed in gun raids in the last few months? The cops would just stop showing up to work… a positive pandemic of “The Blue Flu”, spreading like wildfire, and getting worse every day…”

Nope. Not a peep back there.

“Of course, with fewer cops on the street, crime will probably soar… that makes sense, doesn’t it? I mean, cops get shot all the time now, right? And the cops that remain are slow to respond because there are fewer of them, and they are extremely cautious now… they never go anywhere alone anymore. If there is a rape or a murder or a robbery, it might take a long time to get a response, if a response comes at all… And I’m guessing that lootings would come soon… might as well smash the window at Best Buy and snag a flatscreen… you know the cops aren’t coming…”

Silence.

“After that, the predators will start getting REALLY brazen. That’s when the home invasions begin, and the good citizens that complied with Obama and turned in their guns will suffer horrible attacks… beatings, robberies, gang rapes, murders, mass shootings, every damn day. The local news will just stop reporting them, because they won’t have time in a half hour.”

Not even crickets back there. We pull up in front of their house, and their fare is seventeen bucks and change. To my surprise, the guy gives me a twenty and tells me to keep the change. The woman opens the door and says in a very condescending tone, “Well, thank you for the ride, and the very interesting discussion… you certainly have a unique and special point of view.”

Smarmy to the end…what a smug little liberal bitch. She sounds like a kindergarten teacher trying to explain to me why I shouldn’t shit in my lunchbox, without hurting my feelings. She has no response to a reasonable argument, so she talks to me like I’m a retarded child. I’m pretty sure she could be quickly convinced that someone like me could use some time in a reeducation camp. I said, “I regret we didn’t have more time to talk about the other side of this important gun issue.”

“The other side?” she says.

I said, “Yes, the Progressive side of the equation… we didn’t get to talk about the Democrats.”

She says, “What do you mean?”

I said, “Well, several key Democrat constituencies have a lot of guns too, you know… young black males, young Mexican males, young Muslim males, disaffected urban males… they have lots of guns, although many of them did not go through the FBI background check I went through as a lawful gun owner. Do you think they are going to turn in all their guns? Do you think all those 95% Obama voters in Chicago that make the streets run red with blood are going to be turning in THEIR stolen guns? And how about all those union goons in Michigan and Wisconsin? I bet those guys have a lot of guns, too. So you see, criminals and other leftists add at least another couple million guns to the mix… Good times, good times…”

Her face looks like her skin is drawn too tightly across her skull.

“It’s funny…. Liberals always say that booze and pot prohibition don’t work, but they somehow think Obama gun prohibition will? How fucking stupid can you possibly be? The newly created black market for guns in America is going to be staggering, and will probably dwarf the GDP of most European countries. And if having a gun is a felony anyway, I bet people will opt for serious, heavy-duty, fully automatic, high power weaponry… the machine guns that are already illegal… the shit that shoots through schools…”

She looks enraged, she’s heard enough of this shit, and she’s getting out of the car. Right fucking now.

She slams the door and as she storms off, I say, “Hey, I’m just sayin’… after watching 40 or 50 years of The War On Poverty and The War On Drugs, I can’t wait to see what The War On Guns looks like…”