Simply Pathetic

Last Wednesday night on my local PBS station they broadcasted a show telling the history of the Black Panther movement back in the 1960's. Setting aside the reasons the group formed, Panther members eventually felt the need to arm themselves for protection from the cops and overly concerned citizens. The videos the program showed them carrying small carbine rifles, shotguns, and revolvers, all kiddie stuff in this day and age when movies, television shows, and gun manufacturing advertising literally say you're not a man unless you own an assault weapon and the required accessories for that extra bit of murderous bling.

The thing that almost had me laughing though were the videos of those police officials and overly concerned citizens—all white folks that were in a total nuclear hissy fit meltdown over what they considered were armed thugs, the Black Panthers, that were roaming the public streets. The general refrain those people all repeated was that we lived in a “civilized society” and that no one should be allowed to walk the streets carrying weapons like it was the Old West. This idea went as far as legislation in the California State Assembly to prohibit individuals or groups from carrying weapons in public. Even the conservative messiah Ronald Reagan, who at the time was governor of California, makes an appearance in those old videos supporting the legislation to making it illegal for American citizens to exercise their Second Amendment rights. The huge Catch-22 in that whole episode was the fact that the people openly carrying firearms in public places seeking to protect themselves were African-Americans.

While I grew up in South Carolina, I clearly remember the time when people viewed the open carry of weapons in public places by civilians like the local main street or inside business as a sign that someone was mentally deranged. In those strangely innocent and relatively calmer times—compared to the nightmarish crap we regularly have to deal with now, firearms just weren't that big a factor in the daily lives of most people. Weapons were just dangerous tools that a kid would get a serious ass whooping if they touched without a responsible adult standing right next them.

Before someone possibly loses their Second Amendment mind, I also grew up around all sorts of weapons from hunting rifles, shotguns, and revolvers. One of my few good memories of my father was him taking me out to the old Georgetown County landfill and shooting the piles of junk and a few unlucky rats that got in the way. Throwing more fuel on the fire, several years later I go and join the military and spend four years in the active army and after that a total of seventeen in the National Guard. Quite the difference when compared to countless armchair warriors who despite supporting the troops somehow never found their way to the local armed forces recruiting office.

Over those intervening years of my military service I shot so many different weapons so many damn times that going to the rifle range became long boring affair that I mostly slept through. In fact on the last occasion I went to the weapons range a few months before I finally retired, a young private thought I was insane because I didn't want my share of the ammo for the old and crappy M-60 machine gun we were shooting. So I'm not some liberal pansy that faints at the sight of a dainty .22 handgun designed for a suburban housewife. No, I'm a retired veteran who is an ardent liberal and feels most of the goddamn country has become engrossed in a psychotic delusion about the ownership of military-grade firearms.

It appears a massive chunk of the populace has come to believe their manhood, or womanhood, is founded on the ability to efficiently fire off dozens of rounds from their AR-15 or semiautomatic pistol, instead of basing their self worth a crazy thing like an education that just might expand their understanding of civilization, their fellow human beings, or the natural world. To justify this talent and the ownership of the weapons that make it possible, they engage in fevered nightmare scenarios from violent home invasions to nationwide mass insurrections, the one common element in them all being the skin color or ethnic heritage of the possible assailants.

Yes, home invasions do happen and the potential victim has every right to defend themselves. But contrary to what is commonly assumed in some circles, having a gun in the home is far more likely to be used in a crime directed at one of the people living there, either through accident, suicide, or assault. Some might be surprised to learn that I AM NOT saying civilians shouldn't be allowed to own firearms for hunting or basic home protection. I am saying that like automobiles such ownership should depend on a person's ability to be trained and then licensed. But here is where a lot of deluded people lose their paranoid minds.

Unlike the 1960's, the people showing off their personal arsenals in public places are paranoid middle class white people. Not only terrified of countless shadowy boogeymen out to take their stuff, they are utterly convinced that nefarious agents of the United States government are on the verge of declaring martial law with the expressed purpose of taking their weapons. That once the God-fearing folks are defenseless, federal stormtroopers will swoop in and force them into internment camps where they will be reeducated to become socialist-atheistic-Muslims working for Satan. The only problem with that absurd last statement is the fact that you wouldn't have to look very hard to find a group who believes something close to it.

This is where our stalwart leaders, and those seeking to become such, should step forward and diligently work to calm the outlandish fears spreading like a virus through the more suggestible segments of the American public. But no, proving that the purest form of democracy is a crazed mob many of our public leaders actually feel it is to their advantage to not only support this insanity but show that they are willing participants.

I've got to admit, that while I made the mistake of voting for George W. Bush in 2000 it was not long after that I developed a huge disdain for the entire family. The one exception to that rule was Jeb Bush, compared to his brother he seemed to be at least a semi-rational adult who appeared to be a capable governor of the state of Florida. While I would have never voted for Jeb for president in a hundred-million years as the republican presidential primaries started he at least seemed RELATIVELY saner as compared to Trump, Cruz, Carson, and the rest of that proto-fascist pack.

As the months went by, all I can say is at least he was consistent in his desire to pander to the worst and lowest aspects of his party's political base. It was all summed up nicely with his tweet of this photo showing his new semi-automatic pistol captioned with the word: “America.”

That one photo immediately struck me as the most craven act of political desperation and cowardice I had ever seen in my lifetime. I know the target audience for the picture was meant for the South Carolina Republican masses which quite frankly continue to prove the over a century old adage that while the Palmetto state is too small to be a republic it was way large to be an asylum, which it certainly meant in terms of population size.

Instead of being a true leader and tweeting a picture showing the best of the United States, like the beauty of our national parks, the space program, or any of thousands of other pictorial representations of American hopes and optimism he chooses something specifically designed to kill people. So it seems that as a nation we have lost almost all of what made being an American truly special when the one supposed sane person in the room full of psychopaths and idiots surrenders to them. I absolutely hate to write this, but it looks like George W. Bush is not only the smarter brother but a better human being than Jeb.