Arm the Hippies

I honestly believe that one of the biggest problems with the two party polarization of United States politics is the political polarization of weapon training and ownership. This does not come from a strong belief in the sanctity of the second amendment or that guns are evil or good in of themselves; instead I believe that, in a democratic society, linking ownership and knowledge of how to use weapons to one end of a political dichotomy is in of itself dangerous.

In a democratic society, the vote works because it is a simulation of who would win if we had a civil war over the given issue at that time. The political campaign and voting process measures manpower, funding streams, ability to organize, zeal, rhetoric, apathy, and many other determining factors that are also applicable in a civil war scenario. As long as this simulation model is accurate, the democratic process stops us having to physically fight to impose our will on the rest of the population. We measure with a vote who would win and the issue is decided with little to no actual bloodshed.

This all breaks down when the training to use, and ownership of, weapons is entirely on one side of the political spectrum. This makes the entire simulation invalid. It makes it so that if there ever was an issue that the armed party was ruled against in the voting process, and they felt strongly enough about it, it would no longer be in their interests to abide by the democratic results.

I don’t know what issue would be polarizing enough to lead to such an outbreak of violence, but if the polarization of weapon ownership and training continues as it seems to be going, it would most likely be a rather swift and one sided revolution. This is especially true with the fact that a large portion of the military and law enforcement personnel in the U.S. also feel pushed towards the gun-toting end of our political dichotomy. In a civil war scenario, which side is the side of serving your country and neighbors can become rather muddled.

I don’t know what issue would be so divisive that one side would be willing to use force on the other, but the historical evidence is overwhelming that one will come up eventually. Eventually, if we continue this way, there will be some issue that the party with guns feels strong enough about that a large portion of them will feel that it is worth a cost in human lives to see it done their way. When this happens, if the vote does not go their way and it is obvious that use of force will go their way, blood will spill. It will be a disaster. It also will have been entirely preventable.

Just as there are American conservatives that abhor weapons, it is important that we recognize that having armed liberals is important to keeping everyone safe and our system on course. Really, I feel much more comfortable with people who hate weapons and abhor violence owning and knowing how to use them than people who have a fascination and love of weaponry. I don’t see passing laws requiring all citizens having weapons training going through, or going over well even if passed; but I would argue for a need to encourage people, especially those who would never want to use a gun, to know how if it is ever needed.

Disarming the population would not be actionable or practical even if it were preferable. If one side of our political system is heavily armed, it is unsafe in the long term for the other side to remain unarmed. It creates the situation where violence does become an easy answer. Violence is much harder to leap to when your opponent may be able to defend themselves than when you have every reason to believe they are helpless.

In all fairness, it is true that having both sides armed will not stop a civil war. My argument just is that having only one side being armed makes it too tempting for the other side. It makes it tempting enough that over a long enough time scale it seems to me to be inevitable.

Arm the hippies to make it possible that they won’t have to fight.

Path of the Kraken Part 1

Richard Howard heard the dark whispers in his dreams for years. He lived his pitiful little life surrounded by pitiful people for years while the whispers spoke of power. For years he went to school like a good little sheep, not ever doing as well as he "should" but doing as well as he was able to bear. In his dreams though, he saw what he could be, and whispers told him how to become it. He had the will, he just needed to shape and hone it.

Willpower grows with practice and exercise just like anything else. Eventually he decided to try what the mad whispering in his dreams prompted. He would be a predator who feeds on predators, not a sheep shorn by the shepherds. His weapon wouldn't be his arm or anything it held. It wouldn't be his hands he would use to grasp for power; it would be his mind.

Richard sat behind his cash register after he dropped out of college for the third time, stooped under the burden of debt and failure. He owed the banks for what they had loaned him. He owed his family for their support. He owed his friends for all they had done for him. He owed the world for every opportunity he had been given and had failed. The pressure in his mind built from the weights of his debts, the weight of what he could never repay. Bearing their weight he became stronger. He did not collapse under it, he walked forward, and he kept failing no matter how much he wanted to succeed. He walked the path of self destructive madness already.

The first mastery of his will was over physical pain. He would poke and prod himself, stand in awkward yogic poses, stretch muscles, and tell his mind to disregard the pain. Pain is only information, he knew it hurt, the signal could stop being sent. He still felt the pain, and it still hurt, he learned to be it's master not the other way around. The day he mastered pain was the day a scar was ripped off of his skin and he poured salt, lemon, and hot sauce into the wound without wincing. This was the first and easiest step on the path of the Kraken.

