Gone a Year and Four Days.

Just over a year later. Time to light this up. I've been walking exclusively since a bike accident involving a potentially serious injury, but the outcome was fine.

Last week I completed my longest walk since my health issues began well over ten years ago. Ten miles. I have started carrying a notebook to write down my ideas. Came up with some doozies.

Offensensitivity alert. Involves politics.

The 2nd amendment was intended to protect the American nation from the savage Indians, and escaped slaves. Sadly, those so called savages were not the threat. The well-armed Americans were. We are their legacy. It is time we own up to it. Those now wanting to use the 2nd amendment to overthrow the elected government are arguing from similar motivation. The perceived threat this time has morphed into Indians from further south, in Central America, and inner city black youth.

Many of the fiercest defenders of the 2nd amendment openly attack the First. Therein lies the real threat they face. Having to hear an honest recounting of the history. A history that many deny rather than face the future with all Americans.

They claim the government is out to get them because they are giving privileges to minorities. Those minorities that have been robbed of privileges for well over two centuries. They feel armed insurrection is what they were given to make change.

We were actually given the First for that. If, in a representative form of government, rebellion comes from a minority of the citizens, their only hope of success is by armed force. The First amendment is intended to give citizens freedom to have their own opinions, and for the government to respect the opinions of all citizens. It gives them freedom to freely assemble and express grievances with the government.

It is imperfect. This is largely because while the government is required to respect my opinion, There is nothing that compels anyone reading this to do so. Some may get very heated and angry at some of my words. That's life. I will not temper my words for them, nor will I get in a war of insults. I'm too old for that shit.

Donald Trump was a highly visible disaster on the world stage. I cannot deal with anyone who supports him. They know what he is. They identify with him. The deny being racist. Many I have spoken to have convinced me that they really believe they are not racists. The reasoning I have gotten from more than one was along the lines of; it would only be racist if they were not truly inferior to us.

Many of the people who believe this are highly educated and economically successful. The success often comes out of exploitation. Such people have been called trained monkeys. It is an analogy I have used referring to many of my former colleagues in aerospace engineering. I never talked politics at that workplace.

I was fired once for, among other things, talking politics. Those other things involved complaining about the exploitive corporate greed of my employer, and even my contacting of government agents regarding their corrupt business practices. The discussion of politics was because all this occurred around the time GW Bush and his gang of "upper crust C students" were going to throw young American men, like "toys some rich kid got for Christmas," at a personal enemy, using an attack on us by others as an excuse. Quotes;Kurt Vonnegut-Man Without a Country.