2012 was a tough year and 2013 could be even tougher

Perceptions by Gerry Warner

The year 2012 is grinding to an ignominious end and I wish I wasn’t so deeply pessimistic. But I am, and there’s no point hiding it. So if you’re still enjoying the year-end fun and festivities please continue and you might be better off skipping this gloomy epistle.

As for my state of mind, and I suspect many others, how can pessimism be avoided in the wake of the Newtown shooting tragedy and the shooting deaths of two New York firemen that followed only a few days later? Sure, it’s easy to say that’s the U.S. and we’re different, but are we really that much different? The anti-feminist motivated massacre at the Montreal Ecole Polytechnique in 1989 ranks right up there with the worst of the American school slaughter tragedies and there have been others in Canada and around the world too.

What’s the likelihood of more such shooting tragedies occurring in 2013? You might as well run a lottery on it because more deaths are that certain. Hell, let the NRA run it and give an AR-15 semi-automatic to the “winner.” Then there’s the toxic state of American politics. We’re only days away from the so-called “fiscal cliff,” an agreement cobbled together by Republicans and Democrats a year ago to force them to agree on future fiscal policy or a draconian set of spending cuts and tax increases will kick in forcing the world’s biggest economy into another recession.

The clock is ticking on that one, and if the American economy slides into recession again will the Canadian economy be far behind? And then there’s the Euro Zone, already heavily into recession with Germany the only strongly solvent major country left and countries like Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy in the cross-hairs of economic collapse.

Even the Chinese economy slowed down drastically the past year and stories began to seep out of over-worked Chinese workers jumping out of the windows of giant sweat shop factories churning out electronic toys for technology-obsessed Western consumers.

Meanwhile war, disease and starvation continue to stalk large undeveloped areas of Africa, Asia and South America while we in the developed West rack our brains trying to figure out how to hold on to all our “stuff.” But even in the West there’s great discontent as wealth continues to spiral upwards to the gilded few belonging to the so-called “one per cent” while the middle class grows smaller by the day and thousands, if not millions, face the grim prospect of sliding down the standard of living ladder into a life style full of fear and privation.

Am I depressing you yet? If not, you haven’t been paying attention.

Meanwhile as the world’s climate grows ominously warmer on a yearly basis and the atmosphere fills with carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases, let me tell you what I fear the most – the dire state of the American body politic. Like it or not, the U.S. is the fulcrum on which the rest of the world spins. The Excited States of America is the most powerful country in the world financially, militarily, technologically, intellectually and any other adjective you care to use. But in many ways this colossus of a country is one sick puppy. Bipartisanship, once one of the strongest features of American democracy, is dead. With the death of bipartisanship, American politics has slid into gridlock. Witness the 11^th hour settlement on the debt ceiling agreement last year. Look at the looming fiscal cliff crisis approaching now. Look at the country’s $16 trillion debt with the majority of it held by Communist China, a country many Americans consider their mortal enemy. And most of all, a country now seriously contemplating using armed battalions to protect its children at school while at the same time fighting one of its many wars to keep the Taliban from killing school children in far off Afghanistan.

And who said irony is dead?

And how many of you realized this? According to an October 2012 Brookings Institute report, more U.S. soldiers died in Afghanistan this year of suicide than were killed by the Taliban. The latest official totals from Jan. 1 to Sept. 30 were 222 deaths caused by “hostile causes” and 247 by suicide. Even Uncle Sam’s own troops don’t believe in the American Dream anymore.

And where does this leave the Global Village I hope I never have to find out.

Happy New Year everybody. Honestly!

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Gerry Warner is a retired journalist and a Cranbrook City Councillor. His opinions are his own.

Is there change in the wind for a nation in love with guns?

Perceptions by Gerry Warner

Dec. 21, 2012

Back in the days when the United States was 13 colonies of religious fanatics huddled on the East Coast of America facing a dangerous wilderness and hostile natives wanting their land back -- and rightly so -- it was understandable why the pioneers needed guns.

Guns fed them. Guns protected them.

A hundred or so years later those same pioneers fought a revolutionary war against the greatest empire on earth – and defying all odds – were victorious. Once again, the key was guns. Then it came time to create a country with a sacred document to guide it into an uncertain future. Is it any wonder that the Second Amendment to the American Constitution was the right to bear arms?

But this is where things started to go off the rails.

The Second Amendment was intended to provide the fledgling country with a citizens’ militia because the New Republic still faced many enemies, not the least of which were the imperialist British still smarting from their unexpected defeat, Spain, which possessed a great empire of its own, Mexico, part of the Spanish Empire to the south and the misnamed North American Indian, who still controlled the western half of the continent and had great leaders of its own like Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.

But the Americans persevered and eventually defeated all of their enemies and became the Greatest Empire in the history of the world, bestriding the earth like a giant colossus, albeit a colossus with a fatal flaw – a love of guns. Any kind of gun from an AR-15, the semi-automatic weapon that killed 20 innocent school children in Newtown, Connecticut last week, to a Glock hand gun concealed in a pocket to the hundreds of drones killing children in Afghanistan and Pakistan. (When a gun doesn’t work, you get a better weapon – and praise the Lord – the killing can continue.)

We’re talking about a sick country here. Sick, sick, sick! The gun culture is ingrained into the very fiber of American DNA. And ironically the only person that may be able to reverse this atavistic disease is one who has played a major role in continuing it – President Barack Obama.

Yes, I’m talking about that president, the one who was elected more than four years ago saying he would fight for tougher gun laws and did nothing. The one who gave the order for the extra-judicial murder of Osama bin Laden (in his bed surrounded by his wives and children) instead of bringing him to American justice and legally executing him like a truly civilized country would do. And, oh yes, the president who expanded the Drone War in the tribal lands of Pakistan and Afghanistan, killing hundreds of innocent civilians including dozens of women and children. No public tears shed for them. Then again, sitting in their stone houses and hovels in the Steppes of Asia, they represent great threats to American “security.” Yeah, right.

I know this is harsh, but I defy anyone to tell me it isn’t the truth.

Yet, despite the foregoing, I’m actually daring to believe that maybe this time it’s different. Obama’s tears looked genuine on TV. This time he’s pledged to act on gun control and put Vice President Biden in charge of a special task force to come up with concrete proposals for new gun laws within weeks. Referring to the Newtown massacre where teachers tried to shield students with their bodies, he said it’s time for Americans to show “one tiny iota of courage those teachers in Newtown summoned on Friday."

Pray to God, I hope Americans start doing that. This, after all, is the country where sales of children’s body armor and bullet-proof backpacks soared after the Newtown tragedy and where some politicians have seriously suggested arming all teachers to keep students from being killed.

But now there are signs that real change may be in the air. It took three days for the National Rifle Association to respond to the killing fields of Newtown and the NRA responded in a gracious manner with no mention at all of Americans inalienable right to gun each other down. Even some senators and congressmen, who have strongly supported the gun lobby in the past, are showing signs of a change of heart. Given this, Obama has a golden opportunity to forge a legacy of being the president that restored peace to the public square, made school children safe in their seats and created a kinder, less violent America.

What a Christmas gift that would be.

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Gerry Warner is a retired journalist and Cranbrook City Councillor. His opinions are his own.