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Two stories this week caught my eye. I have no problem with our Second Amendment. I do have a problem with the mental functioning of some of my fellow Americans bearing and selling arms.
Case #1: The Conspiracy Theorist – stock up because Obama is coming for your weapons. This mindset is as old as the hills. I mean if Barack Obama has been President since January 2009 and these gun-lovers still have their weapons in 2012, why is this belief rampant? From the Lone Star State (which of course, has folks ready to secede as well) – Raw Story, the Black Friday bum-rush for guns:
FBI records released earlier this week indicated that the bureau fielded 154,873 calls for background checks last Friday, beating last year’s record of 129,166 background checks by about 20 percent.
Jerry McCall, who owns Texas Guns in San Antonio, thinks he knows why.
McCall pointed to President Obama’s re-election because “more people feel under the gun to get one in anticipation of possible new laws restricting gun ownership,” WOAI reported.
But wait, there’s more:
“He’s also sold to customers who may be preparing for a ‘doomsday’ scenario as we end 2012, in case the Mayans were right,” according to the station. “I bought my gold. I have my food. And now I’m buying the gun so I can keep my gold and my food,” McCall recalled one customer telling him.
I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that some of the birthers, far-right gun nuts are getting prepped for the Mayan apocalypse coming up on December 21, 2012. I don’t think even facts published by Faux News will stop the doomsday prep:
On the 21st, the date of the winter solstice, a calendar cycle called the 13th b’ak’tun comes to an end. Although Maya scholars agree that the ancient Maya would not have seen this day as apocalyptic, rumors have spread that a cosmic event may end life on Earth on that day.
Thus NASA’s involvement. The space agency maintains a 2012 information page debunking popular Mayan apocalypse rumors, such as the idea that a rogue planet will hit Earth on Dec. 21, killing everyone. (In fact, astronomers are quite good at detecting near-Earth objects, and any wandering planet scheduled to collide with Earth in three weeks would be the brightest object in the sky behind the sun and moon by now.)
That leads us to Story #2: The Deep-Fried Gun. You’d think that will all of the news about weapons being taken away and doomsday approaching, that a perp trying to rob a restaurant would have a more effective battle plan than this:
Much remains unclear in the bizarre incident that occurred shortly after 9:30 p.m. at El Diamante Restaurant, 2830 E. Charleston Blvd., near North 28th Street.
The biggest question of them all: Who threw the biscuit – slang for gun – in the deep fryer?
“It was discovered the gunshot was a result of a firearm being tossed into a deep fryer and exploding,” a Las Vegas police report said. No one was hurt .
Although no one was arrested in connection with the shooting, 44-year-old Obdulio Gudiel was arrested and accused of attempted robbery with the use of a deadly weapon in connection with an incident shortly before the gun was fired.
9 Comments
The Maya, like most other peoples outside the Judaeo-Christian tradition, saw history as a series of cycles, not as a line with a beginning and an end.
But I suppose it’s too much to expect of some people that they’d actually acknowledge the point of view of those whose predictions they’re misreading.
The end of a cycle was a great thing for the Mayans, but when the calendar rolled over they just added more digits. It’s not any different from adding a new digit to a decimal or binary number. There are a few examples of dates further in the future, but generally they had not much use for such distant dates.
I really don’t understand the reason for this post except to be able to use the term “Batshit Crazy” (there! I spelt it out!).
It smacks of religious piety morphed on to urban legend, like “There but for the grace of god go I”.
Hubris also comes to mind.
No way having one of those bsc’s living in my neighborhood. No-siree bub!
Book Salon up with Ben Freeman’s The Foreign Policy Auction: Foreign Lobbying in America hosted by Michael K. Busch
Even if your bats**t crazy, I wonder what possible good you think your gun, gold and food are going to do you as you face an apocalypse.
Too logical. C’mon. Start asking questions like that and it’ll lead to questions about why batshit crazy racists want to use a Mexican calendar as an excuse to start shooting up immigrants.
In their world the Mayans were able to divine the end of the world but not the invention of flush toilets, electrical grids, mass transit, and penicillin. The true believers never seem to realize that if they really could see into the future wouldn’t they have known that the Spanish were coming and that they needed to invent guns? These people are really sad, probably batsh*t crazy, and very, very dumb.
…or wheels. They did not possess knowledge of wheels. However, their strange mathematics, which did not admit the existence of fractions (only whole number ratios the basis of which is 13 (for 13 moons/year) and 20 (20 fingers and toes). But see the 2 in 20? They did set up their own version of binary mathematics, with which they could predict solar timing so precise that it took us smarties until close to the end of the 20th century to best it.
So far as predictions, they saw Cortez coming except he was supposed to be a god, known as the Plumed Serpent.
Cortez had some sort of feathers in his helmet when he landed to the day predicted (which was Good Friday, btw)
Some historians doubt the story, so take your pick.
So much is done in the name of religion, not just the Aztecs or Mayans. Catholics, Muslims Jews, so many justified their conquests based on religion.
They did have their Creation story, with such a similarity in content and timing to Western Religion to be uncanny. Their bible is called the “Popol Vuh”.
Oh, and another near miss. Had they picked 13 and 21 instead of 20, they might have discovered the Fibonacci series and the Golden Mean. That would possibly have led to entirely different architecture.
Maybe.
They did do math fairly well and even used 0. The wheel thing was a major prediction fail, especially since they were in wide use in the Old World at that point. I did not know that they didn’t have those. By the way though, Cortez was the guy who wiped out the Aztec Empire. I haven’t heard anything about their predictions but I predict that we will when the people who are being suckered in by the Mayan prediction don’t get what they seem to be wishing for. ;^)