Sometimes I learn things altogether different from that which I seek. This is not an original thought, but it can become a realization if you do this life thing long enough, and you are paying attention.

To this day my father has entertained one question more than most any other. And this from his peers….

“Why jump out of a perfectly good airplane?”

Dad joined the 11th Airborne as it formed during that large war laid on his generation. At some point during 1943 he learned how to jump out of perfectly good airplanes. On purpose. He also learned all that other how-to-make-war-upon-the-bad-guys-stuff while he was at it. These days some men pretend to not recognize the other stuff when Dad compares notes with that dwindling family of heroes who won that war, and they pose the question. This does in fact acknowledge Dad’s record, and yet still razzes him a bit. These men now have a sense of humor, honed from a Great Depression and the horror of World War. You must have done some shit in your time to even join in with this conversation. 

These men saved our American way of life from indescribable evil, and you and I have benefited beyond measure because of this. If you question this, I shall not listen to you, so don’t bother to read the rest of this thing. 

My daughter, Jody, followed me to many high places over the years of her development. She climbed with me the Grand Teton in Wyoming, some 13770 feet of real live mountain climbing. She followed me up Mt Whitney, the tallest bump in the lower 48, and a few others of substance. We thawed her near frozen fingers atop Mt Shasta. She would have followed me to hell and back, if you can believe my late friend Dan, who was wise and wonderful. Jody and I got high often.

So, many years ago, when we walked out of the clinic after we closed at noon on a Saturday, and we drove up to Lodi just to “check out that sky diving place”, and I decided that it was time for us to experience that ole jumping out of a perfectly good airplane, she just said, “Sure”. So we signed the papers, and climbed into the old C-47, that one that had once, uh, crashed, and they rebuilt it, and we sat on the aluminum floor as it circled the airport, rattling something awful as we climbed lazily up to 10K feet. And then, each strapped to someone whom we trusted to  know what they were doing, we jumped out of a perfectly good airplane.

This….was a life changing experience, in more ways than I can describe here. Somewhere another essay describes this event, but don’t ask me where. How this is relevant to today is that thing I learned that I didn’t expect to learn. And that has to do with thermals. And the scent of death.

These days, when you jump out of a perfectly good airplane, the goal generally is to have a good time. Free falling most of the distance back to earth, give or take seven thousand feet before opening the parachute, is entertaining. Take my word for this. And feeling the parachute finally open, suddenly slowing our transit back to earth, is comforting. And by the time our feet land gently upon firm earth the exhilaration will leave us thinking that our feet are not actually touching said earth for some considerable time after. 

Shortly after the rectangular nylon canopy opened above us, that device that slowed our fall and also propelled us forward so we could maneuver into the wind and toward our projected landing site, it also carried us over the four lane freeway. The four lanes of asphalt had been baking under the California summer sun for hours, and from its hot surface warm air rose, as warm air is want to do. We hit that column of warm air, that rising column of air, and for a brief moment we rose with it. And with that warm rising column of air, came some scents.

I smelled mowed grass, and diesel exhaust, and some other from the ground below. But this taught me something that I should have figured but hadn’t. I learned that those vultures circling high above the dead body in the desert in those old cowboy movies, were hanging on a rising column of air, and they were smelling dead body. I hadn’t planned on this part.

Carrion, which is not the same as carry on, is not luggage, but instead is dead bodies. Dead bodies emit certain scents, some 450 different dead odors if you look into this. Vultures live for these scents, for they eat the dead. Dead bodies represent lunch for vultures. The hint of dead, the odor, and soon several large dark birds are circling above, hanging on the rising warm air column and enjoying the odor. They look forward to this, for without carrion, they don’t eat. They wait patiently for death. Death for them is opportunity.

October brings to our area those big green-blue iridescent flies some call blow flies. These guys like carrion too. They smell the slowly rotting dead body upon which they lay their eggs, thousands of eggs, so that the hatch from those eggs, disgusting maggots, can feed on decaying flesh and thus become many more blow flies. On the dead body. Blow flies are also attracted by the scent of dead. 

