In the mugshot seen around the world, the scowl on the 77-year-old face under a combed-over “strawberry blond” mane was intended to sow fear in those prosecuting him under federal and state laws.
Despite the fearsome mask, the four-time indicted Donald Trump showed fear and defeat, both of which seemed to weigh heavily in his body language as he ambled – slumped-shouldered – across the airport tarmac after getting booked in the Atlanta jail on Aug. 24.
This is no longer MAGA’s inevitable triumph who boasts of slaying imaginary enemies that are out to get him and thus them. This is a pathetic man long broken – probably since childhood –with a diminishing base of supporters who struggle to hang onto his lost cause.
Trump performs, even if all he does is play himself, but great actors are confident in themselves, highly imaginative, with sharp understanding of human behavior; you can’t tell how they actually feel when they perform, you just think you do.
Whatever mask he wears – bluster, braggadocio, arrogance, cockiness – Trump always lets us know how he feels, projecting his anger, fears, hurts, deviousness and lusts onto others.
A fortunate son of a New York City developer, Trump spent a life using wealth and privilege to attain wealth and power, a singular focus that deprived him of essential self-reflection.
We know Trump is transactional and angry, but we know little else about the man. I wonder if Trump even knows who he is, lost in his performance of the caricature “Trump.”
Loneliness must consume him.
Tellingly, at every one of his arraignments, none of his family or friends are there for him. From all the news footage and photos, the only people who are ever there are Secret Service agents assigned to him, his staff, some hangers on, and the media.
Despite calls to his supporters to turn out for massive protests at each of his arraignments, Trump has seen only small gatherings who are outnumbered by the media. After each indictment, the din of “unfair charges” from GOP politicians and conservative media becomes quieter.
At the Republican presidential debate hosted by Fox News the night before the Fulton County Jail arraignment, no one gave a full-throated roar of support for Trump. Two candidates on the stage denounced him and the one candidate that sought to emulate the former president, Vivek Ramaswamy, was constantly attacked by the others.
Trump is aware of this. In the fragmented way that he often speaks, he seemed to subconsciously allude to his lack of support on the tarmac when he told the media, “I’ve never had such support.”
If latest polls are any indication, Trump has already been defeated in his bid to become president again, even before voters go to the polls next November. He may win the GOP nomination, but a majority of the country believes he should stand trial for his attempted coup on Jan. 6, 2021 and his pilfering of secret documents.
He may voice defiance as juries of citizens are prepared to hear evidence and render verdicts, but this fourth indictment seems to have unsettled him. Trump no longer appears like the historic figure that he always tries to emulate, World War II Gen. George S. Patton.
Unsurprisingly, he does exhibit many character traits of the general, according to a 2016 article in Politico that compared the two men:
Twelfth Army Group commander Omar Bradley, who knew Patton well, described him as “colorful but impetuous, full of temper, bluster, inclined to treat the troops and subordinates as morons. He was primarily a showman. The show always seemed to come first.” Patton acted as though he didn’t care what people thought, but he “harbored a burning ambition for personal recognition,” wrote [Supreme Allied Commander Dwight] Eisenhower’s son John.
Since he doesn’t like to read, Trump’s understanding of the general is solely based on the 1970 film biopic, “Patton.”
Trump should watch the movie again and heed a quote from “Old Blood and Guts” himself that actor George C. Scott, who portrayed Patton, narrates in the final scene:
“For over a thousand years, Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of triumph, a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeters, musicians and strange animals from conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conqueror rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children robed in white stood with him in the chariot or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror holding a golden crown, and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting.”
By Matthew Durantine
I have been reading recently a rather detailed account of the Battle of Antietam in Sharpsburg, Maryland. It prompted me to think also of the second invasion of federal territory, the Battle of Gettysburg.
Like the afternoon of July 3, 1863 in Gettysburg, was Jan. 6, 2021 in Washington, D.C. the high-water mark for Donald Trump and Trumpism?
Was the violent invasion of the Capitol Building comparable to the assault on the Union Army’s center, where, at the clump of trees on Cemetery Ridge,, Confederate General George Pickett’s famous charge broke?