The next victory was over desire. This is not the victory sought on the path of Buddhism where you seek a place of quiet peace with no desire. This was a victory of a roiling chaos of desires growing higher and higher and honing his will to deny them all. He did not quiet his mind of desires, he sought them, fixated on them, denied them, and then sought more to deny himself. He learned new desires, forbidden desires, impractical desires, and impossible desires. He would place himself by the subject of a desire; focusing on how much he wanted, how much he yearned, pined, and thought he would die without the subject of the desire. He was careful at first not to fixate on desires that denial of could cause him harm. He would fixate on luxuries and forbidden things at first. He fixated at first on what he should do without. Then he branched out.

His search for new desires to fixate upon was twofold. In one direction was self denial of things that verged closer to necessity. On the other hand, he nurtured desires that went further and further into the bizarre and forbidden. He noticed that his occasional satiation of necessary desires merely whetted his appetite for more, so occasionally he tried whetting his appetite for the forbidden and bizarre as well with mixed results. Some of the dark desires were disappointing when indulged. Others did not disappoint in the least.

Some of the darker desires soon eclipsed hunger and the need for warmth. His will grew stronger. He lived an even more pitiful life than he had before he began to walk the path, but his strength had grown so much beyond what he had before been. His desires grew stronger and more ephemeral by the day, but his will became stronger still.

Then came the day when he learned he could hear the desires of others and push them towards or away from them. He learned he could move his hair and flex his fingernails. His will was no longer limited in it's control of his nerves and muscles. He tried to bend his bones to disastrous result. If he had not mastered lesser pains, the pain of manipulating his own skull could have killed him. His skeleton was limiting him though, it needed to go. He focused on the furthest bone on the first finger of his right hand; and compelled it from his body slowly and painfully, as it left he whimpered. He repeated the process over and over until there were no longer any bones in his right hand. He grabbed a steel conduit on his wall and crushed it with his grip that now was subject only to his diamond will. He had not eaten in months, he had stopped needing that long ago. He willed the other bones from his body; every last one, one at a time. The skull was the trickiest.

He washed the blood off in the shower, and stood in front of the mirror, practicing pretending he had bones still. That was when he realized he had much greater weights against which to push his will than desire now. He had the raw physics of the world to push against. He no longer needed to fixate on these desires, he no longer had to deny himself. For a moment he laughed harder than he ever had, and wasn't sure when the realization of what not denying himself anymore would mean hit him, and the laugh turned into a scream.

Desire vs. Fear?

Desire and fear have an interesting relationship. At their core, desire is a drive in favor of something, while fear is a drive to avoid it. They both are a want, just in opposite directions. Also, chemically (and most emotions are chemical at their core) the substances released into one's bloodstream by sexual desire and fear are notably similar.

The hormones and such released into the bloodstream are even similar enough that they can build upon one another when alternated back and forth. This is part of why horror movies will often have a scene of sexual tension or sexualized displays before a scene of fear driven tension or graphic violence. The chemicals released by the viewer's body by the sexual arousal transitions easily into a state of fear arousal without the need for a separate build up of the emotional state. Many will make an even smoother transition by having foreshadowing of the horrors to come or flashes of the impending doom worked directly into the sexualised content itself.

Also, collectively we recognize this connection enough that horror movies, haunted houses, and other such attractions that are intended to terrify are rather popular dating choices, especially early on in a relationship or prospective relationship. We attend a slasher flick with one who we are considering as a potential mate and are placed physiologically in an ideal state to perceive them as attractive. Our hearts are racing, we're flushed, arousal hormones are pumping through our veins, and they are also flushed and out of breath. Exiting the theater, both persons' bodies are most of the way to hot-and-bothered already, and there they are, in one another's presence. The fear in the theater itself likely helped to override timidness at the idea of pressing close together and finding safety in personal contact with one another. Each person, going through this simulated trauma, likely felt protective and/or protected by the other. The fear and horror of this feature has now left them with the feeling, on some level, that they have gone through this experience and survived it together. Their bodies are primed and ready to go. They want to do something with that energy, and guess who is right there?

