A Regretful President

During the midterm elections recently past, President Trump befriended a former political enemy whose father Trump accused of killing John F. Kennedy and whose wife Trump once made offensive, disparaging remarks. Politics breeds strange bedfellows. 

Trump, desperate for the Republicans to keep control of the Congress and advance his agenda, was in Texas stumping for GOP Sen. Ted Cruz, himself feeling desperate. He narrowly defeated Democrat Beto O’Rourke in a race he should have won easily.

            Smiling and praising his new friend, who he called “Texas Ted” to a gaggle of reporters, Trump was asked whether he regretted his claim during the 2016 election about Cruz’s father killing Kennedy. Trump waved the question off: “I never have any regrets.”

            Trump is not a man to have regrets, but this is something that even some of those who ardently oppose him doubt. Everyone has regrets. Why would Trump not have any regrets? Yet, we should believe him. When Trump speaks, for anyone who listens, he reveals himself. 

            A friend and an astute observer of people who is appalled by Trump asked me recently how the president, at age 71, could have learned so few life lessons at his age. That’s a question I’ve heard many people ask, as if Trump missed class those days life lessons were taught.

            Truth is, Trump did learn the lessons humanity lives by and cherishes – honesty, integrity, fairness, empathy, sacrifice, generosity, selflessness, kindness and sympathy. But Trump could not see how virtue would get him ahead in life, how it would make him wealthy beyond measure, how it would earn his father’s approval. 

            So, he chose dishonesty, deceit, deception, cruelty, hate, unfairness and pain to make his way in the world. Democracy doesn’t work for him because it doesn’t give him unfettered political power to reward his loyalists and punish his opponents, to rule with an iron fist in order to smash any obstacles or constituencies he perceives as threatening his wealth and power.

            Trump is the man in the high tower. He’s unreachable through interaction because that requires meeting someone at a common level; he’s transactional – what can someone do for him; what can he get from someone at minimal cost to him. Trump is just about power and money, as much power and as much money as he can get.

            The anger Trump’s opponents feel is born from frustration that an individual could deny empathetic traits such as regret. In life’s interactions, people expect honest, integrity, empathy, selflessness and fairness. However, Trump is a blank screen. He reserves those character traits for the transaction to ensure he gets what he wants.

In October, when CBS reporter Lesley Stahl in a “60 Minutes” interview asked Trump whether he had any regrets looking back at his first two years in office, Trump said, “I regret that the press treats me so badly.” A few weeks later, Trump shared what Sinclair Broadcasting characterized as a regret: "I would like to have a much softer tone. I feel to a certain extent I have no choice, but maybe I do," 

            As former New York Times editor and longtime journalist Howell Raines recently said of Trump, “To have regrets in life or in politics means you have principles.” 

The Senate Judicial Confirmation Process Works; It’s Some of the Nominees that Don’t

This headline and subhead to Brett Kavanaugh’s op-ed appeared in the Wall Street Journal on the eve of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s vote to move his U.S. Supreme Court nomination to a Senate confirmation vote. They say much about the man:

“I am an Independent, Impartial Judge: Yes, I was emotional last Thursday. I hope everyone can understand I was there as a son, husband and dad.”

Yet, he wasn’t there in those roles nor in his role as nominee. He was there as victim of a process that in his view was out to get him. 

He honed this point in this paragraph about his partial, anger-filled testimony that followed that of the woman who accused him of sexual assault when they were teenagers, Christine Blasey Ford: 

“I was very emotional last Thursday, more so than I have ever been. I might have been too emotional at times. I know that my tone was sharp, and I said a few things I should not have said. I hope everyone can understand that I was there as a son, husband and dad. I testified with five people foremost in my mind: my mom, my dad, my wife, and most of all my daughters.”

During his testimony, Kavanaugh lashed out at the process, made baseless accusations against Democrats as to the reason Ford stepped forward with her story, and dismissed the confirmation process as essentially broken: 

“This is a circus. The consequences will extend long past my nomination. The consequences will be with us for decades. This grotesque and coordinated character assassination will dissuade competent and good people of all political persuasions, from serving our country.”

He’s right, the consequences will be with us, and not just for decades.

