An Early Night: Why I Hate Daylight Savings Time

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Looking at the Trump administration this past week, I feel like I’m in a runaway locomotive that is heading at full tilt toward the side of a mountain in which someone has forgotten to carve a tunnel. If you aren’t frightened right now, you should be. This is even scarier than Nixon’s final week was.

So let’s talk about Daylight Savings Time. But don’t worry: there’s method in this madness.

Daylight Savings Time, or what we as kids called “Summer Time” has become deeply unpopular, and a majority of Americans would like to just get rid of it altogether. There’s even scientific evidence that the self-inflicted twice-a-year jet lag leads to a loss of productivity, and an increase in heart attacks and strokes, especially in the spring when the clocks are moved forward. It’s just one more irritation in a world filled with irritations big and small, and of course the government, having made it an annoying waste of time (literally), will do nothing to alleviate it.

When I was a kid, Daylight Savings Time was great. It came at a time of year, late April, when the last of the dust and gravel from the winter had vanished from the streets, the tulips were topped by fat buds with hints of the colors to come, the days were warm(ish), and suddenly, magically, you had time for three more innings of baseball after dinner. It marked the end of Unlocking and the beginning of true summer. It was a glorious event. It was Summer Time, and it was special.

The first week of October marked the beginning of Locking. The leaves were beginning to turn, the evenings were crisp, the mornings chill. It was time to put away the toys of summer. Thanksgiving and the Grey Cup were only weeks away (this was Canada, after all) and the NHL would be starting soon. Locking had begun, with the promise of the winter to come, and it was right that the evenings would darken, softened by the extra hour of sunlight on school mornings.

The time shift, which began was a need by plutocrats to squeeze more work out of us, meshed with the seasons and our moods. It was almost organic, and gladdened our souls. People set their clocks ahead and smiled at the warm days to come. In fall, it heralded another welcome transition. People moved their clocks back and settled in to get cozy.

In the 1970s there was the APEC crisis, and Congress decided to extend daylight savings time in the vain hope it would save energy. It didn’t, and eventually the crisis passed, making the point moot, but Congress wasn’t about to admit they were wrong and set it back to where it was.

Another, smaller energy crisis struck in the Oughts, and the Congress, now mostly twisted and broken minions of twisted and broken plutocrats, could think of nothing better to do to deal with it than extend DST again, this time from the second weekend in March to the first weekend in November.

I remember early March. It was just barely light when I awoke, and when washing my hands in the kitchen, I would look at our neighbor’s north-sloping roof, hoping to see gaps in the snow cover where the eaves would appear. At least the giant icicles of February had fallen. The trip to school was a slog, wet cold winds, rain or snow, or both. It was the rotten part of late winter, where the white ice had melted from the streets, old man Campbell had shut down his rink because the ice was too rotten for skating, and the berms were crunchy foul nightmares of black gravel and automotive soot and dead things caught by the plows. “Summer Time” began, not only before the snow had melted, but before it even stopped snowing. The pussy willows, the bravest harbingers, hadn’t even budded yet. Worst of all, one’s mornings were slammed back to the latest sunrises of the year, the hopeless dark of a mid-winter morning. School began at first light, a phenomenon of which everyone was already heartily sick, having gone through it in early January.

The end of DST is an even more meaningless. Evenings are already dark and cold, the leaves have all fallen, and as the cold and dark encroach, we are tormented by the false gaiety and emotional blackmail of the Mass of the Christ Commercial. Suddenly, it’s dark before dinner, and the faint gray light of November mornings are no consolation. Saying goodbye to summer is like grieving for your great-grandfather who died twenty years before you were born.

The time change has changed from an accentuation of the seasons to just another bloody pain-in-the-ass regulation foisted on us by a corrupt and uncaring government.

Is it any wonder people have learned to hate Day Light Savings Time?

There’s been a spate of articles lately about how people are depressed an alienated, crushed between the millstones of runaway capitalism and a corrupt and twisted government.

And now we see the end game of the fascistic notion that society should serve the economy, rather than the other way around. A man whose only qualification for office was that he was a good thief is disintegrating before our eyes and threatening to take us with him. The inevitable political implosion is here, and the economy is threatening to follow suit. The media each day reflect how, like the time change, the foundations of society have completely lost relevance to our human needs.

Of course we are depressed and frightened. Any sane person would be.

I think we’ll muddle though, and I’m sincere when I write that. But that’s my own optimism, and that’s all it is. The only thing backing it up is “Well, we’ ain’t dead yet.”

It’s a mean time in our lives, the bleakness of dead leaves in the gutters and a swirl of snowflakes mocking the dying lawns. And now, suddenly, it’s dark, far too early.

Set your clocks, and hope for the best.

Kneeling Against Authority

When I first came to America at age 14, I was told that it was a lot like Canada and England, and I wouldn’t even notice the difference. Just a few words spelled differently and football has four downs, is all.

