*Very Impotent People
As noted downpage a touch in “Res-pect Mah Authori-taaaaaayyyyh!”, we have begun to see something many of us predicted more than a year ago—namely, the more dangerous spasms of wingnut crazy against authority they once cherished (a mere nine months ago), but now gleefully cheer the overthrow of. “The Way Of The Gun” is upon us as so-called “protesters” are now inexplicably showing up outside Presidential events with small arms, high-tech gats and thunderous blunderbusses. Apparently, some twelve of these knuckle-draggers showed up at a Health Care Town Halll not too long ago with weapons a' strapped to their limbs like the obligatory “hero” just before the big gun battle near the end of an early 90's action movie.
Now, I said “inexplicably showed up” because the presence of these weapons is inexplicable considering the spin being spun as to why they are there. I had the bile-inducing misfortune to watch one such spinmeister—one Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation on “Hardball” recently, who while admitting that it may have been over the top to so openly flaunt all that overcompensatory gunmetal, the reason these people were doing so was to make a point about government interference in the lives of Americans. Matthews was for once in his perpetually blaring foghorn of a life, speechless. Gun Rights' advocates showing up at these rallies makes as much sense as Rev. Fred Phelps' crazy ass showing up to non-sequitir-ly pimp his “crazy of the day” at random unrelated events. This in-way-over-his-head flack tried to make the case that while these lunatics probably had a secondary agenda they were pushing (Hard to believe—but going all Devil's Advocate here—okay, we'll give it a tumble...) it was still perfectly okay to bring loaded handguns and automatic weapons to otherwise peaceful Presidential Events / public discussions because 'you never know when somebody else is gonna show up at one of these things looking to kill 'em.'
And with that, the wheels fell off his argument just before it exploded in flames while cartwheeling into a road abutment.
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After Matthews went down the infamous list of times unaccounted-for guns were at venues Presidents were at and retold just how badly most of those times ended up, this poor loon still defended the letter-of-the-law legal, but incendiar-ily silly practice. Ron Reagan Jr. who in the exchange evisceratingly said to Gottlieb, “Speaking as someone who has a little more experience than you do with the Secret Service...” nailed what the host Matthews was a bit reticent to say on air—that the proud brandishing of these weapons at these events was “about anger, and anger and guns do not mix”.
“The only real reason to carry a handgun or assault-style rifle anywhere—(enumerates with his hands) hunting, target practice or you intend to kill someone in self-defense Now they're not goin' huntin', they're not goin' for target practice...so who is it that they think they might have to kill? Well, they're holding up signs saying 'The tree of liberty needing to be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots'. Maybe that gives us a little hint there.”
And he was 110% correct. There's a delicious irony in Reagan Jr.'s pointing that out, considering his particular lineage and a nearly lost bit of Sixties history. His father while Governor of California quickly pressured the California Legislature to repeal the open carry laws in that state in the summer of 1967 when Oakland's Black Panther Party exploited them by openly displaying weapons during their public rallies and pursuing armed local patrols to counter police brutality—a main issue of theirs. Reagan and ninety-nine percent of his wattled, golf-tanned O.C. cronies lost their narrow, ever-lovin' minds over this “free expression” then. But the huge difference with what the Panthers were doing was they openly stated their agenda (right in their name “Black Panther Party For Delf-Defense“), and didn't present arms at unrelated events to intimidate on side issues. In fact, maybe the best way for all this unsubtle barrel waving to be brought to heel is for a few black beret-ed and leather-jacketed brothers and sisters to show up at these rallies with their own legally-owned elephant guns representing the opposite view of the “protesters”. Defense for the wingnut-practice would disappear like a baby fart-let in a hurricane.
It would be one thing if, say these Town Halls were actually about Second Amendment issues. It still would be dangerous—but one could at least see a policy correlation to the “shock and awe” of these open carries. But these meetings have nothing whatsoever to do with the gun issue. The guns are being brought to these events as a verbally silent, but deadly, and symbolically loud statement about the nature of the debate between the right and left today. The right, as has been the case for quite some time, is not capable of arguing the merits factually for their side of the ledger. They have been good at staying on message, and media manipulation, but in terms of giving good reason (or really, even half-assed “reason”) for deeds and policies when things went as badly as the halfway sane amongst us predicted, they have been—and I'm being charitable her—stunningly clueless. After years of that—especially the unabashed know-knothing-ism of the Bush era after which Americans woke up a little bit and put these people aside—they have unsurprisingly and quite literally “gone to the mattresses”. It is pure and naked “intimidation”.
And why? Because with the exposure of their arguments as utterly impotent, they have rushed down the route of many insecure about their ability to command respect or at the least, appear powerful—and that way of course, is to grossly overcompensate.
It really, really doesn't take so much as an audition of a Psych 101 course to see the embarrassingly obvious relationship between their increasing frustration and their need to show who's boss, does it? It's all about the (husky, cougar-ish Elizabeth Ashley voice her) “long barrels, huge caliber and “gasp!” explosive stopping power” now. When reason and words fail, well...the sound the insecure goes for instead is the great, big “bang”. These are not smart people. These are not people who believe in the spirit of debate or really, the democratic process. They are barely functional hooligans, for whom the moment common sense begins to win out against their entrenched, retrograde views, or policy that rankles their sensitive dispositions is even being considered, will rush headlong into the steely embrace of Mssrs. Colt, Glock and Smith & Wesson. Remember how once President Obama was elected there was that sudden run on the gun stores? A run chuckled over by the usual suspects on the right with a “Hey 53% of America...it's your fault!” topping of spitefulness? (No Insta-dunderhead links here—just Google up the words “Guns Obama Election Instapundit”—and its right there. Of-disingenuously-course.) If you ever doubted it before, let this tack by them leave you nevermore a' questioning. This is their last refuge, and really, it's not that far from where they pretend to civilly exist in day-to-day debate...it's a place where physical elimination of the opposition is not so much a final solution, but a generally accepted, logical next step in the process of their getting their way. It's what these emotionally maladjusted people have been doing for years—most notably in recent memory during the Civil Rights era where “The Way Of The Gun” and naked force was embraced as a way of stopping non-violent, democratic change dead in its tracks. And the nuts we see today at these rallies are the direct descendants—emotionally, in terms of from where they hail, and in the coarse rhetoric they spew—of those very same people acting out in the bad old days featured in that grainy black and white footage that makes us grind our teeth when we see it.
This is nearly entirely about the intimidation that Ron Reagan Jr. bluntly pointed out. Having lost in the arena of ideas, the right is going for the impactful thing that takes no thought, just blind rage and a hard hand to either pound you with or clutch a weapon to shoot you with—the threat of physical harm. Impotence breeds intolerance which breeds indiscriminate violence. It is a sad sequence as old as time itself.
But there's that neurotic spectre again...just a' waving his “point” around all clumsily, and knocking down all the accumulated Freudian bric-a-brac in the room, right? I mean...we could...if we wanted to...delve deeper into the creepy, psycho-sexual nexus of guys (and it is almost 100% exclusively men perpetrating this) feeling politically impotent over the Black Guy's (in their mind) “lording it over them” and of course going for the whole “big gun” as equalizer / trump card angle...but hey...
We await the post-protest YouTube of one of these fellows all sweaty-browed, flushed and out of breath asking another one of his number as they stand erect...against “the grip of tyranny”...
“Hey dude...was it good for you too?”
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