Bill LaCroix: Say Hell No! To Walmart

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Say Hell No! To Walmart

Crosman MK 177 Tactical Air Rifle

Here's a little food for thought regarding the recent shooting at a Walmart store of a young man by police officers in Beavercreek, Ohio. Beavercreek is an affluent, mostly-white suburb of Dayton. The young man, who was not white, had picked up a BB gun in the toy department. It was apparently a Crosman MK 177 Tactical Air Rifle, pictured above (all the pictures on this post come directly from Walmart's website http://www.walmart.com/tp/bb-guns).

What in the world, you might ask, is a "tactical" air rifle, and what is Walmart doing encouraging children to acquire "tactical" weapons? Before I opine on that, below are a few other choices the young man, who was not white and who was shot dead by police (shades of skin unknown by myself), may have found in the toy department at this typical Walmart in a typical, mostly-white affluent suburb of a large city.

What ever happened, you might ask, to BB guns that don't look like real-life assault weapons. Not to worry. Here's one below, part of a kit complete with human targets...for practice in case you want to grow up to be a police officer in a mostly-white, affluent suburb.

Given that these pictures are all proudly displayed on Walmart's own website and are worth a thousand tortured words, here's the next question you might ask: Does Walmart have any second thoughts about being the mass purveyors of such merchandise in a country already overcharged with an idiotic Teabag ideology's fixation on assault weapons and the resultant plethora of mass shootings with assault weapons? Well no, says a Walmart spokesman. Ohio, you see, is an open-carry state.

So you do see, don't you, that it's not only perfectly legal for Walmart to display and sell "tactical" BB guns, it's just as perfectly legal for a young man to be carrying a real gun in a Walmart store... if you follow the logic, which I hope you can't.

Because it appears by every measure that the young man's real crime was to be of the wrong color while carrying a gun--real or BB--in a Walmart store. So, as promised, I'll leave you with some food for all your thinking: Would it have been a shootable crime for the young man to have been carrying the BB gun pictured below, also sold by Walmart, while black?

Are we there yet? Can we start evolving now, or at least start talking like grown-ups?

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Why I Blog

Thoreau and Emerson had a discussion in May of 1846 about the Mexican War--our first war that set us on the course we still track today. Conquest of nation-states and the inevitable Imperialism that follows. Emerson counseled his friend that we can supersede the transgressions of a well-meaning State by the Muse. Thoreau wasn't so sure that the State was so well-meaning or that the Muse alone would be enough to supersede it. But he tried both the Muse and "other means" to our everlasting benefit. Civil Disobedience, in the American sense, has always been his child, in large part because he raised it to the level of Literature. "Other means" requires the Muse to be lasting and effective, and vice versa. How would anyone know what the hell you were talking about otherwise, let alone emulate what you're trying to do?

The problem with Progressives today, I think, is that we have been in the habit of letting other people--Rupert Murdoch, the Koch Brothers, Sun Myung Moon--tell our stories for us, people who do not mean us well. We haven't plugged our muse into our political discourse very much, and that's a big mistake. Mark Twain didn't make that mistake, and he was among the first American writers to use the new-fangled typewriter. Why do we children of Twain, Emerson and Thoreau make that mistake now with our new-fangled computers?

For all its faults, Corporate America understands that people are story-based critters, like it or not, and I think we progressives should like it. By definition, people make many important social (read: political) decisions based largely on who's the best storyteller. It’s in our nature, and Corporate Media is a classic example of how Nature abhors a vacuum. We’ve collectively created a cultural ‘narrative’ vacuum by allowing ourselves to be so easily entertained by—Corporate Media! And Nature hates that. She’ll allow the same garbage responsible for that vacuum (Corporate Media!) to be sucked in and to rattle around until it ruins our cognative motors before she’ll let that sad state of affairs stand. I'd ask any "America Firsters" stumbling on this blog and reading this far to consider: Rupert Murdoch is from Australia. Sun Myung Moon, now-deceased but whose creatures, the Washington Times and UPI still walk the face of the earth, was from Korea. The Koch Brothers, of course, were from the sheikdom of Texas. All of them were, and the living ones still are, so obscenely rich they apparently believed they own America simply because they paid for it, and we collectively let them define who among us are “real Americans”?! C'mon!

Although it helps to strive toward the goal, progressives don't have to be great writers, and I'm not claiming to be one. We simply have to acknowledge that we have the better stories and we’re sitting on our best ones. Our truest ones. Multi-national billionaires have better versions of American Liberalism and Progressivism than the real ones told by real Americans? Us? We shouldn't put up with that. Why do we?

Like any historic attempt, we need to find our Voice. Significant action will come only after our contemporary, progressive political muse matures, which it hasn't yet. Not to paint with too wide a brush, but too much of our positions have been framed in intellectual, almost-didactic prose, which, if you don't identify as an intellectual, means boring. Not all of it, just a whole lot of it, but never mind. If history's still a guide--and I hope it still is--there's hope, because when any progressive movement's Muse matures, it generally becomes the baseline for much of Western Civilization’s meaningful and therefore lasting literature. For example, "Mein Kampf" is still in print but I'll bet you'd have to turn over a lot of rocks to find someone to call it 'literature'.

So, this blog. It's a call, I suppose, to elevate our critical modern discussions out of Fox-news-landia back to where intelligent, caring Americans can find their feet and fight back, either with the Muse, by other means, or both. It’s not up to some politician to change the narrative. That’s up to us. So by definition we still have as good a chance as we ever had. Don't lose hope. It’s always been this way. At least in literate societies.

In other words, like Emerson advised and Thoreau partially agreed with: stories matter, and may the best Muse win.