Keep in mind the rebels fought on for almost two more years after that turning point in the Civil War. They scored victories and launched other assaults into federal territory. There were many times when the outcome was uncertain and victory for the nation seemed unlikely.
Trump and Trumpism are winning some battles these days, particularly in the U.S. Supreme Court, where Trump made three appointments to the nine-member bench while he was in office. The court has effectively reversed more than half a century of progress for racial and economic equity and diversity.
But are the Trumpists ultimately losing the war?
President Abraham Lincoln was vilified and lampooned in the press as an ape and a buffoon. As commander of the Union Army, Gen. Ulysses Grant was pilloried as a drunken butcher who bludgeoned his way south without concern for the death toll among his troops.
For a time, Gen. William Sherman, commander of federal troops in the west, disappeared along with his army on his drive to the sea after the Battle of Atlanta. A tremendous amount of uncertainty and doubt persisted among voters in the North still loyal to Lincoln’s vision of a nation once again united but without slavery.
And then, just like that, the war ended.
Union troops launched a siege around Petersburg, Va. in June 1864. Lincoln’s re-election in 1864 was in doubt as a former Union general, George McClellan, ran against him. McClellan enjoyed tremendous popular support, even among some of the troops. His platform was to sue immediately for peace and divide the country in two.
Such thinking is echoed today by Trump, Trumpists in Congress and MAGA voters who oppose President Joe Biden’s support for Ukraine and its fight against Russia’s 16-month unprovoked and unwarranted invasion. Trumpists in Republican-led states like Texas clamor for secession from the nation.
Lincoln managed to win in November 1864 and the Petersburg siege didn't break until March 25, 1865. But within a few weeks, by April 9, the conflict that began five years earlier – and must have seemed interminable to the country – was over. Just like that.
They say history doesn't actually repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Are we in a similar paradigm today?
I'm finding it easy to become disheartened after eight years of Trump and Trumpism fighting against the rule of law to take and hold power at any cost in order to serve their needs and not the nation’s.
I have found some hope in our justice system, which Trump and congressional Trumpists vow to dismantle if returned to power. Federal indictments against the former president and his lieutenants, and convictions against MAGA insurrectionists, proceed methodically and determinedly.
In the United States, as federal special prosecutor Jack Smith said in his indictment against Trump for violating national security, no one is above the law.
Maybe this is how history always plays out. You never know until you know. Things don't change until they do. Things seem inevitable until they're not. Has Trump and Trumpism reached the high-water mark?
Time will tell.
Matthew Durantine is a writer from Silver Spring, Md.
The two organizationsmost responsible for the gun violence on American streets today, the Gun Owners of America (GOA) and their partner, the National Rifle Association (NRA), have much to celebrate these days.
America has more guns than people and thanks to their willing partners in Congress, state legislators and municipal governments, laws have been fashioned to allow gun owners to shoot whomever whenever for whatever. This is the freedom conservatives long sought—the power to kill and maim with your firearm of choice without consequence.
Just the last week, freedom-loving gun owners have exercised their right under such state laws as “stand-your-ground” and “conceal-and-carry” in a variety of ways that must warm the hearts of the GOA, NRA and every guns-for-everyone politician and gun-fetishist everywhere.
We had an 84-year-old gun owner shoot and nearly kill a teenager for knocking on his door; a gun owner shoot and wound two cheerleaders for mistakenly getting into his car; and a gun owner shoot and wound a 6-year-old and her family because a basketball rolled into his yard.
These were just some of the shooting for the week of April 16, which, having become like any week in America, also included plenty of mass shootings, illegal discharge of guns, gun violence to settle disputes, etc.
Earlier in the month, a mass shooting at a private school in Tennessee took teenage and adult lives. How many? Why ask? Body counts are always increasing, and lawmakers in that state certainly didn’t care.