Even if such feelings aren't consummated that night, the desire will still be there and remembered. Any potential bond will have been likely enhanced by this adventure. (Also, the much less subconscious sexual tension provided by the previously mentioned overtly sexualised scenes will not have hurt the association of the other person with any sexual stirrings.) This is not to say such experiences are any kind of "foolproof seduction methods." They just greatly enhance the likelihood of a fledgling attraction being cemented in the minds involved.

There are other connections between fear and desire, especial if the desire is sexual. Almost everyone remembers their early recognition of their sexual impulses, and likely much later impulses as well, as being associated with fear. Everyone has wanted to go up to that hot someone across the room, and been afraid of knowing what to say. Anyone who has 'asked someone out' knows the gut gnawing fear of rejection. First dates, first kisses, and especially first times in the bedroom, are all full of fears of inadequacy and rejection.

Sexual attraction is terrifying. It has this great power over us, and even the most experienced persons who have devoted their lives to understanding it have only scratched the surface of all it's complexities. You have this want, but that want is a whole other person just as complex and intricate as you. You can simplify and objectify the subject of your desire as much as you want in your mind, but that will not change the fact that any such simplification is a lie. Every person you are attracted to is this whole other world. Trying to take your knowledge of others you have gotten to know, and extend those lessons to this new desired one, is as likely to confuse you further as help, because they are an entirely different and separate creature.

Men and women the world over complain about how mystifying the other gender is. If you listen to the complaints though, many of them are the same, just rephrased based on the gender of the mystifying person. Even listening to persons in a same sex relationship have many of the very same complaints as people in opposite gender relationships. The central point that most of these complaints come down to is that the subject of one's desire is a person with all of the mystifying complexity you have, and as such, can not be easily, if ever, understood.

Sexual attraction isn't simple like hunger. A pot roast is easy to understand. The pot roast isn't trying to understand you back. With sex, the person you are trying to enjoy is trying to find their own enjoyment as well, and you may not be able to fulfill what they are questing for. When you eat a pot roast, it doesn't matter if you are it's favorite kind of chewer. Your swallowing technique only matters insofar as it affects you. Sex is different. Your favorite flavor might not have you as their favorite. With food, if you don't get it, you just are hungry and feel deprived. With sex, you may feel horny, deprived, rejected, worthless, and unworthy when you go without. Also, if you go long enough without food, you eventually die of hunger. With sex, no matter how much you try and put yourself out there though, not only are you not guaranteed to ever succeed, but you can live indefinitely without it. Without food for long enough, you eventually die and are no longer hungry; in regards to sexual desire, you can potentially go all your years trying, and still be forever alone.

That is absolutely terrifying.

Then there is the love and relationships side of this. At least with sex you may find someone who just wants to use you for your body and you just want to use them for theirs. Appearance, performance, and availability are all that need be considered. Most people don't just want that, though. Sooner or later, they want to build a relationship. Sooner or later, most people want to find whatever they define as love. That is an even scarier desire than sex.

Sex has a limited number of axis that have to be considered at once. You can train and fake whatever with enough effort. Heck, with some money and a good surgeon, you can even remodel your body to fit a variety of tastes. A relationship, however, sooner or later, is about every part of you. A relationship is potentially dependent not just on your physicality, but also your intelligence, empathy, understanding, sense of humor, interests, smile, compassion, history, career, age, location, background, family, fertility, beliefs, work ethic, devotion, mental state, health, smell, taste, fashion sense, bank account, ethnic background, genetics, way with kids, dreams, soul, and the endless deluge of traits that make you who you are. It also is potentially dependent on all of those traits from the other person too. That is before one even figures for all of the varieties of circumstance and life situations that can get in the way of a relationship working. Even then, all of those endless stars being right, it can all come crashing down anyways if you or they make the wrong mistake.

Trying to start a relationship is pure fear. It is an exciting fear. It is a fear energized and pregnant with the possibility of what might be. However, it is a fear informed by the endless possibilities of how it might fail, and the full knowledge that the possible failure could end up being entirely your fault. Few things test the full battery of ways one can fear failure like a romantic relationship.

Then there is the fear of what problems the relationship might have that you might be willing or unwilling to push through. Would you stay if they put onions on everything? What if they like the wrong sports team? What if they like or dislike things you like or dislike? What if they are 'so bad' at your favorite game? What if they are better at it than you? What if they believe something you think is stupid? What if it turns out they already have a kid? What if they think what you believe is stupid? What if the sex stops being good or frequent? What if you catch them lying? What if you can't seem to stop lying to them? What if they cheat? What if you want to cheat? What if you can't agree with them what cheating is? What if they do/do not want kids? What if the two of you get pregnant? What if the two of you are not both the child's genetic parents? What if you or they are infertile? What if they hit you? What if you get angry one night and hit them?

