Segarini: Asshats and Headcases – UPDATED AGAIN!

I am convinced that every single piece of bad news that finds its way into newspapers, radio and television newscasts, and onto the Internet are related. Every war that is raging, every homicide, every act of terrorism. Every robbery, every act of bullying, every rape, every fatal car accident, and every home invasion. Every bad decision that leads to tragedy, every thoughtless act of greed, every violent action taken in the name of God, Country, or Wealth. Every act that puts an individual or millions in harm’s way…ALL of them are caused by just two factions of the human race, either separately or in tandem. They are our real enemies, and usually undetectable until it is too late. (Photo by FOH)

They are the Asshats and Headcases.

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No man in the history of the world has ever considered himself evil. From Genghis Kahn, to Hitler and Stalin, from Pontius Pilate to George W. Bush, no person who has ever rained death and destruction down on one human being or an entire Nation, has ever thought of themselves as “evil”. If you want to cite evil as the cause of all that ails us, at least use the word properly. Evil is done by those who believe they are doing what is right for themselves, their family, their country, their religion, their whatever. History will paint them as ‘evil’, but in their minds, they were not. It is all about perception. What they were…and what they are…are Asshats and Headcases. And it is the Asshats and Headcases who DO evil to others in the name of righteousness.

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I have been a practicing curmudgeon for many years. It is something that I enjoy and I recommend it highly as a fine way to spend your time when you begin suffering ageism at the hands of others, aches and pains that don’t go away, and insipid fads and faux news items that clutter our daily lives like hipsters at a hat sale. It is a practice that sharpens the wit, focuses the senses, and makes small talk bearable. It enables you to look at the likes of Kim Kardashian and get a chuckle out of the fact that this wide end receiver is tantamount to this generation’s hula hoop. A fad, a hiccup, a bit of gas from that last taco you shouldn’t have eaten.

You will have something funny to say when Justin Bieber buys a monkey and proves he is unraveling like a cheap sweater. You can caustically explain that classic rock is fine if you live under a rock and off the grid and haven’t listened to music since 1978, but seriously, wouldn’t you like to know what has sprung from the well of creativity and talent since then?

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Usually, when bad things happen, or justice gets blind-sided by an Asshat or Headcase law, the populace rushes to first denounce, then blame whatever the obvious cause appears to be. Having lived long enough to have experienced a wide variety of terrible events, it has occurred to me that every ‘first reaction’ is almost always made with very few facts on hand, and little or no information other than hearsay and conjecture. We are quick to judgment, and even as the facts drift in, we are hard pressed to change our original gut reaction regardless of what is revealed.

Sometimes it takes years to get the whole story, but by then we have moved on, struggling to come to grips with the latest horror, the latest act of evil, the latest tragedy.

The main point of all of this, is that no one thinks of themselves as evil, but in the name of whatever they are on about, they commit acts of evil that they believe are a means to achieving justice or to right a perceived wrong.

The other half of my point is how badly the populace reacts. They are positively devoted and determined to finding something to blame and blaming it…condemning a whole nation for the actions of a few, terrorizing individuals out of a fear of their differences (judging them as immoral or unworthy) and grasping at rumours and conjecture, ignoring facts, embracing theories and photo-shopped or misleading pictures as ‘proof’, and making everything worse in the dash to blame, condemn, and judge. There is not enough tin-foil in the world to make hats for all of these people.

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It’s like blaming guns for homicides and murderous deeds. There are 89 guns per 100 people in the U.S. Millions upon millions upon millions of guns in a country of 315,000,000 people. Some estimates are far higher, claiming over 800,000,000 guns are in circulation in the United States, but the only provable number I could find is the former one. Gun related homicides are now less than 9000 people a year in the United States. Statistically, this is an almost insignificant number, yet the argument of whether people should have access to guns or not is fervently discussed by everyone…constantly citing the overwhelming amount of gun related deaths in the U.S as the reason to put the blame on these inanimate objects instead of those who pull the triggers. We are constantly reminded that guns kill more people quicker than any other weapon, ignoring the fact that drunk drivers (not drunk cars) kill as many if not more, cigarettes and alcohol related deaths are much higher, and, if you wanted to, you could take out a 100 people on a crowded street with an SUV in mere seconds, and already be in your getaway vehicle.

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If guns were the problem, as so many people seem to believe, then why aren’t there hundreds of thousands, or even millions of gun related deaths every year?  Guns, along with hammers, ice picks, knives, cars, sharp objects, rocks, and God knows what else are USED to kill people…but the guns, hammers, etc, do not act alone. They are wielded by humanity’s common and sworn enemy…Asshats and Headcases.