They will be with us because the process worked, despite Kavanuagh’s emotional ouburst or Sen. Lindsey Graham’s rant in which he joined the nominee in blaming Democrats – “You’re looking for a fair process?” Graham said to Kavanaugh. “You came to the wrong town at the wrong time, my friend.” 

The process was fair, as fair as it has always been and always will be in the politically charged environment under which it’s conducted. Plenty of “good people” from all political persuasions have not been dissuaded in the past, and they won’t in the future. 

It’s not the process that’s broken, it’s the people in the process that are broken. Kavanaugh is a flawed nominee. As his outburst revealed, he’s not the best person to sit on the nation’s highest court. While partisans are fine with justices who evaluate the law solely through their particular partisan prism, most Americans are not.

The process, as difficult and perhaps distasteful as it may seem, revealed Kavanaugh as someone who is neither an independent nor impartial jurist, regardless of his insistence. Through his emotional testimony, and at times inappropriate behavior toward the senators, this 53-year-old man showed he could not handle a job interview for a lifetime appointment.

More importantly, the hearing process revealed a person born, raised and living in the ranks of privilege – white man privilege – where boys are not questioned about their actions nor required as men to accept responsibility for their actions, past or present. Instead, they are encouraged to pursue their dreams; dreams that lead some of them to position of power in this country.

The process also revealed Kavanaugh’s lack of maturity as well as his abiding sense of privilege.

His emotional outburst sounded not like a man defending his good name and his family, but like a man angry that he would have to submit to questions about past behaviors that he didn’t think relevant. He should have known as someone who has long been immersed in Washington politics that it didn’t matter what he thought was relevant, what mattered was what the senators, who represent the voters, thought was relevant. This alone raises questions about his jurisprudence.

If Kavanaugh was honest with himself – and he demonstrates that he lacks that capacity – he would have readied himself for the accusations levied against him and prepared an appropriate response that could have shown his empathy, his temperament and his humanity. We all makes mistakes, at any age. 

Instead, he wanted everyone to focus on his performance on the appellate bench, but the hearing process is not just to determine a nominee’s ability to write a legal opinion – computer programs can do that, if we let them – but also the humanity that goes into the thinking and analysis when deciding how to rule on an issue that affects people.

Christine Blasey Ford sounded more than just believable, she sounded credible because she came forward out of her “civic duty.” Kavanaugh could not understand her humanity or the desire of at least half the committee to understand his humanity. Instead, he became “emotional” because something he felt was owed him seemed to be slipping away. 

The American people don’t want a self-centered justice to get a lifetime appointment on the court; they want someone with experience, maturity and humanity.  

The Triumph of Trumpism: He's on Our Minds. Every Day.

In 2002, Mark Bowden, journalist and the author of “Black Hawk Down,” wrote this passage in the May issue of The Atlantic: “The sheer scale of the tyrant's deeds mocks psychoanalysis. What begins with ego and ambition becomes a political movement. [He] embodies first the party and then the nation.”

The three sentences, published in the roiling wake of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, were part of a large piece, “Tales of the Tyrant,” about Saddam Hussein, whose country, Iraq, the United States invaded in March 2003 to oust the tyrant from power.

After nearly 24 years. Hussein achieved absolute control over the country, not just politically, but culturally; he insinuated himself into the daily lives of Iraqis. They thought about him, talked about him, and feared him. Every day.

As president of the United States, Donald Trump has accomplished this feat, thanks to the technology of mass communication, his bullying personality, his demagoguery, and a Republican Party willing to accept the disembowelment of our democratic institutions and presidential actions and declarations that challenge our Constitutional rights and principles and undermines American democracy’s foundation. 

Is Trump like Saddam Hussein? They share the same authoritarian tendencies that are abetted by the political party in power. For Saddam, it was the Baathist Party, who tolerated and abetted their autocratic leader’s behaviors for their own quest for power and wealth. Confident they could control him, they lost control, and Saddam led their country to near destruction. 