Would you stay? Would they stay? What are you willing to stay through? What can you live with them putting up with because of you?

Sex is terrifying; relationships are terrifying; love is terrifying.

So many of us want them so much though. So many of us want to feel what sex, relationships, and love make us feel. So many of us would give anything to feel those ways.

Luckily, for most of us, somehow, fear is sexy.

The Second Knife Sister: Age of Ishtar part 6

Skye escorted Kris Montoya back to where her parents and sister stood watching and discussing. As he released her hand, he bowed and thanked her for the splendid dance. He then turned to Kukri, and with an additional slight bow, asked her, "Would you allow me the supreme honor of escorting you to the floor?"

Her eyes met his, and it took all of his strength not to melt into a puddle on the floor. She reached out to his offered hand, and Skye could swear he felt a warm glow where she touched. Struggling to keep his cool composure, he led her to the floor. Each step felt as though it was taking ages, that he was going too slowly, even though he knew he could not go any faster without his walk being describable as brisk. His nerves made him feel hyper aware, time was slowing down, noises were louder, images were sharper, and her warm hand in his was a fire blazing into an inferno. The breathing helped, but he could swear sweat droplets would be breaking out on his forehead soon. As they reached an open place to begin, he turned, looked back into the depthless pools that were her eyes, wrapped his arm around her waist, pulled her towards himself, and began to dance before he could lose his nerve and turn into a twitching mass on the ground.

Skye would not have believed two women who looked so similar could feel so different if he had not felt for himself. Both were amazing dancers. That could not be denied. Kris had been a willow branch, stiff but yielding wherever the wind blows her; never breaking, yet always returning to where she began. Kukri was water in his hands. Wherever he led she didn't follow, she flowed. She offered no resistance, she almost seemed to move before he directed her; but he wasn't certain if he could stop her if he tried. If he let go and walked away, he wasn't certain she would stop to see where he had gone. Her movement said she would continue the dance alone if she must. Perhaps she would flow to wherever he had gone. Perhaps she would continue until he returned. Dancing with Kris was to dance with a partner who complimented his movements. Dancing with Kukri was almost to become one with his partner. While there was little visible difference in their figures standing still, the feel of their backs as they moved was almost as if they were entirely different creatures. Kris was wiry muscle. Her body was a coiled spring like Skye’s own. Kukri was softer, her subtle curves more passively flowing. She did not lack her sister’s strength; it was just dormant and relaxed.

They danced faster and more complex maneuvers. They flowed through movements he never would have thought possible to guide his partner through with one hand. She read from his body sequences he never would have normally tried with a woman he had not practiced intimately with even with the use of both hands. They didn't talk, at least not with words. There was no need. In the spinning, twirling, entwining, and leaping they communicated in ways that verbal language cannot capture. Other couples stopped dancing. They just stood back and watched, slowly forming a larger and larger open floor in which Skye and Kukri could freely sing their kinesthetic duet. Skye lost track of how long they danced. He thought the song had changed a few times, but there was nothing real in his mind except his wondrous partner.

How long didn't matter to him though, what mattered was that as one they reached a crescendo of movement and stopped, clutching one another in a panting embrace. After a few moments of applause from those around Kukri pulled back her face from where it was buried in his chest against his sling and gazed up into his eyes. The soft brown pools had shed tears that now dripped down her face. She reached up, gripped the hair at the nape of his neck, pulled his head down, stole a sudden sweet kiss, and ran away.

Kukri did not walk away, she did not just briskly leave the dance floor, she ran as if there was some kind of creature chasing her and she dared not look back lest it catch her. Needless to say, Skye was confused. Just a moment ago they had been moving as one. He had been certain that in those moments had known her better than he had ever known anyone in his life. At this moment, he didn't have any clue whatsoever as to what had just happened. Maybe men really were as stupid as they were made out to be, or maybe women were just crazy, but Skye felt he had as much chance of understanding this most recent event of his life as he had of defeating an entire nest of silver scale drakes alone and unarmed.

