THE KILLING MOON

There are legends surrounding the moon and tales of madness associated with its' light, and we are under the influence of the full moon as I write this. The past few days as the moon grew steadily larger we have seen an unprecedented killing spree sweep across America. We had the slaughter of immigrants in New York, the family and cop killer in Oakland, the mother who shot her 20 year old son in the back of the head at a firing range in Florida and then put the gun in her own mouth and pulled the trigger. Then closer to home, Monday night in Graham a man killed his 5 children because his wife wanted a divorce. Oh, and then he killed himself in the parking lot of the Indian casino as his grand finale.

And that's not even the full extent the mayhem. Alabama seems to be a favorite place for these family mass murders. You remember the guy who killed his family and then drove 20 miles to his old place of work killing people along the way. I think the cops killed him in the end. An hour ago there was another family killing in Alabama. We don't know the details yet, but we will, thanks to 24 hour infotainment.

You really can't blame the moon I suppose. Only some of us are superstitious enough to believe in the influence of the moon. But it's about as good a theory as any to explain this growing phenomenon.

Some people say it's because of the economy. After all, people are losing their homes, their jobs, their savings, their dignity and they just snap. This makes sense, except that virtually all of these killers are middle class or working class. I mean, how much in real terms did they have to lose? They probably didn't have much equity in the house, and according to everything I've read over the past few years most Americans don't have any savings. What they do have is debt.

The other thing about the economy as a motive, is that during the Great Depression you didn't hear about people killing their families or strangers and then killing themselves because they were out of work and were about to lose their homes. The ones who did kill themselves during the panic on Wall Street in 29 were rich folk. There was a wave of suicides as wealthy brokers and bankers threw themselves out the windows of skyscrapers when they discovered they were broke.

The guys on Wall Street in 2009 aren't the ones killing their families and then themselves. That's because they still have a bonus coming in after they destroyed the economy, I suppose. Besides, they really haven't failed yet. The government is keeping them alive in their Zombie banks while in Alabama another red neck kills his kin.

The other theory is that these guys are paranoid. Right wing talk radio has been telling them that now that we have a black communist for our president the next thing coming is the confiscation of their guns. That being the case, you might as well use your guns to make sure the government can't come after you with their damn unemployment checks and other such socialistic plots. It's kind of like the black sheriff in Blazing Saddles when he holds the gun to his own head and says "If you take one step closer I'll kill the nigger." The theory here is that these guys think that the government is going to put their children in re-education camps after they confiscate the guns. They know this is so because we've got a congresswoman running around saying it's true and besides they saw it on Fox.

My own theory is that America is crazy! The whole goddamn country is one gigantic madhouse. We no longer manufacture anything. We sent those jobs to the guys who were our mortal enemies just 30 years ago. Does anybody remember Red China? Guess what. They're still Red! So we shipped them all of the decent paying jobs and in return we're receiving inferior products, toxic even, which we can buy at bargain rates at our local Walmart.

Oh, and we can't have a decent health care system because that would mean some oligarch couldn't get rich and we all know what a crime that would be. In fact, we tell ourselves we have the best health care system in the world when what we really mean is that we have the most expensive. By any other measure we are not even in the top ten when it comes to health care.

And how about refusing to face the fact that oil has been running out since the 1970s and what reserves are left are controlled by people who want to destroy us.

Or maybe someone can explain why we transport food from around the world to our grocery stores while paving over our best farm lands right outside town. Or why we can't run an election anymore without screwing it up. Or why when you call for assistance you get someone who can't speak English in an English speaking country. Or why we think buying and selling debt to each other is the basis for an economy. Or why we let sexual predators lose on the streets and lock up pot smokers. Or why contracts for speculators are sacred but contracts for workers can be renegotiated. Or why we spend more money than all of the other countries in the world combined on our military. Or why we think everyone is entitled to their own gun. In fact, according to some Americans, the world would be a better place if everyone was armed with a gun.

You see what I mean? These are not the actions of mentally stable people.