Sunday, May 15, 2022

Yes, There was a Manifesto - weekly column, 5.15.2022

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

mhall46184@aol.com

 

Yes, There was a Manifesto

 

In the midst of a world of light and love, of song and feast and dance, he could find nothing to think of more interesting than his own prestige.

 

-C. S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost

 

This scribble began as a consideration of the sad sack of s(lop) – hardly a man – who murdered mostly elderly shoppers and a stand-up retired police officer.

 

Aaron Salter, Jr., 55 and recently retired after thirty years with the Buffalo, New York police, surely understood that with only a pistol he would not probably survive his defense of his fellow Americans against an orc wearing body armor and armed with a .556 semi-automatic rifle.

 

There are still heroes among us, and Officer Salter was one of them.

 

In the event, last weekend featured numerous other murders and woundings of ordinary Americans by other Americans in church, at sports events, and at community festivities. No other nation needs to bother attacking us; we’re destroying ourselves.

 

The speculations we all still have about the sad sack of s(lop) murdering old people in a supermarket extend now to all the sad sacks of s(sop) who, in a world of possibilities, found nothing more to do with their weekend than compensate for their inadequacies by shooting unarmed people.

 

Let us anchor the discussion in the first orc:

 

Grandpa’s old single-shot for rabbit hunting and secured with a trigger lock with the key kept by Dad when not in use – we get that; it’s a piece of Americana.  But a semi-automatic rifle in a combat calibre and a G. I. Joe dress-up play-soldier suit – that’s pathological.

 

About the wannabe soldier thing - did he make the first day of recruit training? Or did he just know about video games?

 

Did he ever consider joining the volunteer fire department or some other worthy cause?

 

Did he play football, join the band, belong to the FFA, take a shop class, join the Scouts, help with the little kids at Sunday School, or belong to a club?

 

Did he ever have a job – sack boy, fast-food, mechanic’s helper, anything? Who paid for the three weapons he is reported to have been carrying? And the body armor? That’s not cheap.

 

Did he ever mow the yard?

 

Could he cook a simple meal?

 

Did he ever help wash dishes, vacuum the floors, wash the windows, or do the laundry?

 

Did he ever change the oil and hit the lube points in a tractor, pickup truck, or car?

 

Did he ever help build fence? Did he even know what a carpenter’s hammer is for?

 

Did he ever wrestle a rotor-tiller around the garden?

 

Did he ever have to take care of little brothers and sisters?

 

Did he ever question the illogical, immoral, and unscientific race theories fed to him?

 

If you were to ask him about his favorite book, would the response be a blank stare or even a sneer of disapproval?

 

Did he have a purpose, a life-plan, a cause beyond whatever nonsense was programmed into his little brain from the InterGossip?

 

In the end, it’s not that we ask such questions about him; we ask them about ourselves and about how we raise our children and grandchildren.

 

Peace.

 

-30-

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