Couples filled the dance floor back in, and a few men gave Skye hearty pats on the back as he stood there dumbfounded. In a daze he looked for a familiar face, someone to cement him in what was real. Up on a balcony he saw his sister Evangeline conversing with a small crowd of women, and despite her earlier protestations he did notice a champagne flute in her hand. Oh well, she had more than earned a drink tonight. Quite frankly, if she wanted to start a scandal with someone else’s manpet, she had earned that too as far as Skye was concerned. Right now he wasn't sure whether that would be a bad thing. It might even distract his attention from the girl who had addled his brain. His sister’s drunken indiscretions were at least a problem he could understand.

He trod up the stairs, hardly looking where he was going, politely bowing and excusing himself automatically as he moved through the crowd. Soon he had reached his sisters perch, her back now to the railing she leaned against as she regaled those around her with some story or another Skye wasn't certain he would recognize even if he paid attention, although his name was occasionally mentioned in it. When she reached the end and looked around to see how many had properly appreciated her witty retelling she saw Skye and exclaimed with delight, "Here is my blessed baby brother now! You did wonderfully as ever down there. As I was just telling these Ladies, you are blessed kinesthetically to a point of being a credit to your gender. With the softness of mind and harshness of temperament God cursed your kind with for the original sin of the slaying Abel, she was merciful enough to give you something to make you all still worthy of the spark of life. This boy is certainly worth keeping around Ladies. Remember also, a man dancing exquisitely doesn't just indicate he will do well in the arena, it also indicates skills in other more private venues." She winked at her audience and nodded to emphasize the little insinuation she had made.

It seemed no one thought the display after the dancing stopped worthy of comment. Maybe they couldn't see what had happened from this angle. Maybe with the exertion of dancing he had imagined it. Skye remembered the soft insistent press of her lips against his. He couldn't have imagined that, could he? Either way, Evangeline quickly moved into introducing the gathered women to Skye. Most of them were representatives of some small local stable or another. One was an individual who wanted to purchase a man with a fighting pedigree for her own personal use. Three were investors who were there to make sure the stables they were backing made good decisions. Skye wondered if any of them were among the investors for the Grigori stable. Then there were the representatives from two competing intercontenintal mega stables; Horde and Legion. 

Both mega stables had facilities in most major cities around Ishtar. Their gladiators won few major titles, their business philosophies tended towards the idea that maximum profit could be made by buying as many cheap gladiators as they could and planning for mediocre results. Once in a while they would try buying a highly appraised fighter in the hopes of building renown for the entire stable, but not often.  Some said that when they bid on more prestigious gladiators it was just to drive prices up for the other stables so the little ones could afford to bid on fewer of the other men. Even if a mega stable accidentally purchased an expensive one, it didn't cut that far into their budget; and if the guy did well, they still came out ahead.

Mega stables were not buyers he wanted interested in him. Mega stables were where low class gladiators spent their lives and has-beens went from the day they were forgotten until the day they died. The best case scenario when bought by a mega stable is to be resold to an individual as a private manpet. That wasn't a bad life, but it wasn't what he had in mind. There was no good way to "accidentally" alienate the mega stable representatives without possibly driving off the other buyers and investors gathered around, though. The other stables represented might be rather good. As far as the one stable he had allowed his hopes to rise about; one daughter seemed indifferent to him and the other seemed neurotic. Kukri was beautiful, graceful, sensuous, brilliant, and possibly his soul mate if such a thing existed; but seemed most definitely neurotic. Hopefully the mega stable representatives were just enjoying his sister’s stories and had no interest in bidding on him. The gleam in their eyes when they looked at him; however, gave him definite doubts that they were there for his sister’s company, and made him quite aware of the alcohol Evangeline was now on her second glass of since he arrived on the balcony. "How many glasses did she have before I returned?" He wondered to his own dark thoughts.

Too many of his paranoid fantasies from before the ball were coming to life. He had made a fool of himself on the dance floor whether anyone else had noticed or not. His sister was well on her way to sauced. The mega stable buzzards, while not obese, were definitely formidable women, and they were circling. Soon his cosmetics would be tasted and from there his life would end. One of the matriarchs was responding to Evangeline's comments about how much value is added by his certificate of virginity with a "joke" about how lucky it was that there was so little time for him to lose it "accidentally" before the auction. How did that provide a segue into the "face diaper incident" story? "That's the predestined path that my life needs to follow in order to ensure my total destruction," He thought, "That's how."