We witness the same with the Republican Party. They chose to abet his behavior once they realized they could not control Trump who enjoys overwhelming support among Republican voters. The GOP is Machiavellian because Trump fulfills their agenda. He redistributes the wealth with a massive tax cut to ensure the wealthy are wealthier and the poor are poorer; hollows out government with that same tax cut so services for helping people in need are no longer available; and marches GOP conservatives to absolute control over the American judiciary to ensure their agenda is upheld for a generation. 

An iron-clad conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme, with the confirmation of nominee Brett Kavanaugh, could be the GOP’s crowning achievement. For Republicans, the ends have justified the means. Trumpism has triumphed, but not because the GOP achieved its agenda. 

From his Tweets to his rousing political rallies, Trump’s demagoguery is masterful. He finds something to announce or do every day that is inappropriate to most people. He threatens to use the awesome power of the presidency to punish enemies. He is outlandish for the sake of outlandishness. He lies with the bravado of a strongman. He admires strongmen not because he aspires to be one of them, but because he is one of them; he never apologizes, never cares. 

Trump has accomplished what authoritarian figures like Saddam Hussein accomplished. He has Americans thinking about him, talking about him, and worrying (if not fearing) him. Every day.  

Where Does the Catholic Church Go from Here?

The grand jury report on Pennsylvania Catholic clergy stuns us not just for the excruciating details of sexual and physical abuse against more than 1,000 children by 300 priests over seven decades, but for a greater significance it holds. This is the beginning of the end of the Catholic Church.

The report signals that sexual abuse by clergy occurred, and occurs still, everywhere in the world; and church leaders, from the Vatican to the parish house, knew and have always known. How could they have not known?

“We believe that the real number – of children whose records were lost, or who were afraid ever to come forward – is in the thousands,” the grand jury states in the report’s introduction. “As a consequence of the coverup, almost every instance of abuse we found is too old to be prosecuted. But that is not to say there are no more predators. This grand jury has issued presentments against a priest in the Greensburg diocese and a priest in the Erie Diocese, who has been sexually assaulting children within the last decade. We learned of these abusers directly from their dioceses – which we hope is a sign that the [C]hurch is finally changing its ways.”

This is a crushing reality for the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics not blinded by the unquestioning obedience that allowed the Church to control the faithful for centuries. Catholics are torn about a faith most were born into, live and love. The allegations, the accusations and, in very few cases, convictions, have divided the Church. 

Vatican City in 2017

Some conservative Catholics are unable to accept that once trusted men with immense power over their ordinary parishioners chose to abuse that power. They seek comfort in the belief that the devil is at work, but evil is solely the work of men, and in this case, the men of the Church. 

Some moderate and liberal Catholics are in search of ways to correct the abject failures of the institution; some have decided to simply leave the Church, their sense of community shattered. 

The years of sexual abuse, and the victims’ accompanying emotional and mental anguish, have taken their toll. The years of Church leader denials that followed nearly every accusation; the years of cover-up, of moving abusing priests from one parish to another, letting them damage lives from one parish to another; the years of quietly paying off victims for their silence using hard-earned money dropped in the Sunday collections plates by unwitting parishioners. The years of struggle for victims tortured by guilt and shame, unable to reconcile their faith and their abuser. The years, the years … 

The latest revelations in the grand jury report come after years of revelations from Boston to Ireland to Chile and so many, many more dioceses. The revelations have exposed the corrosive acid that long ago seeped into the Catholic Church’s now crumbling pillars. The Catholic Church today is in the throes of death, corrupted thoroughly. I do not speak carelessly here. As a lifelong Catholic, I’ve watched for nearly 40 years the degradation of the Church that began many decades, if not centuries, earlier. The Church became too powerful; Church leaders deluded in the belief that the Church, and thus they, are infallible – they can do anything, God willing, and, indeed, when it came to children, anything is what they did, claiming God’s will, no matter who it hurt. 

Since the release of the grand jury report, more abusive priests have surfaced; more victims have come forward; more states have started their own grand jury investigations into clerical sexual abuse, which means more horrors to come. Despite the grand jurors’ optimism, “that the Church is finally changing its ways,” the Church, with its wealth and power, is not changing. 

