The snow came like they said it would. Prediction was a little off, of course. The nice lady in the red dress said it would be “one o’clock.” I had to do some presumptive work on that one, since she could have meant tomorrow after lunch or that tiny little hour in the darkness while we slept. Words matter, you know?

It was wrong, either way, but it is here now. For those of you in real snow country, this is laughable. There is perhaps an inch, or a couple in some places out back. Huge flakes are falling, and mounting little by little. I am not leaping in anticipation of a long drive on badly plowed roads to stand in a line for a lift ticket. These days I just wait for the stuff to stop and melt. But experience suggests that could be a lot longer than what the nice lady in the red dress told us.

Snow or slush, I am staying away from politics and current events. Those both appear to be even less accurate than the prediction of snow. I mentioned that curious article in Time Magazine’s on-line presence yesterday. It got me energized, since it is part of everything swirling around like the puffy snowflakes outside.

Part of everything we hear is a lie, and we have grown to accept it. The question is not whether something is “true” or not, since it is all part of a carefully constructed narrative. For example, I heard about the new gun bill that is being introduced in Congress. It is pretty amazing in detail, but was explained as being a justified means of getting all those automatic-firing weapons off the street.

I support that, of course, except for one of the details that is sort of important. Those machine guns have been illegal since 1934, under the provisions of the National Firearms Act, or the better part of a century. There are provisions by which citizens can own them, but they require a payment to the government, strict regulation, and requirements for storage and transfer not much different than the ones contained in the new bill. Except the new one will apply to all guns, not just machine guns. That is a fairly dramatic change, but it is presented in a seemingly reasonable manner that ostensibly would rid us of the plague of weapons of war.

Which of course is all of them. There is only that little change in words that does it.

That was the same thing with the word “democracy” contained in the Time article. We do not have one, nor did the old dead white guys who wrote the Constitution want one. They talked about that a lot, and there are plenty of words about the matter of governance. What they settled on was a “Constitutional Republic.” That is the one we used to have here in America. You know, the one where we elect representatives who deliberate on these matters, pass what they think is appropriate for us, and send it to the President for signing into law.

If he/she doesn’t, that can be overcome with another Congressional vote. If it is a real a persistent problem, the Constitution has a means of being changed, or amended. We have done that fairly frequently over the last couple centuries. Of course the process can’t do it by itself. The process needs most of the people in all the states to do that. It is supposed to be difficult.

And that is where we find ourselves today. We are indulging in a great experiment about changing the Constitution without doing any of the things we are supposed to, since it is not “democracy.” The Constitution is clear on that. But we are doing a much simpler process by ignoring it. Instead we are just conjuring up a proposition from the mass of voters and putting it direct to law, with punishment for violation. It is much easier.

I talked to a pal about that. I am fully compliant with whatever comes out of Washington, for sure. He was uncertain about whether he had the $150,000 in hand for potential fines, nor whether his schedule could accommodate a fifteen year stint in prison. He seemed concerned about the matter.

Not me. I read the Time article and am satisfied that there are people out there with an awful lot of money who are saving our democracy, or whatever it is. The only part of that I am unsure about is for whom they are saving it for.

Copyright 2021 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com