Jeff McFadden Profile picture
Mar 24, 2018 15 tweets 3 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
Here on #MarchForOurLives day I'd like to mention the forgotten victims, the ones who *don't* die. A brief thread.
2. We know the numbers of dead - well, most of us do. My memory is damaged, and the numbers escape me. But - 17 at #MSDStrong . So many at Pulse, so many at Las Vegas, so many here, so many there. The dead ones.
3. But little attention gets paid to those who are shot but live. "So many dead, so many wounded."
The wounded Never. Get. Well. Never.
They get better, but they don't get well.
4. If you don't believe me ask Gabby Giffords.
5. Gabby is nearly the only mass shooting wounded survivor whose name is widely known. She was shot through the brain. That she survived may be a miracle, but it's not unheard of.
6. James Brady, Ronny Ray-gun's press secretary, was shot through the brain too. He survived.
I propose that the forever wounded are as great a loss to society, their families, and themselves as the dead, and they need to be counted. Noticed. Discussed.
7. A friend of mine was shot in the wristwatch in Vietnam. The bullet carried fragments of itself and his watch into his arm, where it traveled up through the muscles and exited through his armpit.
8. They had to open his arm from the wrist to the pit to get most of the pieces out.
He's a tough guy. He said, "It ain't bad. It works OK."
OK, but - not right. Never right.
9. This was a war wound. For a guy who went through numerous firefights he didn't come out too bad. We had about an 80% "killed or wounded" ratio. 8 out of 10 of us brought home Purple Hearts. War seriously bad for the health.
10. Leaving aside philosophical discussions about the justification for war, I propose that going to school, to work, to a mall or a movie, is not supposed to carry the same risks as going to combat.
11. Steve Scalise may still be a swaggering tough guy who brags that his wounding is the Price of Freedom, but I will guarantee this: he will never outlive the pain. And he'll get damn tired of it.
12. But he, literally, asked for it. He is a member of a party that tells its base that they have the right to shoot at their government if it annoys them.
13. We talk about the 30,000 people a year who die in the endless hail of bullets, AND WE SHOULD.
But there are literally hundreds of thousands more whose lives are forever changed, worsened, by the same horrible government policy.
Hundreds.
Of.
Thousands.
14. They spend their lives in wheelchairs. They spend their lives in pain. Their sparkling intellects are stolen from them and they spend their lives struggling to form a sentence.
15. However bad the death toll is - and it's horrible - the total toll in human misery is thousands of times greater.
Even standing for the dead leaves out more victims than it honors.
This has got to stop. No more.
--jeff out.

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More from @JeffAndDonkeys

Oct 9, 2018
It makes me wonder:
You take a young guy like Don McGahn, working full blast in public to make the coup permanent -
Doesn't he understand that when his usefulness is over they'll kill him?
These guys all seem to think that the refined, permanent plutarchic states of America only really needs a few people to run it.
I mean: Putin's got his dozens of pet snakes, but he used to have hundreds.
Most of them fell out of windows.
Or had other tragic accidents.
Look at China. Look all over Africa. Eastern Europe.
It only takes a few dozen thugs to own a country. Everybody else is dispensable.
The people at the bottom, like as not, are too busy trying to keep a roof over their head to worry about the details of government.
Read 8 tweets
Oct 5, 2018
I have found the Kavanaugh theater program monumentally depressing.
Both sides. All of it. What it said. What it didn't say.
The bad faith, the gullible media, the
Whole
Fucking
Circus
pisses me off.
What pisses me off the worst is that it is so much built into our current system of economy, politics, and technology.
I can't express how depressing I have found the whole program. Discussion. Interaction. Whatever it was.
I believe the women. Every word.
But if putting all our energy into the sex scandal worked, he whose name would soil my thumbs would not be President.
I like righteous as well as the next guy but I'd like a few righteous wins.
He had worse weaknesses, by law and tradition.
Read 22 tweets
Oct 3, 2018
I'd suggest everybody stop, catch a breath, put Kavanaugh on the back burner, and think long term.
They wrote a plan in 1974 and have been executing it ever since. It started out all legal, selling a message and winning local elections, and the legal part worked.
--more
I've written about it extensively, but if you Google "Powell Memo" and read it, it's simple and it worked.
Before then there was no Heritage Foundation or anything like it. There was no Rush Limbaugh.
He invented them.
The objective, clearly stated, was to save "our way of life"
3. Defining unfettered, unregulated capitalism as our way of life.
His plan was simple:
👉Define a message
🕳️You know the Conservative™ party line: freedom, low taxes, limited government - actually it's a pack of lies, as I explain here (Quick read 350) nopackagedeals.com/2017/09/12/the…
Read 23 tweets
Oct 1, 2018
Leaving aside for a moment the natural sense of annoyance that goes with watching Grassley suck up farm aid from the government, think instead about the clip below.
A thread. washingtonpost.com/amphtml/busine…
2. 150,000 "farmers" produce about 90% of the nation's soybeans.
The same number applies to almost any agricultural commodity.
Oh, and they only call themselves farmers when there's a reporter around.
The rest of the time they're "producers."
3. The business they are in is "production agriculture."
Years ago - I don't know how many years, but many - there were about 300,000 "producers" in American agribusiness. Those 300,000 people produce virtually our entire agricultural commodity products.
Read 12 tweets
Sep 29, 2018
I spent today out piddling around on the farm.
I'm going to train Abe, the middle aged resident donkey, to pull a cart and light farm equipment.
Donkeys aren't like horses. Donkeys are the number one, still working, beast of burden and transportation in the world.
--more
2. Donkeys were the first beast of burden ever domesticated. Humans offered them a deal: pull and carry stuff for me, and I'll keep you safe, and feed and water you.
Work stock are no more abused than work humans are, and no less. Some get treated fair, and they're happy.
3. Abe is tame, he's just never been taught anything. We tie him up every six weeks and have a professional keep his feet trimmed and healthy. I failed to do that for him for a while, which is borderline animal abuse. G keeps track of it now.
So we go out, pet him, talk to him.
Read 7 tweets
Sep 25, 2018
You in the mood for some pond story, with pics?
Pics upload slow from here, so it's a slower paced story.
I've never shown you this pond before.
This is the "civilization" side of the property. As you can see. Neighbors. Houses. Roads.
This is "the home place" or "the farmstead." Our houses, buildings, chickens and gardens are here. This is the part G originally bought, buying the wild side later when the opportunity arose.
This side had its pond already.
Read 44 tweets

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