Blogpost # 910   OUTPOST NATION: Redux 2

We remain hopeful, that the feelings of ennui, or impatience, at the perceived repetition of an identical theme, such as is the case regarding this essay, is far less painful than the recognized tragedy of its reiterated subject. We speak, yet, once more, of the widespread tragedy of popular gun ownership.

Reportedly, no less than Five Thousand American lives, (many of which were young schoolchildren), were senselessly, and tragically, killed by psychopathic, armed gunmen, so far this year, (viz., in the past four months, alone). For many decades, thousands of innocent adults and children have been murdered,  grievously, injured and/or,  chronically, traumatized, due to the unregulated ownership of instruments of hand-held, human destruction, the pernicious singular accomplishment of the Nation’s right wing.

A tactically false, self-serving, and illusory reading of the Constitution’s Second Amendment, which in part, affords to “the People” the right to “bear arms,” has been the fundamental, holy grail, of the NRA, its minions, and those others that chose to assert the purported right to privately, maintain weaponry. Any instructive reading of the Nation’s history of the relevant period would identify the specific identity of the  Amendment’s determinative, grant, by its words,The  People.”

History recounts the fervent debates, between the “Federalists,” who stood for a Central Government, for the new Nation, and the “States Rights,” people who, advocated the cause of separate, State- controlled, entities. The relevant portion of the Second Amendment, relates the terms of their, hard fought, settlement, of the issue, viz., the establishment of a governing Central Government, yet, reserving the right of the member States, nevertheless, (“the People”) to raise their own independent, standing militias which would have the right to bear arms. The self-serving, ersatz ,right-wing gospel, would have the saner portion of the public, accept their self-serving and dystopian, belief, that the elegant, white wigged and philosophical Founders, intended to create a historically, radical experiment in political  democracy, conducted and populated by “ Wild West gunslingers.”

[N.B.: in the age of our Founders, “arms” connoted, “muskets.”]  More on the dystopian image of a society of “gunslingers,” after the following, b rief, but fundamental, inquiry.

We have never been able to successfully, comprehend any acceptable use for firearms, other than in the context of defensive, wartime. What utilitarian service can possibly be facilitated by a gun? Why would a mentally healthy, normally, socialized citizen require an instrument, designed only, to cause death or grievous injury to another? Our small pocket knife, by utilitarian contrast, can be serviceable in cutting string, opening packages, slicing cheese and fruit, whittling, cutting bait and fishing line, sharpening pencils, slicing salami, cutting fabric, poking needed holes in tight leather belts and in many other acceptable applications. What conceivable, purpose can be accomplished by the use of a gun, other than the intentional act of bloody, primitive, killing or crippling other human beings?  Are the gun activists, lizard- brained enough ascribe to the belief that our learned and pacific, Deist Founders, intended to create a Nation in which there was a  Constitutional franchise to kill or maim one’s fellow citizen?

With the catalytic, assistance of the unique and unprecedented, persona evinced by Donald J. Trump (in or out of office,) the less than sufficiently, educated or troubled, citizen was induced to perceive modern reality as non-factual, conspiratorial, and threatening.  Society thus morphed into notably, less neighborly, spontaneous and personal interaction and more isolation. Comforting, informal, and routine conversation, to a significant degree, was superseded by a more constrained and selective style of personal interaction. Anecdotally, those citizens, naturally given to innate feelings of loneliness and insularity, experienced an exacerbation of such feelings by the new and unfamiliar context of reality, further promoted by the mandatory isolation and required masking during the Covid pandemic.

It is our considered view that, in significant part, due to the unpredictable, unorthodox and incapable Trump stewardship, long established and fundamental mores of the Nation appeared to be bypassed, inconsistently recognized or skewed. Reality was assaulted to the dystopic extent that even the settled assurance, afforded by  universal consensus as to empirical facts  was upended by subjective, “alternate” facts, giving faux substance to the most paranoid of conspiracy ideations. The observed result, amounted to an increase in a previously, developing, divisiveness and balkanization, of the American population, with everlasting damage to its previously existing, assurances of security and National cohesion. Mistrust and even, fear, began to supersede traditional assumptions of citizen loyalty and commonality. The unfortunate tragic-comedy of the “winking approval” of the “would be” autocratic orange-haired, despot, as it did, the anti-democratic, bigoted, White Christian Militias and most profitably, the NRA.

Guns of varying potential lethality are seen at supermarkets, stores, schools, churches, synagogues, public parks, gymnasia, cars, in public transportation, and stadia. Not since the Hollywood portrayal of the of the era of the Old Wild West or, perhaps, the California Gold Rush, has there been such a visible proliferation of guns, not to mention, modern improvements in unlimited impact, from pistols (automatic or otherwise) shotguns, rifles, to rapid-fire, military weaponry.

Unless mainstream American is able, by vote, educational means, or otherwise, change the tactically, errant reading of the much abused, Second Amendment, the Nation will continue on it’s dark journey along the Pinocchio route, only to arrive at a dangerous, dystopic and non- democratic, nightmare.

[pliny SUGGESTION]: As a  fraternal gesture to the saner portion of our Nation’s population, those “Right to Life” adherents who, simultaneously, and unhesitatingly, advocate for liberal gun ownership, should, at a minimum, try medication.

-p.