Threats
None of this is normal or ok.
Trump’s legacy is armed and dangerous people in Congress.
Over the past couple of weeks, Republicans have been having temper tantrums about new safety protocols that have been put in place in the US Capitol following the deadly 6 January insurrection. Lawmakers are now supposed to walk through metal detectors to enter the chamber and vote but a number of Republicans have been ignoring the rules. “You can’t stop me,” Louie Gohmert, a Texas congressman, reportedly sneered at Capitol police, as he shamelessly skirted a metal detector…
…“Nah, I’m not going to do that,” the Georgia congressman Rick Allen reportedly told officers who attempted to scan him after he set off the machine. Similarly, the newly elected congresswoman Lauren Boebert, who tweeted earlier this year that she was going to carry a loaded Glock handgun to Congress, refused to have her bag searched. Congressman Andy Harris, meanwhile, did consent to a search on Thursday afternoon: a concealed weapon was found in his suit coat.
…
Nobody should have to go to work every day wondering whether one of their colleagues is going to kill them. And yet, that’s precisely what some Democrats – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other members of the Squad, in particular – are having to do. The Squad are a favourite target of rightwingers; they’ve had reason to worry about their safety long before the Capitol riots. Last year, for example, the QAnon supporter and new congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene posted an image on Facebook of her holding an assault rifle alongside Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. “We need strong conservative Christians to go on the offense against these socialists who want to rip our country apart,” her post’s caption read.
In the Thursday post, Marjorie Taylor Greene, the GOP nominee in Georgia’s heavily Republican 14th District, wears sunglasses and stands with a gun next to photos of Tlaib and U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, and Ilhan Omar, D-Minnesota. Text below the image says “Squad’s Worst Nightmare!”
“We need strong conservative Christians to go on the offense against these socialists who want to rip our country party,” Greene’s Facebook post added. “Americans must take our country back.”
Greene is now in Congress.
None of this is normal or acceptable.
I don’t trust a single one of these ideologues not to start gun violence in the very chambers themselves.
Ideologues and gunologues.
What they have done is start an arms race. Any politician who does not carry a firearm with knowledge of how to use it had best assume that they will eventually go down in a shootout. Thus Washington gets transformed into the OK Corral, and the political dialogue therein into the script for any old B-grade Western.
I bet that if Omar posted something similar, showing her carrying an AK-47 alongside photos of Greene, Ghomert, and Boebert with the caption ““We need strong, faithful Muslims to go on the offense against these capitalists who want to rip our country apart,” the three gun nuts would be calling for a lot more than metal detectors in response. Fine for me but not for thee.
Given that Boebert is already under suspicion because of her tweeting about the removal of Speaker Pelosi to another location during the terrorist incursion, you’d think she’d be a little more circumspect about playing the persecuted victim card so soon.
I guess supporting a violent insurrection doesn’t count as tearing the country apart, but opposing one does.
I was honestly just thinking about the OK Corral – about how growing up on Westerns and cop movies and dystopia movies and yadda yadda has probably shaped this “yay guns” culture more than ideology has. That photo of Greene for instance, that’s not ideology, it’s a fucking movie poster. It’s childish and stupid but no less lethal for that.
OB@5,
Yeah, gun loving Americans also love to quote, and definitely subscribe to, Robert Heinlein’s claim that “an armed society is a polite society.”
I seem to recall reading that actual historians of the American West have debunked many of the Hollywood myths about the Old West. I believe that in most towns, you weren’t allowed to walk around or hang out the in saloon with your six-shooter strapped to your side. And certainly the idea of the “gunfighter” was grossly exaggerated.
But even if it were true, what kind of society is that? The implication is “you won’t say anything rude to me for fear that I will shoot you.” That’s not a civilized society, it’s thuggery. The fact that the same people who hold this up as a model society tend to be the same ones getting outraged about free speech and “cancel culture,” or declaring with horror that there are supposedly “no-go neighborhoods” in London where Muslims will kill you for saying or doing things they don’t like, is ironic to say the least.
Screechy, another one along that manner is “The west wasn’t won with a registered gun”. I find it ironic, since so many of the settlers relied on US Army forts to hide them along the trail, and US Marshals to maintain the peace. Too many people have no idea of the true history of this country. And if the 1776 project has their way, that number will dwindle even further.
On a related note, it’s never not funny to me when conservatives whine about “liberal” Hollywood, considering that 90% of an entire major genre of films (action blockbusters) are about how a “good guy with a gun” saves the day, and about 90% of primetime TV dramas are about law enforcement and prosecutors saving the day.
Then there’s standup comedy, where about half the material by current male comics is about how they are brave truthtelling heroes fighting against snowflake cancel culture. “I’d like to explain to the millions of you watching me on Netflix how I have been SILENCED and CENSORED. And if you’d like to hear more, subscribe to my podcast, I HAVE BEEN CENSORED or buy my bestselling book, THINGS I’M NOT ALLOWED TO SAY.”
Screechy, I’ve always said Hollywood is as capitalist as Wall Street. Even the most “socialist” of the stars usually aren’t clamoring to give their money away, and will throw childish tantrums if they aren’t paid what they believe they are worth. I suspect for most stars, socialism is an abstraction they sort of believe in, as long as it doesn’t affect them too much. As for the owners, they are at least as capitalist as any Republican, but they can let the stars blather about socialism because they know it won’t make much difference in the long run. Same with sports; the owners are all about money, many of the athletes are all about money, but they do talk the good talk. Great PR, right?
It’s turtles all the way down (capitalist turtles, that is).