When we had puppies sick from parvo virus in the infectious disease ward at the back of the clinic, the poor puppies who smelled dead before they actually were, laying there spewing bloody diarrhea with the half digested linings of their intestines flowing out the back of them, the flies knew. They came buzzing in through the front door, took a quick sniff of the air, and then they flew a bee line back to the parvo ward, hoping to let their baby maggots feed upon the poor puppies. Blow flies live for this. Death for them is opportunity.

Sorry about the gross part, but it leads to the point of all this.

The point is that some creatures, some of the most vile creatures, live for the smell of the dead. To them, death is opportunity.

So the other day a client came in, and as sometimes happens, our conversation wandered away from the cat’s minor problem, and into other stuff. From my client I learned that the cops are killing far too many unarmed young black men. And….nobody cares that unarmed young black men are getting killed.

Really?

OK, so such might happen on rare occasion. Young black men kill young black men many times, most every day. Hard to get anyone to even notice this. But lately we hear about young black men dying only when a cop is involved. Cops, all of them together are nothing more or less than a slice from the pie of people, with mostly good and a few bad. I get that, and the system does too, punishing those few bad police officers who overstep their authority. But what of those other times when a unarmed young black man was killed, those times that netted the obsessive assault from the media, the obsessive assault of the self-promoting reverends, the obsessive assault from the president? Do you remember all those times when the angry mobs filled the streets as a consequence, but when the cops actually did no wrong at all?

Well, it turns out that the vultures and those large flies who hope their darling baby maggots will feed upon dead bodies are not the only vile folks around who get all excited when they get the smell of a dead body. Sometimes dead bodies give the media, those reverends, and that president an opportunity to raise a fuss and thus they gain the excuse they need to demand that cops stop arresting criminals. They had to wait patiently for this opportunity, but finally they got their dead bodies.

This time it kinda started when young Trayvon Martin violently attacked a man, and died for his bad judgement. Later that year, one crazy evil young man accomplished something in his perverted mind by murdering a school room full of little children. And then, after an embarrassing long wait, it blew sky high with the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO. Long before the facts were in, long before reality and much delayed honesty arrived, the outrage over these killings erupted, and this grew beyond all reason. The paid protestors had already trashed the city. Long before the vultures and the blow flies would have known, the president had already spoken of his outrage, and the media took this and ran with it. Oh, the horror. And oh, what a relief. Relief for the president and his political cronies. This was a crisis. This was opportunity. Never mind the facts. Never mind the truth. Never mind the collateral damage.

Now, in the spirit of truth in advertising, I will admit that I’ve been accused of promoting certain conspiracy theories, and I plead completely guilty on this one. This means I believe we can see  what happens when evil people take advantage of tragedy. I’ll just lay things out, and you can be the judge for yourself.

Each time that president of ours impatiently waited until rewarded with well publicized dead bodies, the greater the number, the better, and then he pled his case to the American public. He stated that he must do something to keep these murders from happening. According to him, we must do something to keep guns out of the hands of those criminals who couldn’t and wouldn’t kill people if they didn’t have firearms. His timing seemed perfect, always right after a fresh death. Who could argue with this? 

Sometimes he was so aggrieved that he cried just for the camera. He gets props for this. Reminds me of that old TV show, “Queen for a Day”, but I wander off. 

The president likes to fly in those families of the victims of murder, wrapping them around him before the cameras, shamelessly exploiting them, for that makes his performance seem more believable. Good for him, for these tricks do help his argument.

It is not a closely held secret that the president is obsessed with disarming the American people. He tries, and his supporters try, to keep this under a hat, but the truth has been out for years. Just don’t look for this truth in the New York Times or on the network news. These folks would just as soon not let this revelation cloud our thinking.

This president, while a representative for the public in the government of Illinois and in the US Senate, this guy voted for every gun control bill and every gun ban that offered up the opportunity. Except for that one time, when the retired chiefs of police promised him their support if he would vote to let them carry concealed weapons. For regular folks who couldn’t offer this guy a political boost, this wasn’t gonna happen.

This is in contrast to all those other times when he voted “present” on all those other regular bills, instead of actually voting yay or nay, so that he would seem to be working, but not choose wrong and carry any negative baggage forward in his political career. He only staked out a position for this one obsession of his. This left him with more wiggle room when he needed to con the public into voting for him later. 