They took action to ensure freedom for gun owners (and thus less freedom for non-gun owners and future victims) by passing more gun laws to make more guns available to anyone without any restrictions. Oh, a red flag law failed to muster support because it would temporarily keep guns out of the hands of gun owners with such high-risk behaviors as shooting everyone in sight to address mental and emotional problems. Lawmakers saw that as violating a freedom-loving gun owner's Second Amendment rights.
They also voted to kick out two Black lawmakers because the two young men had the temerity to demand more gun safety measures after the school slaughter and because they are Black. Cooler heads prevailed in the districts they served and they were re-instated.
Civility is dead, stupidity reigns. America belongs to the freedom-loving gun owners who believe that around every corner, in every heart and mind, someone – in particular someone who is Black, Hispanic or Asian – is out to get them. As the 84-year-old Kansas City gun owner who shot the Black teenager without any provocation other than to glimpse his skin color believes, shoot first, and then shoot again. If you feel like bothering, ask questions later.
For more than 50 years, the GOA and NRA and the gun industrial complex have spread the fear that without a gun you as an American are in danger, every second of every minute of every hour of every day. Own a gun. Own many guns. Keep several in your home, in your car, in your boat, your camper, your kid’s lunch box. At any moment, someone is going to get you!
Forget thoughts and prayers, America. Guns now rule, and for those who don’t agree, tough. Shut up and get a gun or just shut up.
And if you get a gun, don’t worry about unloading it and locking it up in a safe place at home (Hell, someone could break-in at any moment and get you!). If your 6-year-old happens to take it to school and shoot his teacher, well, that’s America, where the GOA and NRA wants every kid from the time their born to get a gun. Just be proud that he aimed correctly.
Yes, America, we are a gun republic, many of our congressional members have even replaced their flag lapel pin with an AR-15 lapel pin to show their loyalty to the gun, under God.
America is steeped in the John Wayne and movie Western mythology that the gun won the West (It didn’t. It was the federal government and a powerful military with a genocidal policy) and that men and guns are what make men, men.
Two hunters once told me this when I told them I had no interest in guns. What an idiot I must have seemed to them as they informed me about stirrings they feel when fall comes, the birds fly south, and hunting licenses arrive in the mail. They were almost disbelieving when I shared that I never experienced such longing, which made me question my white manhood.
It’s just not the conservatives and Republicans and Democrats and the GOA and the NRA and the gun industrial complex at fault for gun violence. It’s not even the fault of Americans who hate guns but own one because they are fearful of the other gun owners.
Hell, in a gun republic like ours, gun violence is the daily rhythm, no one is ever at fault, other than the victims who were not armed at the moment of their demise. Tough, but, hey, the GOA and NRA warned you to get a gun because someone would get you.
We are a democracy – in our gun republic that ideal is slipping fast – and if we truly want an America without gun violence as many civilized and developed nations enjoy, then we have to change the conversation that the GOA and NRA have dominated and we need to make the serious sacrifice of banning guns. It’s not impossible to ban guns, just hard.
Until that happens, the only people who will be making sacrifices are those who are killed and wounded every day by guns.
Something happened in a Florida federal court a few weeks ago that showed what it takes to standup to bullies, and not just any bullies, but bullies who wield power.
U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks sanctioned former President Donald Trump and his attorney Alina Habba, ordering them to pay nearly $1 million in fines for filing what he deemed a frivolous lawsuit. Trump claimed that his political opponent in the 2016 presidential campaign, Hilary Clinton, as well as others involved in the Russian investigation, conspired to damage his reputation.
Middlebrooks said Trump was a sophisticated litigant who made it a practice to use the courts to seek revenge against his political opponents and called the former Republican president’s lawsuit against Clinton a “political manifesto.”
"He is the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process, and he cannot be seen as a litigant blindly following the advice of a lawyer. He knew full well the impact of his actions," Middlebrooks wrote in his opinion. "As such, I find that sanctions should be imposed upon Mr. Trump and his lead counsel, Ms. Habba."
The judged ordered Trump and Habba, who as a member of the bar clearly knew the frivolity of her and her client’s actions, to pay 18 defendants $938,000. Of course, they vowed to appeal, but that seems doubtful.
