Bob's Barber Shop is festooned with Western memorabilia and some very old guns. You don't see Bob much any more., Like me he's mostly retired and I don't see the signs for his homemade Venison jerky on the wall, but time seems to move slowly at Bob's and I like it that way. It's a country for old men.
I have a wait and so I pick up a copy of American Rifleman with it's mailing cover still on it, proclaiming the dire need for the reader to buy an NRA raffle ticket to win a variety of guns and so to "protect our freedom in Obama's last desperate years."
Obama and his "rogue agenda to destroy our unique American freedoms." It may be evocative of old times, but it's not. Those faces, those people I used to think I got along with so well in my love of the outdoors, the land and waters, fields and streams: there's something behind the mask that feels like a door I shouldn't open. Something new in degree if not in content. " And that Hillary!" I read in another article. Indeed it is.
Should I be grateful to be informed of this mad desperation, this frenzied and howling lust to "take our ammo" Hillary represents? Strange that I never noticed it because ammo is available everywhere, including WalMart and the gun store just across the street from Bob's. Have I been kept in the dark?
"Buy all you can, bury it in the back yard -- the Obamocalypse is upon us and if it's not, there's the Hillary Horror and blood in the streets."
Everyone who reads the NRA publications: American Rifleman, American Hunter, Amrica's First Freedom, Shooting Illustrated, Shooting Sports USA, American Family Insights, Armed Citizen, Standing Guard and others knows it's a desperate struggle, a fight every day to keep the government away from our freedom and yes, freedom means guns. Yes these are Obama's last desperate days and yes that sounds rather ominous, rather threatening coming from people who are promoting imminent and necessary rebellion. There is desperation of course and it's at the NRA and they do a stupendous job of promoting that fear of losing our Freedom (guns) even when there seems to be little, if any motivation on the part of the Executive branch. Mass confiscation, like the Second Coming is always imminent and contributions to the NRA always necessary and it sells well to the "south will rise again" crowd and the closet anarchists and paranoids and revolutionaries. Obama,s gonna lock you up, he's gonna take your guns just like Clinton did and ohmagawd, here comes another Clinton!
Of course it's not just Bobs or at the fish camp bar out on the lake I'm fond of. It's not just at those parties at the Harley dealer or the biker bars. You hear it at the Yacht Club. You hear how "Obama has been just a disaster" from people who still have those "2012, the end of an error" stickers on their Bentlys. If I dare to break the club rules and ask why that is, the answer is always a shrug or something that isn't true.
But things are changing rather quickly today, what with changing demographics and age and the spread of civil rights, although one side will tell you it's too much and the other denies any change but for the worse. Maybe we're in may respects at another George Wallace turning point. No matter how firm he acted, no matter how much rabid support, Segregation was over. The old ways are on the defensive.
"There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’"
Let's hope.
But will it be for the better? Will we have to fight the civil war all over again? I'm seeing Confederate flags everywhere now and people are taking idiotic pride in pretending to be rebels, renegades and sovereign citizens and their symbol is a rifle. Nothing matters in the new Utopia as much or more than guns, more guns, unlimited guns so we'll never have to worry about being rounded up by 'librals' and sold as slaves and the South shall rise again. So says Fox, so say the NRA.
Are the many people outside the paranoid, conspiracy theorist, anarchist, White Christian Nation circle helping it die? Hell no, of course the anti-NRA fear-of-guns crowd doesn't help spread truth and objectivity by all the ill-informed and equally obsessive hyperbole. Nobody seems to speak for the middle, for the people who are not afraid of Swiss Army knives and Gluten, Cell Phones and mysterious toxins and can't understand why a Montana rancher or resident of Alakanuk, Alaska needs guns. If this is to be a turning point rather than a breaking point we're going to have to hear from and to listen to these people, normal people, rational and informed people. They are out there aren't they?
Obama has been in office nearly 8 years now and still no one can tell me one freedom they have lost. They still have all their guns, can still get ammo, can go to church, say Merry Christmas... Where is the jackbooted thugs taking away their liberties? Really, I want to see them.
ReplyDeleteBut he's a Disastter! Facts don't matter. It's what side you're on that matters. Say anything, do anything, all that matters is standing up for your team. Obama is just like HITLER! He's a TYRANT. He's an 'empty suit' and can't get anything done but he's a TYRANT that appoints Czars! He's from Kenya and was born in Indonesia at the same time! So he's not an American even though he has automatic citizenship because his mother was an American itizen unlike Ted Cruz who was born out of the country but looks American so that's OK even if his father is a Communist from Cuba.
ReplyDeleteOf course it doesn't make sense. It's not supposed to, any more than those halftime cheerleaders make any sense. So what if Bush ruined the world? All we have to do is say Obama did it and presto-changeo it's all his fault. So what if we've had steady recovery? So what if that "reckless spending" paid us back two to one? So what if employment is at record highs. So what if deficit spending has been reduced, if the balance of trade is better than I can remember -- so what? It's OBAMA and he's a DISASTER!
The rebel scum said the same about Lincoln: he's a TYRANT and he took away our FREEDOM to own slaves and lynch black men and they killed him for it.
There's nothing we can do about human nature, but we can try to be better than they are, at least. We can stop insisting that nothing has improved, that all non-black people hate black people or that black people are the only victims of racism. We can stop believing every story that makes it seem like all white people are racists, that all gun owners are freaks and nuts and bloody minded murders. We can stop the disgusting hyperbole. We can stop justifying any horrible act because the perpetrators are historical victims.
The day I was called a racist for standing up for humanism was the day I got off the bandwagon. The truth matters and it matters more than the egos of the crusaders and zealots and 'spokesmen' and outrage mongers of all stripes.
Either God is a much nicer guy than me or he doesn't give a damn any more either, because if it were up to me, I'd close the drain and turn the water on and end this great mistake once and for all.