So since this president wants to disarm the American people, he still needs to convince enough of us to follow his lead. And since the occasional murder that lends itself to the raging publicity he needs is a rare thing, he must wait between tragedies for the smell of carrion. Problem is, he is not a patient man, and since his time as president is soon to pass, he must speed things along a bit.

Since this president claims that he wants to keep guns out of the hands of murderers, logic would suggest that our government agencies under his control, those agencies responsible for keeping guns out of the hands of murderers, would be kinda busy. We do, after all, have lots of federal laws designed to keep guns out of the hands of murderers that should be enforced. 

You might not know this, but it actually is illegal to murder people. Now, this is not really just a gun thing, but it is worthy of mention. That president won’t mention this. He will instead tell us that we have no way to stop killers from killing because we don’t have enough laws to stop this annoyance.

More on topic….it is illegal for a convicted felon to possess a gun. It is illegal to give or sell a gun to a convicted felon. It is illegal to buy a gun to give to a felon. It is illegal to transport a gun across state lines to give or sell to a felon. There is a bigger list than this of rules, federal rules, that make it extremely illegal to arm felons, or for felons to be armed. And these are just the federal rules. 

We have a Justice Department in our federal government, and among all the other responsibilities of a Justice Department, they are supposed to enforce all of these laws. Why you might ask? Well, to keep murderers from murdering people with guns. Just in case you were wondering.

You would be thrilled, no doubt, to know that this president has made certain that his Federal Justice department is dedicated to arresting and prosecuting felons who break these laws. The president’s Justice Department is in fact setting records in this regard. Thank goodness for this, for this clearly is at the president’s urging. Think of the violence prevented, and the lives saved. Thank you president.

Uh, but wait…..

Remember the last president who tried to disarm the American people? That would be the two headed monster known as the Clintons. That would be good ole Slick and his tender wife, who always reminds me of Rasputin. Their Justice department set a record for such federal arrests and prosecutions of felons breaking the laws that prevent them from killing people with guns. They arrested and prosecuted so few of these criminals that they set a record. Presumably, they did this because they thought it would reduce violence and murder…. or more likely when they wanted to disarm Americans. And they needed some killing going on to justify trying to disarm America.

This current president, in charge of this Justice Department and his attorneys general, is setting a similar record. This president made damn sure he didn’t take too many likely murderers out of the neighborhood before they killed. Yep. This president has overseen an appalling record of not bothering to do any of this prevention stuff. This president cannot be bothered to uphold the multitude of laws specifically designed to stop criminals from killing people with guns. The rules already on the books….

Oh, and when questioned why those criminals, who were actually stopped from purchasing firearms by the mandated background check at points of purchase, are almost never prosecuted by our president’s justice department, the loyal vice president said, “We don’t have time for this”.

Gosh, I wonder why.

Similar laws exist at state and local levels. And the numbers go up and down, the numbers of violent murdering criminals arrested and prosecuted for all those laws designed to stop them from committing “gun violence”. Take Chicago, for instance. Recently, the political party that runs Chicago has been so distressed by those 500 murders they enjoy each year, all that “gun violence”, that they are now prosecuting something like 7% of the known criminals caught with guns. For the rest I guess they just didn’t have time…..

Oh yeah, that president got his start conning (organizing) poor people into voting for that political party in Chicago, and the corruption running Chicago paid him back by helping him become president. Wash my back, and….

Everybody should know that the two things known to actually reduce violent crime, and murder, and presumably that more horrid thing called “gun violence”, involve arresting criminals, and locking them away. For although we haven’t often rehabilitated career criminals into useful citizens because of time spent incarcerated, at least while they are locked away they don’t hurt any of us. 

So of course, this president and his political party are doing everything they can to make it more difficult for police to arrest criminals, and they are releasing criminals from our jails and prisons by the thousands. Not sure why, but clearly they think we are going to be safer because of this. Gotta be that. Because they say they are trying to make things safer.