Indeed, the very next day, Trump dropped another one of his “revenge lawsuits,” this one against New York Attorney General Letitia James whose fraud investigation into the Trump family seeks records from his private trust.
Last month, the same Judge Middlebrooks denied Trump’s lawsuit against James and called Trump’s claims of harm “quintessentially speculative.”
In sanctioning Trump and his lawyer for the Clinton lawsuit, Middlebrooks made clear, unequivocally, to Trump that he would not tolerate the dishonest bullying tactics Trump has employed most of his life, using lawyers and friendly courts to hide his misdeeds and attack those who legitimately question those misdeeds and seek accountability.
Unlike his colleague in the Southern District of Florida, Judge Aileen Cannon, Middlebrooks rendered a decision without fear or favor. Cannon – who Trump appointed despite her apparent lack of necessary qualifications to sit on the bench – granted Trump’s request last year to effectively delay the Department of Justice’s investigation into his mishandling classified documents. But the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Cannon’s ruling that appeared to return a favor to the former president for appointing her.
“The law is clear,” the appeals court wrote in its ruling. “We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so.”
In regard to the lawsuit Trump filed against Clinton, Middlebrooks wrote, “This case should never have been brought. Its inadequacy as a legal claim was evident from the start. No reasonable lawyer would have filed it. Intended for a political purpose, none of the counts of the amended complaint stated a cognizable legal claim.”
Trump’s complaint that the Russian investigation tarnished his reputation is yet another bullying tactic. Despite what he and his minions including former US Attorney General Bob Barr say, the Mueller Report clearly demonstrated Russia interfered and influenced the 2016 campaign in favor of Donald Trump.
And for Trump, all roads lead to Russia. For the last year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has stood against an international bully, Vladimir Putin, a Trump ally.
Remember, Trump asked Zelenskyy in 2019 for a “favor” in return for releasing a $400 million congressionally mandated military aid package then-President Trump blocked. The quid pro quo that he sought, which lead to his first impeachment, was for Ukraine to investigate his political opponent, Joe Biden.
This incident is seen in new light with the Russian dictator’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, which Trump cheered, and which hundreds of thousands have died since the war began last February.
But Putin’s invasion is failing, spectacularly, and largely because the Russian military is neither well equipped nor properly skilled. Many Russian soldiers sent mercilessly into battle appear to lack motivation for carrying out orders of a would-be czar who wants to re-build a Soviet empire in Eastern Europe.
Despite the world’s fears leading up to Putin’s aggression against his supposedly weaker neighbor, the Ukrainians stood, undaunted (and with immense help from the West led by the US), and bloodied the bully’s nose, month after month as missiles rain down on their country.
Late last year, following one Russian defeat after another, Putin, who vowed never to negotiate, signaled, then called for negotiations. But Zelenskyy knew Putin was stalling for time to build an army for a winter offensive. Ignoring Western pleas to negotiate, Zelenskyy demanded Putin first return all territory taken since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and restore Ukraine to its 1991 border.
As Russian exiles Garry Kasparov and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, co-founders of the pro-democracy Russian Action Committee, wrote this month in Foreign Affairs, Ukraine is on the verge of victory and Putin defeat, militarily and politically because of Zelenskyy’s fearless refusal to back down from a bully.
“This is a make-or-break moment for Ukraine,” the authors said.
However, Kasparov – chair of the Human Rights Foundation and a former world chess champion, and Khodorkvosky, a businessman and former political prisoner – advise that the West, and in particular President Joe Biden, must not fear the bully’s threat of nuclear war or that Putin’s fall from power would mean something worse in Russia.
“Biden can turn the tide in Kyiv’s favor by backing up his declarations of support with the delivery of tanks and long-range weaponry,” the authors said. “He can also hasten the demise of Putin’s regime, opening up the possibility of a democratic future for Russia and demonstrating to the world the folly of military aggression. The United States cannot let its fears stand in the way of Ukraine’s hopes.”
If we let them, bullies will intimidate and brutalize us. Stand up to them, and you will see how weak they truly are. At this point in human history, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
Fascism can slither into a democracy unnoticed until a moment of social dysfunction, then it strikes hard, its poison seeping into the psyche of the nation as its political leaders struggle for constitutional coherence.
