MOVIES | PSYCHOLOGY | POLITICS

How I Found Peace without a Glock

Right-wing radio made me feel like a tiny-dong character in the ‘Glass Onion.’ Then the Universe showed me a better way.

After watching Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery for the second time, I was reminded that Sigmund Freud never said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

But he did say the compulsion to own guns stems from an unconscious desire to compensate for a small penis. I call it Tiny Dong Syndrome.

You wouldn’t think a big dude like Dave Bautista as the film’s Duke Cody would need to strap a firearm between his legs while strutting around the pool wearing only a Speedo and tattoos. Nor would you expect him to whip it out and fire a round into the air for no reason. But that’s what he does.

Here’s why:

Duke’s muscle-man body and individually flexed pecs are not enough to compensate for his inadequacies. He pimps his girlfriend to their obscenely rich host in hopes of regaining his status as a social-media influencer — and the income that comes with it. That’s how inadequate he is. That’s why he needs that gun. That’s why he wears it between his legs.

“That is quite a piece,” says Daniel Craig’s character, the comically southern detective Benoit Blanc, while sipping his drink.

Craig is the most powerful man in the movie. But he keeps his pecs covered by a striped shirt in that same swimming pool. We’ve seen his chest already in the James Bond franchise. When you’ve got it, you don’t have to flaunt it.

Craig doesn’t need a gun.

And I like that. I was brought up to believe that those who live by the gun die by the gun. If someone slaps you in the face, you should turn the other cheek. Jesus, Buddha, and Lao Tse were the three men I admired most. But lately, I’ve been rethinking that.

When my family and I left the theater after seeing Glass Onion over Thanksgiving weekend, it took forever to exit the parking lot at Atlantic Station. Traffic was being rerouted because of a shooting that killed two teenagers outside the popular “live, work, and play” destination in downtown Atlanta.

But that incident didn’t convince me to buy a gun. It was conservative radio, which I’ve been listening to lately in order to understand why it’s such a compelling influence on nearly half the country.

What I’ve learned so far

is that these stations air gun commercials. Something I’ve never seen on mainstream media. You gotta have one of these things, they tell you. It’s a dangerous world. You have to protect your family. Also, it’s your right as an American citizen. And don’t let anyone ever tell you it’s not.

This kind of messaging takes hold if you hear it often enough. Eventually, you believe it.

Hashtag AR-15

Around that time, I ventured onto Twitter where #AR-15 was trending. Someone had posted surveillance video of four men trying to break into the home of a 72-year-old woman in a Texas border town.

The tweeters were saying she needed an AR-15 to defend herself. With 30 rounds in 30 seconds, the AR-15 would drop all four intruders faster than you could say, Title 42, Baby!

So yeah, I’d get a gun.

But with so many firearms to choose from, which one should I buy?Fortunately, one of the tweeters recommended the Glock 40 MOS. It weighs only 32 ounces instead of the AR-15’s 6.55 pounds. And the Glock’s 15 rounds is more than enough.

Also, it’s a six-inch handgun. You can strap it between your legs and whip it out from time to time. Like Duke in the Glass Onion.

By the way…

The movie is so much fun, you almost miss how deadly serious it is. Daniel Craig is the star, but it’s Janelle Monae’s movie. This is a film in which a Black woman has power most of the men lack.

It’s also a film that reveals how perception often lies. It’s a movie that says all the precious achievements of humanity will be lost if we don’t deal with our cowardly fear of inadequacy — and figure out how to save the planet. And it does all of this without hitting us over the head with the message.

There are two nods to Agatha Christie. The first is And Then There Were None, which strands several characters on an island. The second is The Mirror Cracked from Side to Side, which turns on a sleight-of-hand murder. That scene forces you to rethink the evidence of your own eyes, substituting a lie for the actual event.

“What is reality?”

screams a befuddled Kate Hudson, who gets some of the best one-liners of the film as the ditzy blond model Birdie Jay.

After listening to conservative radio, I wondered about reality, too. The talk-show hosts keep telling me the January 6th attack on the Capitol was not an insurrection but “legitimate political discourse.” They tell me crime is on the rise in Blue States because Democrats aren’t tough enough. But research consistently shows that Red States with weak gun laws have seen a much larger surge in gun crime.

When false statements get repeated with lots of emotion, does that make them true?

The thing is,

I was not immune to right-wing radio when it came to guns. I searched for places to buy a Glock 40 MOS. And found one on sale just before Christmas for only $729.

Fortunately, the store was closed, and I had to wait until the following morning. That night, I picked up a copy of Louise Hay’s Meditations to Heal Your Life, which I open at random from time to time. Here’s some of what it said:

I choose a peaceful way of life. Peace begins with me. If I want to live in a peaceful world, it is up to me to make sure I’m a peaceful person. No matter how others behave, I keep peace in my heart. I declare peace in the midst of chaos or madness. I surround all difficult situations with peace and love. I send thoughts of peace to all troubled parts of the world.

The message went to my heart.

But I don’t think Ukraine can defeat Russia by sending peaceful thoughts. There’s a difference between that terrible unprovoked war and what I hear on the radio. Instead of looking for ways to communicate, people with influence are telling us to be afraid.

Afraid of migrants and Blacks. Afraid of gays and lesbians. Afraid of books. Afraid of the IRS. Afraid of government itself.

Buy a gun to protect yourself, they tell us. It’s the only way to keep profits pouring in for gun makers who made hundreds of millions in 2022 alone. They racked up this fortune as more than three thousand people were shot in mass shootings this year, resulting in the death of at least 637 people.

Louise Hay’s meditation on peace felt like a gift from the Universe. It’s probably not enough to dissuade many who suffer from Tiny Dong Syndrome. But it was enough to shake me out of the fugue state that had me convinced I need a Glock.

It’s a nice piece alright. But not as nice as “Peace Piece” by Bill Evans, which I listened to after coming to my senses. Trust me: It’s a much saner way to begin a New Year.

Originally published at https://andrewjazprosehill.substack.com on December 30, 2022.