It's Not About The Guns.....
it's about the character of our nation. You see, if it was just about guns, we would have been shaken to action after Columbine because the thought of a bunch of high school kids getting killed would have been enough. But it wasn't. If it was just about guns the idea that 58 people enjoying a concert could be gunned down would be enough. But it wasn't. If it was just about guns the notion of people being shot to death while in a church or synagougue would have been enough. But it wasn't. If it was just about guns, the sight of elementary school students being massacred surely would have been enough to overcome any obstacles. But it wasn't. The fact that we live in a society where attacking the grieving parents and survivors of these atrocities was countenanced should have been a warning sign. But yet, we still did nothing.
And now enter the spectre of hate and bigotry energized by a president who fans these flames and then acts surprised by the confligration he started. It's about more than just guns. It's the character of our country. It's nothing new. If I gave you the following quotes-Immigrants are flooding over the border. Other countries aren't sending their best and brightest. They're taxing our national resources by being on the public dole. They're stealing the jobs of honest hard working Americans. They're prone to being criminals. They're eating away our national identity and the soul of our country-where would you think they came from? Trump's latest rally? The "manifesto" of the El Paso gunman? Some idiot right wing politician? While the answer may be all of the above, those statements actually come from a report to Congress in 1921 to support the Johnson-Reed Immigation bill when it was Italians and Jews, Poles and Slavs that were the "threat" to our way of life. Chinese and Japanese? They had to be banned altogether. Less of the undesireables and more of the good immigrants from northern Europe. A rationalization for bigotry.
Today? It's the caravan that will do us in. It's Muslims who need to be banned altogether. All for the same reasons set forth nearly a century ago for a different set of folks looking for a better life. The same attempt at rationalizing hatred. The irony is that most Americans are at most a parent, grandparent and great grandparent-people who they very likely knew in their lifetimes-away from being on the list. Oh, unless you're from Norway or some similar country. They've always been favored by the eugenicists-that was in the 1921 report to Congress and comes out of Trump's mouth today. There are valued human beings and then again there are the.....well, disease carrying, criminal, infesting hordes that need to be stopped. Dredge up the old methods of inciting the masses because it works and it's useful. Because our character as a nation is lacking.
The problem is today, we have a president who fans what was a smoldering garbage fire into open flames. We never had a person in the White House (well, maybe not since Andrew Jackson) purposely stoke this hatred. Supercharged by 24 hours of Fox News and the Twitterverse. Armed with assault rifles and large-scale magazines and guided by rightous ignorance. Yes guns are a problem, but it goes much deeper than that. They say a ship takes on the personality of its captain. I'm not sure if the U.S. has taken on Trump's personality or if it was always like this, I just know we've got a serious character issue in this country. We better fix it fast. This has got to stop.
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