Despite his decisive election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump refused to relinquish power, and waged a deadly insurrection with an army of supporters on Jan. 6, 2021 to take control of the United States government before Biden was inaugurated.
This is fascism in 21st century America, where Trump, once considered a billionaire buffoon until he won the presidency in 2016, directed thousands of loyalists, many armed or ready to retrieve an arms cache nearby, to attack the U.S. Capitol and stop certification of the 2020 election.
Hundreds were injured, five people died and one woman was killed in the melee before the mob was turned back.Yet, 147 Republicans in the House and Senate still voted to overturn the election in favor of Trump, even after his loyalists destroyed property, beat police officers, and voted to hang Trump’s own vice president, Mike Pence.
Gallows for Pence on Jan. 2, 2021.Credit: Tyler Merbler
Meanwhile, a presidential hopeful for 2024, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, signs laws by a complicit Sunshine State legislature that dictate what school children and high schoolers should learn. Are checks and balances, one of democracy’s pillars, no longer valid there?
In Pennsylvania, Trump-endorsed Republican Doug Mastriano, a conservative Christian and ex-army officer, vows to disenfranchise voters if he becomes governor and doesn’t like the outcome of statewide elections. Mastriano was among those who marched on the Capitol Jan. 6.
Not since Huey Long of Louisiana has there been governors or candidates for governor willing to tear apart democracy to keep or get power. Long was a beloved populist with a fascist fist. As the Democratic and demagogic governor (and later U.S. senator), he ruled the Bayou State from 1928 to 1935 when he was assassinated at the state’s capitol.
The iron-fisted Long.Credit: Library of Congress
The conservative wing of the Republican Party, having long desired to dictate social mores from the pulpit of government, finally succeeded after jerry-rigging the U.S. Supreme Court, which decided recently that women have no rights under the Constitution.
Five conservative justices took away a fundamental right of privacy under Roe v. Wade, thus effectively banning abortion. They also struck down a gun-safety law in New York and several other states that restricted gun owners from openly carrying weapons.
Justice Clarence Thomas who delivered the opinion on guns appears to have no problem with Trump’s armed insurrection, which his wife, Ginny, supported, if not helped organize.
Thomas said the court is now considering stripping more rights including same sex marriage. In the history of the United States, the Supreme Court has never taken away a constitutional right, but this court is only getting started. Thomas wants to nullify years of gun-safety laws.
This fall, fascist forces could succeed in controlling Congress. If Republicans win one or both houses, they have threatened to impeach Biden for no other reason than to impeach him. If that occurs, the coup Trump started on Jan. 6 becomes a fait accompli.
No matter who wins the presidential election in 2024, a conservative-controlled Supreme Court and a Republican Congress dominated by conservatives will maneuver to decide the winner.
In 1935, during the rise of fascism in Europe, writer Sinclair Lewis penned a novel about a fascist leader taking power in the United States, “It Could Happen Here.”
Since that period, fascist forces have banged at America’s door, and conservative politicians and religious-right leaders have tried to let them in, eager to serve their own self-interests and thirsts for power. Their wish appears on the verge of coming true. It has now happened here.
Some of the leading forces of fascism in this country have largely been conservative Catholics and evangelical Christians. From the anti-Semitic Father Charles Coughlin, who embraced fascism on his Detroit radio programs in the 1930s, to today’s Supreme Court Justices like Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch (now Episcopalian), Amy Coney Barrett and John Roberts.
Perhaps fascism’s absolutism resembles the dogma of religions like Catholicism and evangelical Christianity and that’s why churchgoers find appeal in both.
The three largest countries in Europe that turned to fascism in the 1930s were Catholic: Italy, led by Benito Mussolini; Germany, led by Adolf Hitler; and Spain, led by Francisco Franco.
While Mussolini and Hitler were raised Catholic neither man believed in their faith. They led the most brutal war in world history. Franco was a devout Catholic who, with Hitler’s help, waged a brutal Civil War (he stayed out of World War II), and then led an evil dictatorship for 39 years.