Just don’t ask any cops on the street about this. And don’t ask the victims of crime. They somehow harbor the silly notion that these career criminals are gonna, you know, behave like criminals. But since Michael Brown and the riots in Ferguson, the president’s political party has done all it can to prevent the police from doing their job, from arresting criminals.

I remember listening to that president claiming that the violence perpetrated by those vicious drug cartels in Mexico was the direct result of our local neighborhood gun shops greedily selling “assault weapons” to straw buyers, who in turn drove truckloads of weapons to their bosses in Mexico, because those insanely wealthy gangs couldn’t get weapons from their own country’s military, the Middle East, China, and all those other places from which they actually obtain their weapons.

This president merely wanted the excuse to close down our gun shops, not because (he says) he wants to disarm American citizens, but because he wants to end “gun violence”. What a nice guy. He is such a nice guy, that his Justice Department, and the ATF under them, just happened to run a game on those fools in the Mexican cartels. They planned to let a few known straw buyers obtain weapons illegally from gun stores in Arizona and Texas, and then they would track them into Mexico, and then they’d take back those guns and arrest all those drug cartels and that would be the end of that. And because those gun stores greedily sold to those straw buyers, well they’d just have to shut down all the gun stores, too. Great plan.

So…..they ordered a few gun stores to sell to known straw buyers. The gun stores objected, but they were forced into this deal. Only a few guns left for the border and the cartels. Only about 2000 guns. Oh, and nobody bothered to track them, any of them, and no cartels were arrested. But those guns, in the hands of some of the worst criminals of the 21st century, began killing folks. Lot’s of folks. Thousands of folks. Even more than in Chicago. And in keeping with the plan, some of those guns are now killing people in Chicago, too. 

The only guns the ATF got back were those recovered from crime scenes that had already killed people. They said they were going to get all of them back, but I guess they forgot.

No doubt the president was getting ready to pull the rug out from under all those horrible gun stores, because they clearly were responsible for all this killing. Shame on them. Until somebody noticed that a bunch of those guns were in Mexico BECAUSE of our ATF, because of our Justice Department, because of….our president (?). These were those very guns our own government sent to the cartels. Ya know, because of the plan.

If you ask any member of that one political party why we need all these new gun control laws they demand, the obvious steps in the direction of total disarmament of American citizens, you will get the same answer. This answer is very consistent. This answer is repeated endlessly by politicians of that one party at every level. It is repeated by all the gun ban organizations. It is repeated endlessly by our ever loyal mass media. 

There is an epidemic of shootings, a rising tide of violence. 

Repeated endlessly, by endless drones.

But this is why we need all these new gun control laws, which all seem aimed, not at criminals but at folks like you and me. Because of the epidemic and the rising tide. 

To these folks, this epidemic and rising tide is a crisis. And as any impartial observer might notice, one political party has vowed to not let any good crisis go to waste. They learned this from Saul Allinsky. In fact, more than one politician in this party has celebrated mass murder as a time to “make hay while the sun shines”.  These people love the smell of carrion. 

That crime rates and violence rates have been plummeting since the early 90’s, and now are down to the levels we witnessed way back in the 60’s, well, that seems to have slipped past the gun ban lobby. The 60’s were before the war on poverty and all those other social programs implemented by that one political party which managed to remodel some elements of our society into the “murder capital” of the world, if you missed that part.

This national reduction in crime is apparently a closely held secret. You won’t hear this mentioned by the rising tide and epidemic politicians or most of the media. Certainly you won’t hear it from that president. They need a bunch of violence and murder to make their case for disarming us. Reality gets in their way. Without the epidemic and rising tide, all they are able to argue with are their lies. With only lies, they will have a much more difficult time disarming America.

So let me be the first to admit that I am a conspiracy raving maniac. I cannot look at these last few paragraphs and not wonder about those two vultures in the tree. Growing tired of waiting for a dead body to turn up, one bird decides to take matters into his own hands. Kinda like that one political party, and those three, you know…..the current, the slick, and the wanna be. They need more dead bodies so they can disarm us. They need an epidemic and a rising tide. Because that is what they must do to remake our society to fit their agenda, to end our way of life.

Patience, my ass. I’m gonna kill something. 

And these folks are seeing to this.