American history has been about guns.  Ask any indigenous American.  Ask any Republican for that matter…

Yesterday I watched an old Western movie entitled, Last Train From Gun Hill, staring Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn. The plot as you can guess is about outlaws and gun-play. The “good guy,” the one wearing the star — wins.

At a commercial break a campaign ad featured a Republican candidate for governor giving the stock “law and order” spiel. He promised, if elected to “take the gloves off” of the police. The reference of course was to the daily violence on the streets of Chicago, especially to the random children struck down by stray bullets.

And so the American fetish with guns continues into the new century.  Many citizens as well as those involved in an illegal business are, “armed to the teeth.”  An appropriate epitaph for our experiment, our republic could be: They Worshipped Their Guns.

Simone de Beauvoir in her book, The Ethics of Ambiguity writes about the type of freedom advocated by conservative political parties in general:

…the sort of freedom demanded: It is property, the feeling of possession, capital, comfort, moral security.  We have to respect freedom only when it is intended for freedom, not when it strays, flees itself, and resigns itself. A freedom which is interested only in denying freedom must be denied. And it is not true that recognition of the freedom of others limits my own freedom: to be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future; the existence of others as a freedom defines my situation and is even the condition of my own freedom. I am oppressed if I am thrown into prison, but not if I am kept from throwing my neighbor into prison.

-excerpt The Ethics of Ambiguity by Simone de Beauvoir p. 97

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I have a tune for this Friday.  This one is “on target” for our topic of concern.  The lyric is a telling-in-truth of a failed society of existential emptiness, superficial relationships, and bone deep anxiety.  The absolute certainty is the sensation of the human body when, “the bullet hits the bone.”

Twilight Zone by Golden Earring. (1982)

Twilight Zone

By Golden Earring

Somewhere in a lonely hotel room there’s a guy starting to realize that eternal fate has turned its back on him.

It’s two A.M.

It’s two A.M., it’s two A.M
The fear has gone, the fear has gone
I’m sittin’ here waitin’, the gun’s still warm
Sittin’ here waitin’, the gun’s still warm
Maybe my connection is tired of takin’ chances
Yeah there’s a storm on the loose, sirens in my head
Wrapped up in silence, all circuits are dead
Cannot decode, my whole life spins into a frenzy

Help I’m steppin’ into the twilight zone
Place is a madhouse, feels like being cloned
My beacon’s been moved under moon and star
Where am I to go, now that I’ve gone too far
Help I’m steppin’ into the twilight zone
Place is a madhouse, feels like being cloned
My beacon’s been moved under moon and star
Where am I to go, now that I’ve gone too far

Soon you will come to know
When the bullet hits the bone
Soon you will come to know
When the bullet hits the bone

I’m falling down the spiral, destination unknown
Double-crossed messenger, all alone
Can’t get no connection, can’t get through, where are you

Well the night weighs heavy on his guilty mind
This far from the borderline
When the hitman comes
He knows damn well he has been cheated
And he says

Help I’m steppin’ into the twilight zone
Place is a madhouse, feels like being cloned
My beacon’s been moved under moon and star
Where am I to go, now that I’ve gone too far

Help I’m steppin’ into the twilight zone
Place is a madhouse, feels like being cloned
My beacon’s been moved under moon and star
Where am I to go, now that I’ve gone too far

Soon you will come to know
When the bullet hits the bone
Soon you will come to know
When the bullet hits the bone

Help I’m steppin’ into the twilight zone
Place is a madhouse, feels like being cloned
My beacon’s been moved under moon and star
Where am I to go, now that I’ve gone too far

Help I’m steppin’ into the twilight zone
Place is a madhouse, feels like being cloned
My beacon’s been moved under moon and star
Where am I to go, now that I’ve gone too far

Soon you will come to know
When the bullet hits the bone
Soon you will come to know
When the bullet hits the bone

Soon you will come to know
When the bullet hits the bone
Soon you will come to know
When the bullet hits the bone

When the bullet hits the bone
When the bullet hits the bone
When the bullet hits the bone
When the bullet hits the bone
When the bullet hits the bone
When the bullet hits the bone
When the bullet hits the bone
When the bullet hits the bone

Writer: George J. Kooymans