Have gun, will travel

Beginning Monday, you can start packing heat in our National Parks (with the exception of ranger stations and certain other governmental buildings). Yup. You can walk fully armed through the lobbies and restaurants of the massively timbered lodges. You can keep your finger on your trigger as you walk in and about the camping areas. You can carry guns on the trail. You can hike armed to the gills down into the Grand Canyon, and carry your AK-47 (presumably) to the top of Half Dome.

Not hunting rifles, I guess. You still can't hunt in National Parks -- we like to keep them natural. You can't shoot your guns recreationally. So what's the point? I guess they might be carried for "self-defense," despite the fact that our parks tend to attract peaceful, bird-watching, Sierra Club-types, along with the occasional French or German-speaking tourist.

Never mind. The NRA has spent "millions" to overturn the ban on guns in parks.

According to the Associated Press, gun owners have been rushing in "record numbers" to obtain concealed weapon permits. They suspect that Obama will find some way to get around their Congressional victory -- a rider attached to a credit card reform package that Obama signed into law -- and they want to make sure they have their gun permit in one hand and their Smith & Wesson in the other before that happens.

I know that I've promised from the outset that my blog will be devoted to critical analysis of the world about me. But I'm at a loss. How do you analyze madness, except to admit that you find no other explanation than madness -- paranoid madness -- for what you see?

Virtually everyone in my small circle of friends and acquaintances seems sane, rational, reasonably educated. They at times disagree with my political views or question my aesthetic judgments, but these are the kind of disagreements that it's a pleasure to discuss. But I apparently travel in very, very small circles. There's a significant portion of the American population -- I mean, there's a hell of a lot of them out there! -- who live in a mental universe utterly beyond my comprehension.

I throw up my hands. I consider avoiding rowdy groups or silent loners next time I venture into a National Park. I stare at my map of North America, again pondering the possibility of somehow detaching my Northwest Corner from the far, far scarier remaining 48 states of the Union.

I throw the occasional "eh?" into my speech patterns.