More Laws! That’s the Ticket!
America needs more laws. That is obvious to those of you who pay attention to news outlets.
Some of my ideas are not wholly original. I have been influenced by politicians who solve problems with more laws.
For example, there are representatives in Congress today who demand that new laws stopping the use of certain guns will save children from future tragic shootings (by those guns). Why stop there? Let us ban anything that can be used to kill children, such as any gun, knife, baseball bat, bomb, etc.
And why limit it to protecting children? Adults are being killed too. Recently, there was a mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs. It should be against the law to kill gay people. The shooter there is non-binary. If only a law was in place making it illegal for a non-binary person to shoot gay people, that tragedy could have been avoided.
Sure, we do already have a law making it a crime to commit murder. As I recall, Moses came up with that one for those of you who read Hebrew. But it hasn’t really worked as a deterrent like better laws would. Clearly, we need to be more specific, such as a law stating that transgendered men who were formerly women may not shoot up innocent children and staff at a Christian school. That specificity was missing.
When a person is issued a speeding ticket, the accused offender often tells the officer who is writing the citation that he/she/they did not see the sign with a posted speed limit. It has been said that ignorance of the law is no excuse. Still, it is human nature to use the excuse that one did not know one was breaking the law. At least there are signs posting speed limits. There are few, if any, signs that say, “Thou shalt not murder.” How is a person contemplating murder to know “they” would be “breaking the law”? No fair telling them after the fact.
That irrefutable logic extends to U.S. immigration laws. There should be signs at the border clearly stating that only American citizens or persons with valid passports and visas may enter our country — or else. And, because some of the people who migrate to the U.S.A. illegally do not read English well, all signs SHALL be written in Spanish and Chinese as well as English.
I have another idea. In addition to banning tools which could cause harm to persons being murdered, perhaps there are ways to protect the public from those who are attempting to harm members of the public, including, but not limited to, schoolchildren, gay nightclub attendees, concert-goers, mall shoppers, and even those who benefit from white privilege. Maybe we hold off on defunding the police, Maybe it would help to have armed security guards protect us from those who did not get the memo that murder is a bad thing to do.
Denver East High had a student fatally shot outside the school, and a couple weeks later, another student shot two school administrators at the school. Then he shot himself. Consequently, for the remainder of the school year there will be “school resource officers” at Denver schools again.
Law enforcement should not be a despised term, especially when we all are safer when qualified officers “serve and protect.”
Being an Influencer Requires Being Cool
Nowadays, there are people on the interweb who are so cool that others seek to emulate them. They are called influencers. Being cool is obviously a pre-requisite; e.g., The Kardashians. Once a cool person reaches the status of being an influencer, that status can be, as we say in the business, monetized. That means the influencer gets paid by the makers of the product that the influencer says is cool, or, just by wearing or using the product, shows it is cool.
While I did not coin the term influencer, I pretty much showed how influencing is done for much of my life, except for the monetization part.
Next I will provide a few examples which prove my ability to influence members of the general public to try to copy me. The reasons are obvious — the copycats are trying to be cool because they see I am cool. It is called emulation. It is the highest form of flattery.
There are many photos of me as a young male person wearing a cowboy hat. All of the pictures in what my mother called my “baby book” (which label I resented) depict me wearing a cowboy hat. You readers have probably noticed that many cowboys and celebrities still wear cowboy hats TO THIS DAY!
There are countless other examples, but WordPress has storage space limitations. So I will just briefly mention a couple more.
Back in the seventies, I went to the Army and Navy Surplus Store and bought a pair of bellbottom pants. Well, pretty soon every teenager was wearing bellbottoms. You can look it up.
In recent years, I have experimented with facial hair fashions. This is something The Kardashians have avoided. They don’t try to compete with me. But look around! Notice the many men, young and old, copying some of my mustache and beard styles. Most can’t pull it off, but it doesn’t hurt to try. Who can blame them? They want to be cool.
Now if I can just monetize the project.