Should America keep its flag flying at half-mast until Congress passes saner gun laws?

Much has already been written and shown about the bloodshed at Orlando, the largest mass killing in American history - in a country that suffers a 'mass killing' (in which four or more people in one setting are killed by guns) EVERY DAY. I just want to add that it beggars belief that a man who: had been interviewed twice by the FBI; whose Taliban-supporting Afghani father posts protests against the American-backed Afghan government; a killer whose second wife left him after three months because she found him 'bi-polar, violent and abusive'; that such a man could walk into a gun shop the day before the massacre and - not being on any kind of Homeland Security 'watch list' - could LEGALLY buy an assault weapon and a hand gun. For all the wrong reasons the phrase 'only in America' comes to mind.

Surely this latest tragedy must bring the Republican congress and its bedfellows - gun manufacturers and the National Rifle Association (NRA) - to its senses? The majority of Americans favor stricter gun laws but the millions of dollars that 'special interest' lobbyists funnel to the Congressmen that whistle their wicked tune, seem more influential than President Obama and 'the will of the people.' And so 300 million guns continue to be harbored by a section of those 300+ million people. 

Some politicians, like that bigoted demagogue, the Trash-Talking Trump (why hasn't anyone labeled him with a pejorative nickname?) will blame these tragedies on radical Islam. That way, the orange orator skirts the fact that both the NRA, gun manufacturers and the KKK support him. And the fact that a recent FBI study showed that 94% of terrorist acts in the US are committed by non-Muslims. But let's leave Trump and his supporters festering in their collective folie a deux, 'a condition where a psychotic individual successfully transmits his delusional beliefs to a healthy and sane individual, albeit often someone of limited intelligence'.

I've just spent two weeks in England, visiting family. I found the media, if not the voters, gripped by 'Brexit' fever: should the UK opt out of the EU? Seems most of the Establishment - the Great and the Good (or Greedy, depending on your degree of cynicism) want to 'remain'; the EU, warts and all, is better than the unknowable future of 'Brexit.' That's also the view of my London-based family, including my cousins in the east midlands. But the two cab drivers I journeyed with want to 'leave' - 'cos it keeps out them immigrants!' In the latter conversations, I always keep in mind the sensible advice I saw some years ago in a London cab: 'Thank you for agreeing with me.'  

Boris Johnson, the Eton- and Oxford-educated Tory and former mayor of London, since replaced by Sadiq Khan (chill, Donald), is leader of the 'Leave' supporters. Boris, a pudgy, tousled-haired blond is said to be crushingly clever but many see his defection from the Cameron clique as sheer opportunism: he wants to be Prime Minister. Polls show the country almost equally divided on the topic - but the pollsters 'got it wrong' so badly in the last UK election that citizens - not all of whom will bother to vote on June 23rd -  are taking a bag of salt with the current psephology.

I flew home to the US on BA's Airbus 747-400, a Brobdingnagian plane that can take up to 345 passengers. At Heathrow I was lucky enough to be upgraded to premium economy class. I prefer this class (World Traveler Plus) to the more expensive Club class; in the latter, you have a fully reclining seat but have to sleep alongside a stranger, divided only by a glass screen. The Brit in me resists the notion of sleeping alongside someone to whom I haven't been introduced. A good seat in 'premium' is 35B, next to the galley, so there's no one behind to protest when you push the recline button to its limits. Only drawbacks: the chattering flight attendants; and the long walk I took through Economy class to the loos. Here, about two hundred slack-jawed travelers were seated in rows of 3x4x3. The poor peons ('there but for the grace of an upgrade...') looked like latter-day galley slaves. All that was missing was their oars.

Be safe out there.

June 2016

Brian Clewly Johnson

Amagansett, NY.