The mass shooting at Orlando is something that has been on nearly everyone’s mind. I have seen the obligatory Facebook posts about pro-LGBTQ and anti-LGBTQ posted. I have read meme after meme making statements about pro-gun and anti-gun positions. I have also seen posts following a position of the Donnie lamenting the word choice of the President concerning Muslims (“radical Islam”). In essence, its the same knee jerk foolishness that happens from both the Left and the Right whenever a shooting occurs.

Yes, foolishness.

I do not own a gun. I do not want a gun. Yes, I know very well how to handle both a pistol and a rifle. The US Air Force taught me very well where that was concerned. No, I have no desire to take anyone’s gun away from them. I have no desire to keep people that want to purchase a gun from doing so. I only want a better, far more thorough process for that transaction to take place. How does all that occur? I have some ideas, but I am not sure how realistic any of them may be. That is why I vote individuals into legislative offices. For them to work out how the processes should work, and create checks that insure the processes are being followed.

Yes, I am “pro-LGBTQ”. I hate that term, because it gives off the impression of being one a single side of that particular argument. So, let me put it another way – I am for “love-who-you-want.” That includes the legal agreement of marriage. People should be able to marry who they want. Its their life/lives, they should have the freedom to tie themselves together.Anyone standing in the way of something like that, I would offer them to place themselves in the position of those that they oppose. What if it was their marriage to their wife or potential wife that was being challenged and opposed? But then, no one wants to consider that when opposing LGBTQ marriages and unions.

I get that some people think that Donnie is going to change the world and bring us all back to the 1950s Beaver Cleaver lifestyle. But I look back to the 1950s, and I see a very divided world. Whites were in their own communities. Blacks were separated into their own communities. Rarely did the two mix. Other minorities are barely even given a second thought. There’s no way in the Nine Hells that I want to live in a world like that. I like the diversity that my current world offers to me. In fact, I prefer it that way.

I have mentioned this in my previous posts – as a world society, we stand at a crossroads. We can be a society that is inclusive of others. Where people are given a fair chance to succeed. We’re not quite there yet, but we can definitely continue traveling down that road. Or, we can choose to be a separated society. One where certain groups of people are denied access to things, materials, knowledge and other things – merely based on the color of their skin, the color of their eyes, the color of their hair, their sexual choices, their gender identity, their religious beliefs, or where they were born.

In the movie I, Robot, Will Smith’s character, Detective Spooner is led to the edge of a robot storage facility, where older robots are sent to live in storage containers. The scientist whose murder he is trying to investigate makes a statement that the “three laws are perfect”, but will lead to only one outcome:  “revolution.” This idea of separating folks into various groups of haves and have-nots based on some of the criteria I mentioned above may create a Utopian society for one or two privileged groups of people, but the outcome will be the same – an eventual revolution of those who are pinned underneath because they do not meet a certain criteria. Are we, as a society, ready to create that world? Are we ready to elect leaders who make statements that point in that direction?

In some ways, I would suggest that we are already at this tipping point of a societal revolution. That the rise of the Donnie as a leading figurehead of that polarization movement is the gasping and wheezing of that 1950s model that I mentioned. The people who are comfortable being in the position of a have, with their foot on the throat of a have-not, are not ready to give up that position in the sun – so to speak. And as their definition continues to grow a larger and larger list of excluded criterion, the pressure from the teeming mass of individuals and groups defined by those criterion grow as the push-back gets greater.

As that pressure grows, the combative phrases of “Obummer wants to take your guns”, and “Barrack Hussein Obama is a secret Muslim that wants to overthrow the West from the inside” will get louder and louder. But those voicing those perspectives are becoming a smaller and smaller minority, as they shore up more and more definitions to make their circle of cohorts more exclusive. And those that they exclude don’t want their guns, nor do those that are excluded want to make them marry same-sex partners.

No, those that are excluded want one thing:  the freedom to make those same choices for themselves. They want to be able to make those choices, and live those choices. And not have to live in fear of someone coming into a club and gunning them down – simply because they made different choices, as they should be able to. A friend of mine, actually more a family member to me, noted that a simple public display of affection – kissing his significant other – brought a moment of fear over having someone see that happen. No one should ever have to feel fear – even for a single moment – of sharing a public moment of affection for someone, regardless of whatever different descriptor you can put on them. I am sorry, but I am not about to live in a world like this. Nor am I going to tolerate anyone that would make my family members have to fear for their life for stuff like that.

In the movie “Gladiator”, Maximus makes the notation that the Emperor that he served had a vision of what Rome was. I have a vision of what our modern global society will be. And I shout as Maximus did:

This is not it! This is not it!