ACT YOUR RAGE! – Stand Up to the NRA

In a poignant expression of what a vast majority of Americans are feeling, a member of the other day’s audience at the vigil remembering victims of the Dayton massacre interrupted Ohio governor Mike DeWine’s comments, blurting out, “Do something!” As DeWine continued, others added their voices, building to a chant no one could claim not to hear.

Do something? Do anything constructive to control the use of firearms designed for nothing but killing large numbers of people quickly? They will not.

Not as long as not a single republican member of Congress dares face the wrath of the National Rifle Association.

And here’s the most incredible part. These gun-totin’ cavemen insist that their right to bear arms is so they can defend themselves against a tyrannical government.* And yet right under their noses the very government they’ve so fervently been praying for—the regime a sworn enemy of our country has helped deliver for them—has them armed to the teeth, defending their front doors from immigrants, queers, and any number of other contrived bogeymen, while robbing them blind from the back door.

A ruthless, morally dead oligarchy runs rough-shod over them and over one timeless American value and virtue after another in favor of the rich and powerful’s insatiable lust for control, and they claim not to notice it. It is textbook tyranny, the kind any fool should recognize…even with his head up his ass.

     They are high on their taste of power,
     motivated and energized. They are
     counting on our complacency.

A CYBER-9/11
So, our supreme leader, this gutless, draft-dodging, spiritually empty joke of a president, continues his trademark politics of division. Three times now, right after mass shootings, the liar in chief has read scripted words from the teleprompter promising to do something, hoping to placate the ninety percent of Americans who support common-sense gun control measures, only to renege on those words days later.

He is clearly empowering not just the growing list of this country’s enemies around the world, but the real perpetrators of most of these recent mass murders: red-white-and-blue, all-American Billy Bobs who, goaded by his hateful rhetoric, are emboldened to act out their rage.

Meanwhile, Trump’s self-declared soul-mate, Russian megalomaniac Vladimir Putin, and the president's other despotic role models around the world wring their hands in delight. How could an assault on American democracy possibly be delivered to them any more spectacularly? It is nothing less than a cyber-9/11.

What can be done? One can use whatever platform is available to them to speak up. One can hope the NRA will implode on its own depravity. Or one can get involved in supporting political candidates with the cojones to defy this cowardly, thoroughly corrupt republican party and its gun-toting partner-in-crime.

These are the real enemies of our country. They are high on their taste of power, motivated and energized. They are counting on our complacency. We must show them they are wrong.

* Actually, the second amendment of U.S. Constitution says the right to “keep and bear arms.” exists in order to maintain “a well-regulated militia,” not so every Billy Bob out there can be a bad-ass.