Yet, despite that wealth and power, the Church, as it is currently organized, cannot withstand what is coming. A sign of the future is what occurred last week in deeply Catholic Ireland, where not too long ago the Church ruled with an iron fist. A mass protest greeted Pope Francis’ visit, where he apologized and asked forgiveness for the horrific years of sexual and physical abuse by clergy. Many were unconvinced. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Ireland’s protests, and its recent landslide vote to legalize abortion, means the Church’s grip is no more.

The same has long been occurring in the United States. The archdioceses in Boston,Philadelphia,Pittsburgh,New York, Chicago,Washington D.C., Los Angeles and elsewhere are closing parishes and schools because the faithful no longer trust them, no longer believe the dogma and doctrine behind which individual priests, the leadership, and the institution abused children, abetted the abusers, and covered it up – evil in the name of God.  

Turmoil now reigns in the Church. The Church’s princes are turning on each other, driven by ideology and opportunity instead of Christ-like spirituality. Rather than address the problem of clerical sexual abuse, they exploit the problem in a struggle for political power. Conservative Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano accused liberal Pope Francis and senior Church officials of knowing about the abuse and the cover up. 

In pure political terms, this is an opportunity to remove an opponent. If Pope Francis knew of the abuse – again, how could he not? – then Archbishop Vigano did, too. There’s just no question. 

Can the Catholic Church survive? Yes, with fundamental reforms. While priests should marry and women should serve as priests, the real reform requires the Church to relinquish control; to re-examine Church dogma and doctrine, particularly infallibility, sin and the sacrament of matrimony; and to accept and embrace the faithful long shunned – those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual and transgender.  

To be relative in the 21^stcentury, the Church should drop its 16^thcentury thinking; minister to the faithful’s spirituality rather than to their sexuality. The Church was never in a position to lecture anyone about sex. Unless it changes, the Church will not survive before century ends. 

Resorting to the Tyranny of the Minority

From the June 16, 2018 Tweet of U.S. President Donald Trump:

“My supporters are the smartest, strongest, most hard working and most loyal that we have seen in our countries [sic] history. It is a beautiful thing to watch as we win elections and gather support from all over the country. As we get stronger, so does our country. Best numbers ever!”

Not, “my fellow Americans” or “Americans,” as other presidents have referred to the nation of people they serve, but “my supporters.” 

Stunning, but not surprising from a man who is comfortable with authoritarian impulses and uncomfortable with the democratic principle that no one, not even the president or the makers of laws, is above the law. 

As one of American democracy’s Founding Fathers, James Madison, explained in article 51 of the Federalist Papers: 

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

What makes Trump’s remark telling is that, a year-and-a-half into his presidency, having failed to get a majority of Americans to support his agenda, he is trying to use the tyranny of the minority to assume greater powers.

Trump uses them as a bulwark; to try and stop federal investigations into allegations that his 2016 campaign colluded with the Russians to get an electoral advantage over Democrat Hilary Clinton; state and federal investigations into his questionable New York charity and his international business dealings; his alleged violations of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause (an anti-bribery rule against foreign power influence); the allegations against him for sexual assault; the lawsuits for defamation and for violation of federal campaign finance laws to pay an adult film star money to hush about a liaison. 

American suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton said in 1860: “To make laws that man cannot and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt. It is very important in a republic, that the people should respect the laws, for if we throw them to the winds, what becomes of civil government?”

Trump’s devoted supporters, and the Republican leaders who control Congress and who once thought they could control Trump but now fear him, prove helpful in his endeavours to stymie the ongoing investigations of the Justice Department’s Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller. They provide a wall of white noise to defend theirpresident and in the process, endorse the erosion of civil government and national unity.

National Republican Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel recently Tweeted what sounded like an authoritarian’s threat: “Complacency is our enemy. Anyone that does not embrace the @realDonaldTrumpagenda of making America great again will be making a mistake.”

GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, a lawyer who understands criminal and civil investigations are not started or finished at behest of politicians, told the Washington Examiner last week, “What I think about the Mueller investigation is, they ought to wrap it up. It’s gone on seemingly forever and I don’t know how much more they think they can find out.”

As president, Trump possesses immense powers. He made McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, head of the U.S. Department of Transportation. Is it reasonable to assume McConnell has an ulterior motive to making such comments? 