The five conservative justices who took away the right of a woman to choose her own health care based their ruling not on constitutional or even science-backed constitutional law. They based it on their religious beliefs. Could we be headed to a sort of Franco-theocratic rule?
If conservative Republicans manage to succeed in their fascist quest, their next task is re-writing the Constitution. They will surely take away more rights and eliminate the Establishment Clause that, at this tenuous moment, prevents the government from making religious-based laws.
Since 2014, 19 state legislatures – everyone one of them Republican controlled – have passed resolutions calling for a constitutional convention. Four – Wisconsin, Nebraska, West Virginia, South Carolina – did so this year. The effort is led by wealthy business conservatives such as Charles Koch.
Conservative Republicans claim they want to re-write the Constitution to reign in federal spending and limit government. That is devious. A convention will allow them to throw out our current Constitution for a document that could create an authoritarian government and restrict rights for everyone by heterosexual Christian whites.
Legal scholars have long warned of the dangers of a convention, particularly in an era so politically polarized as today.
As one former Supreme Court chief justice, Warren Burger, explained during his tenure on the court from 1969 to 1986, “there is no way to effectively limit or muzzle the actions of a Constitutional Convention. The Convention could make its own rules and set its own agenda. Congress might try to limit the convention to one amendment or one issue, but there is no way to assure that the Convention would obey.”
Conservative Associate Justice Antonin Scalia (yet another Catholic), who died in 2016, was even more succinct in his opinion: “I certainly would not want a constitutional convention. Whoa! Who knows what would come out of it?”
From the June 28 House hearings on the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson provided details on former President Donald Trump’s insistence on joining his supporters as they left his rally outside the White House and marched on the U.S. Capitol.
Trump knew they were armed and told his aides he was not worried about getting injured by the mob, where five people were killed and hundreds injured that day. The Secret Service overruled the president and whisked him from the rally and back to the West Wing.
“’I’m the ‘effing’ president, take me to the Capitol,’” an infuriated Trump told one Secret Service, according to Hutchinson. She said Trump tried to attack the agent assigned to protect him.
So, the question: Why was Trump so insistent on joining the march that what we’ve now learned was part of the coup plot by the former president and his inner circle?
Perhaps the answer is found in the history of Italian and German fascism.
On Oct. 24, 1922, Benito Mussolini called at a rally of 60,000 fascist militants in Naples to march on Rome.
“Our program is simple: we want to rule Italy,” the soon-to-be fascist leader told the crowd.
Four days late, about 30,000 Black Shirts marched on Rome. Mussolini did not march with them, but made sure he got photographed with the marchers before they headed to the Capitol, where they planned to take power through an armed insurrection.
However, Italy’s King Victor Emmanuel III, fearing a civil war, capitulated to the marchers and handed power to Mussolini to avoid violence.
Mussolini and his Black Shirt marchers.
One year later, inspired by Mussolini’s march, Adolf Hitler and the nascent Nazi Party staged a coup attempt in Munich against Germany’s government, the Weimar Republic.
Unlike Mussolini, though, Hitler joined the 2,000 marchers in their infamous “Beer Hall Putsch,” which the police stopped after killing 16 Nazi Party members. Hitler escaped, but was caught two later, charged with treason.
Widely publicized, the trial gave Hitler a platform in which to spout nationalist sentiments, but he was found guilty and sent to prison for five years. He served nine months, during which time he wrote Mein Kampf.
Hitler in "prison" with his fellow insurrectionists.Credit: Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz
Afterward, he returned to politics and within 10 years, thanks largely to a weak and ineffective Weimar government, Hitler was essentially handed the chancellorship after conservative leaders persuaded the ailing President Paul von Hindenburg to appoint him in 1933.
Once Mussolini and Hitler assumed power, fascism consumed every level of society and politics and the two leaders effectively extinguished any opposition to their rule through murder and terror.
An admirer of history’s authoritarian leaders, Trump may have considered these moments in history as he plotted his coup.