After a month, I was still trying to navigate the strange currents of southern California society. The paper had no mention of my favorite football team, the Ottawa Roughriders, or even the CFL at all. Weather reports indicated that Canada apparently got no weather. The whole country was blank. England apparently didn’t exist. One kid tried to get me to give him twelve cents for a dime, apparently thinking of the British system. He punched me when I told him in Canada it was ten cents to a dime, just like here.

A month in, I walked into my first American classroom. Because of the British and Canadian educational systems, I was the youngest kid in the class by a full year.

The classroom wasn’t all that different. There was a picture of George Washington instead of the Queen, and the walls had images relating to the teacher’s topic: in this case, history. So instead of Wolfe versus Montcalm or Henry VIII, there were images of Abe Lincoln and John Glenn and so on.

The only thing different was the flag. Classroom flags were sedate little 18 inch affairs, pinned flat to the wall. Canada usually had two—the Red Ensign and the Union Jack. But they were just part of the background decoration.

THIS flag was on a pole with a gold eagle on the top and gold fringe, and was taller than I was. I figured maybe it was used in history lessons in some way.

The teacher strode in, and everyone took their seats. Then the teacher made a ‘stand up’ gesture that looked like a conductor asking his orchestra to sound like a scalded cat, and all the kids stood up, put their hands over their hearts, and started chanting at the flag.

I watched, utterly dumbfounded. Nobody had told me about this. I had stood up when everyone else did, and after a few seconds put my hand over my right lung. Left-handed, you see, and since I couldn’t see any rhyme or reason, I just used my dominant hand.

The teacher had noted my unstylish clothing and leather satchel and figured me for a furriner, German, maybe or Swiss. The next day he handed me a mimeographed sheet. “Memorize this,” he said.

I read it with growing perplexity. “I pledge allegiance…”

Um, to the flag? What?

I took it home, along with a light load of homework (no Latin!) and memorized it. And then realized it wasn’t for me. A newly-minted atheist, I didn’t want to say “under God”, and just omitting the phrase seemed inadequate. Especially since the whole thing felt ridiculous, anyway. All these people, chanting earnestly at a piece of cloth in the corner. It seemed like something out of wartime Germany, not to put too fine a point on it.

So I got the salute sorted, and stood respectfully when the others got up, but remained silent.

The teacher noticed.

“Didn’t you memorize the Pledge?” You could hear the capital “P”.

“Yes sir, but I’m not comfortable reciting it.”

He hauled me off to the Principal’s office, and my Dad was called. He came in about a half hour later, and fortunately, the Principal knew the law. We agreed I could remain silent, and it was enough that I stood respectfully. I didn’t even have to salute if I didn’t want.

The teacher didn’t like it, but had to acquiesce. He settled for picking on me for answers, and if I didn’t know, might say something like “You need to know this if you ever want to be an American.”

I was lucky in one way: my classmates never picked on me about it. A year or two later, when Vietnam was clearly falling apart and authority was being challenged, things might have been different.

I never have recited the Pledge, not in over 50 years. And I still think it’s ridiculous.

So when Colin Kaepernick dropped to one knee for the national anthem a year ago, I agreed with why he did it for a number of reasons, some personal, some not.

The first was his principal motivating reason: police brutality. That problem hasn’t gone away. Over a thousand Americans—the majority of them African American—have been killed by police this year. Just yesterday I read, in quick succession, stories of a deaf man who was shot to death by police as neighbors screamed at the officers that he was deaf and couldn’t hear them. Another man took seven bullets for turning and walking away from a cop. The cop hadn’t detained him, and the video suggests that the cop found it suspicious the guy wanted to avoid him. Another guy was kicked half to death for having an epileptic seizure. He lived, but he’ll know better than to have any involuntary neuromuscular spasms in front of his community’s protectors and defenders. There’s been a lot of unrest as cops, clearly guilty of murder, get acquitted all around the country. A rage is building.

So Kaepernick’s grounds for protest are real, and valid, and unfortunately, have not changed.

Trump, pandering to his racist base in Alabama, attacked pro footballers who refused to stand for the anthem. He said, “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired. He’s fired!’”

Trump managed to hit on the issues of the rights of employees and other workers, and freedom of expression and freedom to protest. And with every step, he managed to squelch a fresh turd.

Le Bron James called Trump “a bum”. LeSean McCoy called him an “asshole”. Stevie Wonder fell to both knees in protest. Dozens of players on other football squads knelt for today’s anthem. Coaches, managers and even owners linked arms in a show of solidarity with the kneelers. Pittsburgh’s squad elected to stay in the locker room until the anthem was played. It has finally begun to show up in baseball. The SF Warriors decided to forego the ‘honor’ of a White House visit. The protests have even reached that most reactionary group of players, pro baseball.

Kaepernick’s mother, in a great American moment, responded that she was proud to be the bitch Trump was referring to, and proud of her son.

What Trump doesn’t understand is that you simply cannot order people to do things in the name of freedom. Or symbols. Or because {patriotism, religiosity, or fear}.

If someone orders you to stand for freedom, you should consider it your right to kneel if you want. Or sit. Or lie down. Or walk away.

If someone orders you to salute freedom, feel free to keep your arms at your side.

George W. Bush once declared that “Freedom is on the march.”

