Enough Is Enough, Damn It. (On the Uvalde, Texas shooting.)

If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals — if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is. Now, I can't say that I will agree with all the things that the present group who call themselves Libertarians in the sense of a party say, because I think that like in any political movement there are shades, and there are libertarians who are almost over at the point of wanting no government at all or anarchy. I believe there are legitimate government functions. There is a legitimate need in an orderly society for some government to maintain freedom or we will have tyranny by individuals. The strongest man on the block will run the neighborhood. We have government to ensure that we don't each one of us have to carry a club to defend ourselves. But again, I stand on my statement that I think that libertarianism and conservatism are traveling the same path. ~Ronald Reagan

Yesterday, there was a mass shooting at a school in Uvalde, Texas in which 22 people (including the shooter) were killed and 18 (including the subject's grandmother) were wounded. The majority of those killed were Latino 4th Graders. For fuck's sake, what the hell is wrong with this country that we keep letting mass murder happen, and only reacting to it rather than trying to prevent it, or even implement stricter background checks or reduce access to firearms?

I'm a gun owner, I'm a veteran. I've been shooting since I was a kid. For fuck's sake, even Ronald Reagan said that people had a right to not have to carry a weapon to defend themselves and that the State had a duty to protect the people.

I'm tired of this shit.

Why is even the State reduced to reacting here, reacting to any extremist, insurrectionist or nut that comes along, instead of trying to prevent this shit from happening and prevent loss of life in the first place?

It seems "Conservatives" would rather pray for the souls of the Dead than try to protect the living, especially if it cuts into their profits to protect live little brown kids.

And this is exactly why I call these people the Cult Of Dis Pater, after the Chthonic Roman god of Death, the Underworld, and Wealth.

I mean, seriously, what else do Republicans stand for?

And at literally the same time as I first saw the news about the Uvalde shooting, I saw that they've proven that NRA officials knew the Russians were using the NRA to establish connections with the Trump campaign?

Russians who are now openly flying the Hammer And Sickle, as if the Soviet Union never fell. What happened to "Better Dead Than Red?"

At what point do we stop calling these people Republicans and start calling them dirty Unamerican traitors?

I'd say that certainly explains a lot about why "Conservatives" and the NRA won't lift a finger to protect the lives of American citizens. One dead brown kid today, or one other dead kid who isn't a rich white conservative offspring in a private school is one less US Army soldier to be fighting the Russians in the Baltic States, Finland, Poland or Ukraine ten years from now. Or one less Army National Guardsman to be fighting the next right-wing domestic revolt. It seems like if anybody hates America, it's place in the world and its power...it's Republicans.

And these fucking people have an insanely narrow view of who counts as an American and who doesn't. Or of what counts as Christianity and what doesn't, and I'd assume the next step is who is "White" and who isn't...much less other peoples and religions.

And it seems to me that these fucking people are not only not all about the Constitution, or the very political dogmas that they said they held dear for-basically-ever and that Republican Presidents like Ronald Reagan, George H.W. and George W. Bush all held dear and obviously believed...even if they too could engage in a little hypocrisy now and again? 

Modern conservatism is less about individual rights, personal responsibility, smaller government and the sanctity of private property than it is about hate, racism and "I'm gonna open my fly, and you're gonna swallow what I give you to swallow."

And then they want to whore that shit up with religion and call themselves righteous while spouting cracked-out kook bullshit about some privately-funded monuments that've been there for 40 years and I never heard of them until the other day. Sanctity of private property, my hairy white ass.

These fucking people's philosophy is nothing more than that of the petty high school bully, or the bumptious Third World petty warlord "What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine too, and we'll KILL anybody who says anything different."

Now, I don't know what the fuck that is, but suffice to say it's neither Christianity nor conservatism as I was taught those two things. And what's going on these days is not the ethics and the rules I was taught about firearms, either.

But I'll tell you one thing for sure. If and when the gun people stop being a disposable mob for the elites, if more rather than fewer of them actually stood up for freedom and rights instead of braying like jackasses about it while espousing the values of the 12th Century...and trust me, it will certainly come to this when armed people resist fascism...Republicans would be demanding gun bans for all but the richest white elites even faster than Putin re-Sovietized Russia.

Think I'm wrong? One already did. 

And the laws Reagan passed in California became the basis of gun policy for the whole damn country up until the early aughts.

Americans don't go around carrying guns with the idea they're using them to influence other Americans. There's no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons. ~Ronald Reagan 

(In response to the Black Panthers showing up armed at the California legislature.)

You'd think modern Republicans would regard Reagan as a greater heretic than George W. Bush. But it seems more like most MAGA's don't even remember who he was, much less what he believed.

And if you think the gun companies will care about even some of the population being disarmed? 

Well, if this country falls into civil war or right-wing insurgency...let alone if the fascists break off a piece of America for themselves...the corporations will make up any losses of profits from reduction or loss of private sales thanks to the vast purchasing power of governments in need of weapons to defend themselves or those trying to take more territory.

Republicans and their backers fundamentally think people are disposable, and profits and weapons are not. Isn't it funny how these motherfuckers have completely abandoned previous more optimistic incarnations of conservatism...for one that posits an ever-darker view of humanity?

Eventually, if people really believe in anything...even on the level that Reagan did...that's going to lead to somebody standing up to them. These fucking people are basically following the same script Putin uses in Russia.

Because they think it'll work. Certainly, it let them take over the Republican Party.

We have to be the ones to prove them wrong. If you haven't noticed, these motherfuckers don't seem to fear bullets...at least not yet...but they're scared to death of people casting their ballots.

If you want a better country, you have to be a better citizen.

And yes, citizenship is exactly what these fucking people are afraid of.

They don't care how many people...even kids...have to die for the ideals of citizenship, democracy and freedom to be torn down. Literally all they're thinking about is profit and power.

If we the people don't stand up, who's going to?

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For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. ~Matthew 24:27