The biggest problem we have is understanding and recognizing the fears and insecurities of those who would cause harm to others, and their mind numbingly blind belief in their country, religion, and/or political views…and doing something about it. Education? More background checks and security precautions…no wait…we just tried to get better background checks on those wishing to purchase guns. Apparently there are Asshats and Headcases in Congress and the Senate as well as the amazing number of them on the streets…must be the same ones who can’t seem to differentiate between automatic assault weapons and a .22 caliber hand gun.

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Why is there no cure for cancer? What kind of a person (and for what reason) would build a fertilizer plant so close to a small town? I mean, everybody knows that fertilizer can be very explosive, right? And how on earth did someone (or someones), allow a faulty, seemingly insignificant piece of hardware called an O ring slip by numerous inspections and cause the Challenger disaster. And what about the unnecessary invasion of Iraq to remove weapons that didn’t exist? Terrorizing millions of people in the process and causing young people fighting for both sides and innocent citizens lives to be lost, with the only real result being to further sully the already teetering reputation of what was once the greatest nation on Earth.  At the root of every single one of these events are our dim and righteous enemies; the Asshats and the Headcases. We have learned nothing from the past.

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We are our own worst enemies. We rant and rave and demand justice, even when we’re not clear exactly what that justice would be. We rail against a perceived threat, a wrong doing, by leaving work, making a sign, and disrupting the lives of those who are simply going about their business or doing their jobs. We trust no one, we believe everything, and we share this immense body of detritus, conjecture, and supposition with everyone we can communicate with. See for yourself here.

We go off half-cocked, half baked, and wholly uninformed. We blame the acts of a few on entire nations, entire cultures, entire ethnicities. We do not join together to advocate change for the better by using our wallets and our votes…we cannot agree on anything. Even our music has abandoned us for the most part, and when a culture loses its voice and its poets, that culture is in trouble.

And when it comes to the Asshats and the Headcases that we DO catch and try to make pay for the evil they have done, they can still beat us, still walk away, free and unfettered; because we have Courts of LAW, not Courts of JUSTICE. And when the laws are more powerful than proof and justice, what hope do any of us have? Things need to change. People need to be accountable…and we must stop our rush to judgment, still our thirst for instant answers and solutions, and let the wheels of justice and truth turn unhampered.

These days more people than not, do not trust their governments or their police forces, or their media. Maybe there is some truth in all the rumours and assumptions, but to think a government, all security agencies and police forces, media outlets and witnesses who come forward, are all in some conspiracy together to hide whatever the truth is from the rest of us is near impossible. The cost alone would be prohibitive. The inability to keep information hidden far outweighs the theories…but they persist. The events of 9/11 didn’t just take down the twin towers in New York. It took down a nation’s confidence in itself and its leaders. With every single act of violence and terror, the erosion continues. We live in fear not because of the individual acts executed by those who would conspire to further their agendas through harmful means, but because the fear is spread constantly, every day, in the media, and worst of all, by us, on the social networks that connect us all. We are bombarded with warnings and predictions and so-called facts concerning everything from acts of terror to the food we eat and beyond. We are assaulted by negative energy and possibilities built on sand and fueled by hearsay. And in that, there is a ray of hope…because everybody knows the world we live in should be a better place to live. We need to focus our energy on the heart of the matter. We need to pay more attention to our world and our ability to have a voice in it. We need to learn from what has gone before

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Just remember that what ails us is simple. It isn’t guns and it isn’t religion. It isn’t Big Pharma or the Gov’mint or GMO. It is just two kinds of people we have to watch out for.

Asshats…and Headcases

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Ed. Note: An article about REAL conspiracies. Read this, especially the last one, and see what spreading rumours and misinformation can do to cloud the real issues. http://www.cracked.com/article_19884_6-insane-conspiracy-theories-that-actually-happened.html#ixzz2Rnwb4qHq

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Segarini’s regular column appears here every Friday

Contact us at dbawis@rogers.com

Bob “The Iceman” Segarini was in the bands The Family Tree, Roxy, The Wackers, The Dudes, and The Segarini Band and nominated for a Juno for production in 1978. He also hosted “Late Great Movies” on CITY TV, was a producer of Much Music, and an on-air personality on CHUM FM, Q107, SIRIUS Sat/Rad’s Iceberg 95, (now 85), and now publishes, edits, and writes for DBAWIS, continues to write music, make music, and record.