McConnell and McDaniel (niece of Mitt Romney who is running for U.S. Senate in Utah and wants Trump’s help to win) are just two in a Republican Party that erstwhile or expatriate Republicans now consider the “Trump Party”. 

Trump accurately assessed the undying loyalty in the core of his supporters during a campaign rally in 2016: “I could stand in the middle of 5^thAvenue and shoot somebody and wouldn’t lose any votes, ok? It’s like incredible.” 

He’s used their loyalty to effectively diminish the government’s investigations into the allegations against him. An Economist/YouGov survey in early May showed 61 percent of Republicans believe Trump’s claim that Mueller’s investigation is a “witch hunt.”

Trump likes to characterize his base as "the forgotten." They are not. They are angry and afraid of the demographic changes, technological advances, and economic challenges transforming society today. They embrace Trump because he promises to reverse all that, to “make America great again.” 

Perhaps they are better characterized as “the unprepared”; they failed, for whatever reason, good or bad, to prepare themselves for the 21^stcentury. What they, and the nation, need is a leader, and leaders, with policies that guide them through the transformations.  

The president’s appeal to only his “supporters” who join him to tear down the Mueller investigation is dangerous to a democracy where the rule of law is paramount to a just and free society. 

As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote in 1947: “There can be no free society without law administered through an independent judiciary. If one man can be allowed to determine for himself what is law, every man can. That means first chaos, then tyranny.”

Ironically, the nation’s founders worried the “tyranny of the majority” would elect a demagogue who would harm the minority. They never figured on what happened in the 2016 election. Now it looks like the 2018 mid-term elections could either break or save American democracy. 

The Sacred Instrument of Democracy

For years, the National Rifle Association and its leader Wayne LaPierre masterfully convinced NRA members, much of the public, Congress and enough U.S. Supreme Court justices that any regulations regarding guns violated the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution.

Today, some school children will tell you that the most important amendment in the Constitution is the 2^ndamendment. That’s quite an accomplishment, and it’s the result of the NRA’s decades-long strategy to put a stranglehold on debate, deliberation and discussion about gun violence. 

To ensure cold hard facts never interfere with their argument about guns, the 2^ndAmendment and their cherished “cold, dead hands” slogan, the NRA and its supporters in Congress and the White House adopted a law to stifle questions. They blocked the Center for Disease Control and Prevention from researching the gun violence that has long plagued this nation. 

Gun violence in America today, whether from semi-automatic weapons or handguns, is a testament to the NRA’s achievement in ensuring anyone at any time can have almost any gun they choose. According to various sources, there’s at least one gun for each of the country’s 317 million men, women and children, more than a quarter-billion guns. 

With that many guns and easy access to them, is it really that difficult to understand why mass shootings occur monthly, if not weekly, in this country? Why gun violence is a leading cause of death in the United States today. http://www.businessinsider.com/mass-shooting-gun-statistics-2018-2

Is it really that difficult to understand the anger and determination of the high school students in Parkland, Fla., who grew up with gun violence in schools only to then experience gun violence as they were about to embark on their life’s journeys?  

Is it really that difficult to understand the anger in a majority of voters when a gunman with a semi-automatic weapon murders 20 six- and seven-year old students only to have Congress refuse to do anything but offer the meaningless phrase of “thoughts and prayers”?

The NRA knows what the answers to these questions mean for their organization – a loss of power and money. This is what the gun control argument is all about – power and money. The NRA stands to lose much. So, they block CDC research and attack high school students. 

The NRA’s ruse is that guns are enshrined in the 2^ndAmendment, which never mentions the word “gun.” In fact, nowhere in the Constitution is the word gun found. Most constitutional scholars and jurists have long argued that “right of the people to keep and bear arms” refers to state militias. Arms could mean anything, not just guns.

In fact, guns hold no more special place in the Constitution than a box of cereal or any other product that we, as Americans, have a right to produce, and that the government – the one that’s by the people and for the people – has a right to regulate to ensure safety and security. Yet, the NRA venerate guns as a sort of sacred instrument of freedom and democracy.  

The Parkland high school students leading the March for Our Lives movement want to see a well-regulated gun industry, they want schools, and society at large, safe from gun violence. They don’t want to see guns abolished, just high-magazines, semi-automatics and any device that can turn a gun into an automatic that gives a single individual the power to kill multitudes.

