Calling Bullshit

Day 541.

As I look at the photos for the March For our Lives, the gun control movement lifted up by the simple message that the teens from the Florida shootings are calling bullshit on the politicians. The simple message is that they are not interested in the intricate web of why we cannot ban the guns and stop these shootings. They are done with that. They are calling bullshit on the reasons why not and they are clear that a new way forward is their way. Just sort it out, and stop it now, or - step aside and let them do it.

It’s fresh. It’s simple.

I am done with the pharma control.

I am done with the intricate reasons behind why. I call for a halt on opioid deaths.

I call bullshit too.

It strikes me that with fatality numbers, so much smaller than that of opioids, how come they have so much attention, and the opioid march has so little? Is it that they have stepped up? Or is the stigma of drugs counteracting the concept of innocents being killed?

Is it because it’s school kids? Because opioids are killing our kids too, and it starts in school.

Or is it that we need to simplify our message too?

It is true that the lobbying system is what propels both guns and opioids into mass existence. So would getting lobbying out of politics serve us all?

The Facebook/Cambridge Analytica element shows us that politicians need to know what we think to write their manifestos.

More scary than the violation of our privacy, is that politicians have no ideals of their own. In an Orwellian world it is not the dream of a better world in their own vision that they seek to implement, but just the power to do so. It’s not the ideal. It’s the power of elected positions they seek. Why else would they need to know what we think? And if they do form an ideal, a manifesto based on our Facebook data from random likes and postings which we have engaged in without consideration - should we think twice about how we use social media, knowing that politicians agendas may be based on them?

What happened to the politics of “I have a dream” rather than “We see from Facebook that you would like me to have a particular dream.” What happened to doing what is right by the people?

To my horror, the flood of data on the opioid crisis seems not to have touched all doctors in LA. My friend’s children have been, in the past few months, prescribed opioids for bone breaks. Neither of them in agony. Advil sufficed. And as I consider the outrage of their mothers, I wonder - is it Luke’s death that opened their eyes to the madness of this? And if so; I am pleased. Not that Luke is dead, but that some good has come of it. There’s a message there.