He was wrong. Free people do not march. They may decide to march, but they don’t do so at the order of the President.

Trump does not represent freedom. He represents what people fought and died to protect their freedoms from.

If you agree with Trump, you have that right. But ask yourself just whose freedoms are being protected by ordering people to obey symbols of authority.

If you’re fine with your answer, feel free to obey in the name of freedom. That, too, is a freedom you enjoy.

But don’t demand that others share your servitude. You don’t have that right, and others are free to ignore you. And Trump, they can even defy you.

Weapons of War: Time To Uphold the Second Amendment

Feb. 24th, 2018

By now, you’ve probably heard that there where four Broward County deputy sheriffs in the immediate vicinity of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas last week. There was the on-duty security officer, and three more cops who got there while the shooting spree (all four minutes) was still going on. They didn’t go in, and it wasn’t because they were all suffering from bone spurs, that infamous affliction that has waylaid the most renowned of American war heroes.

They didn’t go in because facing an AR-15 was certain death, and would not save a single life. As long as the shooter had his weapon of mass destruction going, there was little or nothing they could do. Only an abject idiot would chant that the way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. In this case, it’s like saying the only way to stop a bad guy with fragmentation grenades is good guys with whiffle bats.

A big part of the problem is that an AR-15 isn’t just a sidearm. It’s a weapon of war, designed to create maximum lethal casualties in the shortest possible amount of time. To get an idea of just how different these vicious weapons are, read this article: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/what-i-saw-treating-the-victims-from-parkland-should-change-the-debate-on-guns/553937/

I used to think that the NRA, the main proponent of unlimited gun fire, was just a mouthpiece organization for gun sellers.

But it’s just as easy to promote .22 rifles, or 9mm sidearms. The NRA is pushing weapons of mass murder. Even gun companies have to realize that this is a strategy that would eventually blow up in their faces. And thanks to the survivors of last week’s attacks, it has.

There’s several elements that put the motivations of at least some of the NRA leadership into clearer focus. First, nearly half the guns in the US (some 320 million nationwide) are owned by just 3% of the population, and by an even more disproportionate ratio, the weapons of mass murder are in the hands of that same 3%.

Second, it’s reported that Russia used the NRA to launder some $25 million as a conduit to influence the US elections in 2016.

So you have an absolutely mad policy designed to give a small private army weapons to conduct military sieges with, and it’s allegedly being financed, in part, by a hostile foreign power.

Some of the NRA—and their benefactors—are preparing for a civil war. They want a small but dedicated cadre who will be willing to kill thousands of their fellow Americans if push comes to shove, or the country just gets rid of a corrupt and criminal incompetent president. They are fascists, and they are preparing for war against America and the American people.

The kids leading the revolt against this are facing fierce headwinds. Take the people who accuse them of being ‘crisis actors’ or who are paid to feign outrage over what happened at their school. (Stop and think for a moment about the sort of mind that assumes that one can only be outraged at the murder of friends and children if one gets paid for it—that’s the sort of moral cripples speaking on behalf of the NRA). The ones who accuse the school of faking the attack are exactly on the same level as child pornographers—they exploit and harm children for their own personal agendas. They are on exactly the same level. When your cause is twisted and evil, your hireling will be twisted and evil.

There is a way to contain these murderous people, and while we can’t get rid of this neo-confederate army, we can drive it deep underground, and make it a lot more difficult for them to use our children for target practice, and our freedoms to destroy us.

The Second Amendment has a subjective clause, one that the NRA hates so much that they left it out of the inscribed quote of the Second Amendment that adorns the lobby of their main offices.

It reads, in full: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

It’s time to take the Second Amendment literally. It doesn’t guarantee the right of arms to every individual; it guarantees the right to bear arms to every member of a well-regulated militia. The amendment doesn’t even specify state or federal militia, but I would strongly prefer seeing it as a uniform federal requirement for owning a firearm.

As a gun owner, a mandatory requirement would be enrollment in a federal militia. This would entail an agreement to put in six training days per year, a requirement to let the militia know the exact number and nature of the firearms owned, and a log kept of the use of each weapon.

Anyone using a gun in the commission of any crime would be subject to military justice. Anyone in possession of a gun who has not joined the federal militia should be required to hand in their weapon, or face military justice for illegal possession of a firearm.

Exceptions would pertain to law enforcement officers, and members of state militia, although both sets would face military justice in the event of malfeasance.

It would effectively end the ability to stockpile arsenals for the purpose of making target practice of schoolchildren. (It’s a chilling note that there were at least five instances since the Marjory Stoneman Douglas where students with similar arsenals were planning attacks. Nobody knew they had these arsenals, and the only reason they were caught was because the boasted of their plans on social media, or to friends. There may be hundreds more like them out there, waiting their turn.)

Finally: the militia will determine what guns are appropriate for use. Firing rate, muzzle velocity, and range are all factors the militia can use to determine if a weapon is appropriate. Since the role of the militia is to protect the public and preserve the peace, weapons of mass destruction such as AR-15s would not be appropriate.

The contempt the gun nuts have for our liberties and our lives ends here.

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