The nation may well decide to abolish guns, if the NRA continues to attack these students and anyone who questions the status quo of guns. Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens recently called for repeal of the 2^ndAmendment, moved, as he said, by the 800 gun-control reform marches nationwide that March for Our Lives organized. 

Stevens’ reasoning is similar to that used by late Justice Anton Scalia in District of Columbia v. Heller, which ruled individuals have a right to own a gun for protection. ”Whatever the reason, handguns are the most popular weapon chosen by Americans for self-defense in the home, and a complete prohibition of their use is invalid,” Scalia wrote.

The NRA, worried over how the court would rule in that 2008 decision, happily ran with this precedent to oppose handgun bans in beleaguered cities wherever they were proposed. Yet, Scalia’s argument, like Stevens’, is based more on popular opinion rather than intrinsic law. 

Now, after the slaughter of 17 students at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School by a young man wielding a semi-automatic weapon, popular opinion is for strict gun controls that include a ban on such weapons.

The NRA’s old 2^ndAmendment arguments are falling on deaf ears, even among some – perhaps many – gun owners. By ensuring the nation is flooded with guns, the NRA proved wrong their argument that more guns mean more safety. 

The Parkland students just want to reduce gun violence for a safer, “more perfect Union,” as the Constitution states. They have shown the American public that your voice – not your gun – is the sacred instrument of democracy.  

Victims of Gun Violence

Like a battlefield, their corpses are strewn across the landscape, in elementary and high school classrooms, in nightclubs, at concert events, in workplaces, in churches, in restaurants, in homes – victims of gun violence, testimony that America is no longer safe because the nation is awash in guns that seemingly anyone can get and the government refuses to address the issue.

The riddled bodies of children and adults are not the only victims of gun violence. The men and women who kill with guns are also victims. They are permitted to buy as many as they need with as much ammo as they need without anyone questioning them. The gun sellers won’t question them; the law won’t question them until they commit a crime with a gun. No matter what the crime, the gun is the go-to tool of choice.

The law-abiding gun owners are victims, too. Many of them believe the falsehoods about the intent of the Second Amendment or the lie that liberals want to take away their guns. They just want to enjoy the peaceful purpose of hunting, target practice and collecting, but they are caught in the crossfire. They see the carnage, but can’t listen without anger to an explanation of what meaningful gun-control means. They believe that always carrying a gun will protect them. Yet, most people live an entire life without ever needing a gun for protection.

Every American is a victim because politics and special interests have set the nation on a course of more guns and more deaths. Presidents and Congress, governors and state legislators refuse to consider meaningful gun control because to do nothing is safer for them politically. They have forgotten their role in a democracy where majority rules, and poll after poll shows a majority of Americans want meaningful gun control.

Moderation in everything; more of anything multiplies a problem. Why must teachers bear the burden of carrying a gun to class to protect their students. Yet, the National Rifle Association, the Gun Owners of America, gun makers, advocates of so-called gun rights and their supporters in the White House, Congress, governor’s mansions, state legislatures, county courthouses and city halls will tell you more guns are needed to stop gun violence.

More guns to stop gun violence is like pouring gasoline on a fire; like treating heroin addiction with more heroin; like giving more poison to the poisoned; like serving more alcohol to the alcoholic. More guns mean more death.   

Yet, the NRA and the politicians it supports say that is the answer. They say more guns are needed in the classrooms, in the night clubs, at public events, in workplaces, in churches, in restaurants, in homes, and concealed in the pockets of “good guys with a gun.” You’re only a ‘good guy’ until you start killing people with your gun. Just ask the student survivors at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where 17 of their classmates, teachers and coaches were killed within minutes with an AR-15 assault-style rifle.

Back in 1996, Gun makers, with help from their lobbying arm, the NRA, got Congress to halt government research into the harm decades of rampant gun violence has caused our nation, our sense of well-being, our children’s mental health. Such research could help with discussing and adopting meaningful gun control, but we can’t know; the gun makers don’t want us to know.

However, we do know what guns and gun violence are doing to our nation’s civility.

It’s another victim.