However, from what we watched in real time on Jan. 6 and what we’ve learned from the hearings – including Trump’s plotting with Congressman Scott Perry (R-Pa) to enter the House chamber (which could have been with armed insurrectionists) – his motive may have been darker.
Among the endless news on the gun-front is that of a 10-year-old girl who shot and killed a woman because the woman was arguing with her mother. This occurred more than a week after the slaughter of 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, and two weeks after the massacre of 10 African American grocery shoppers in Buffalo, New York by a white supremacist armed with the gun owners’ weapon of choice, the AR-15.
More horrific statistics about our nation that decades ago chose unbridled access to guns over the safety of its children. No other nation on Earth allows gun violence to go so unchecked.
Whatever legislative solutions Congress passes and the President signs won’t stop the violence. The gun industry, its subsidiaries and their customers will make sure of it. No one is safe from gun violence anymore, which is what the gun industry wanted—because more people will buy guns in fear of their safety, a safety that is not secured by gun ownership. Guns haven’t saved anyone from gun violence and Uvalde is yet another example.
Rampant gun deaths in the United States, now the leading cause of death in school children, is the fruit of a decision long supported by gun owners. For decades now, I have written about the need for gun control, to limit weapons used to “assault” (a word gun owners get angry when used) and kill large numbers of people. Initially, I blamed the National Rifle Association; the Gun Owners of America; and lawmakers, governors, and presidents (some too afraid or too bought by these group) for the slowly escalating violence.
And gun violence has been slowly escalating as states and Congress passed more and more promiscuous gun laws – conceal carry, open carry, “permitless” carry, eliminating assault weapon bans – while gun manufacturers not only sold more guns, but more powerful weapons. It’s like a frog in a pot of cold water on a stovetop burner, ignoring the danger as the water gradually heats to boiling. The nation is awash in guns, all kinds of guns, corresponding exactly with the gun violence that, with 250 mass shootings in the last month, has the nation boiling in death.
Government officials at federal, state and local levels, the NRA, and the GOA are certainly to blame, but so are the law-abiding gun owners (NRA, GOA members and non-members alike), as well as the media treating each mass shooting as an individual event instead of what they collective are—a narrative of denial and madness; religious leaders who are more interested in condemning people for their sexuality rather than their support of weapons of mass murder; the education system’s failure to muster the will to demand gun control; gun retailers and their failure to take background checks seriously, and voters who quickly lose interest.
In fact, there’s a lot of blame to go around, so much blame that no one individual and no one group can or will assume responsibility for the carnage. Until we all accept responsibility, until we all acknowledge there is no exception, no middle road, no two sides to the argument, that roiling cauldron will get hotter; more and more bodies of children, the elderly, anyone, will float to the top.
We all are in the line of fir—including citizens packing a weapon to protect themselves and those toxic personalities who like to threaten that if anyone takes their gun it will be from their “cold dead hands.” The years have seen a lot of cold dead hands. Their statistic is just as grim and is another contradiction to the “good guy with a gun” lie, particularly since there are many cases of “good guys” killing “good guys” with their legally acquired weapon. Or “good guys” killing or threatening their partner in domestic violence.
Like a deadly virus, no one knows what goes on in the minds and lives of all these “good guys.” They could perhaps angrily overreact (and who doesn’t do that?) and use their weapon in a burst of anger, something they may not normally do. They could experience a life event that stressed them to a breaking point and they begin firing. In fact, that’s exactly what some of the statistics show. Unfortunately, “good guys” with guns are just not, well, perfect, and ensuring a society safe from gun violence requires near perfection.
Guns are a disease in this country, the vaccine is gun control that would reduce the nearly 400 million guns infecting our society with violence and death. Gun control also needs to start the long-overdue process of changing mindsets through an honest reckoning with ourselves.
We have allowed 50 years of sloganeering about guns and distortions about the actual intent and purpose of the Second Amendment, which has poisoned thinking to a level where the nation’s view of life is callous and inhumane. Gun violence is a daily occurrence. We just shrug.
That is the sorrow of our age.
