I don’t know Wayne LaPierre personally. I’ve read about him though. He has a master’s degree in government. That’s good. Had he decided to become an inventor there’s a good chance he would have invented a doomsday machine. Instead he became a talking machine for the NRA. He does a hell of a job.
During the Cold War years I worked for the Civil Defense Administration scouting commercial sites on Long Island to serve as fallout shelters in case of nuclear war. Large doses of magical thinking were required to believe that the basement of The Driftwood Pub was just the place to survive a world run amuck with blasts, heat and radiation. Heaps of magical thinking also conjured up the military doctrine implemented to keep America safe from the communist threat. It was called Mutually Assured Destruction, or MAD. LaPierre would have loved it. It was based on the idea that the more weapons both sides had the safer we’d all be. It was a doomsday machine. It’s still in place.
The SALT treaty, which was a therapeutic attempt to treat the lunacy of MAD, must have made LaPierre sick to his stomach when it was first ratified. That’s because the ‘A’ and the ‘L’ in SALT stand for arms limitation. When placed side by side, those two words must surely register in LaPierre’s mind as the most obscene dyad in the English language. The only other doublet phrase that can cause comparable mayhem in his mind is this one: President Obama.
The President has royally pissed off LaPierre by speculating that the basic building blocks of the universe may not be firearms. He subsequently earned himself the highest point total on LaPierre’s scale of fear and loathing. A good place to be, all things considered.
By the way, I once asked my six-year-old granddaughter what the universe is made of. She said cookie dough. I don’t know anything about LaPierre’s childhood, but I wonder what more of the yielding dough in his early years could have done to the resistant and brittle man he became.
LaPierre loathes gun-free zones around schools. They’re invitations to cause mayhem. In a way he’s right. A defective brain is unlikely to stop at the zone’s edge. But the truth is that a defective brain doesn’t need an invitation to pump bullets into other people’s bodies. All it needs is a handy killing machine.
When not operating as a talking machine for the NRA LaPierre writes books. One book is called “The Global War on Your Guns: Inside the UN Plan to Destroy the Bill of Rights.” I haven’t read the book. I have too many others in my to-read pile. In any case I shy away from books dealing with conspiracies. The UN is a conspiracy-generating machine.
One day someone may want to dramatize the life of Wayne LaPierre. I imagine the following miniature portrait of Wayne as a young man, a small scene in which I participate through the agency of magical thinking:
Two young men in their teens. A city street with the UN building in the background.
Wayne: I hear the UN is coming down.
Me: What are you talking about?
Wayne: I’m saying it’s going to be leveled.
Me: Nonsense, where did you hear that?
Wayne: Think I read it somewhere, or maybe I heard it on one of those talk shows.
Me: Probably on one of those scumbag talk shows. Why do you listen to that trash?
Wayne: Do you think they would lie? Millions listen to those guys. They don’t just make things up. They got the scoop.
Me: Poop is more like it.
Wayne: No really, they were talking about how the UN is some kind of scheme to take the world over, clamp down on our liberties and all. We’re better off without the UN just sitting there right smack in the middle of our democracy, all those windows and antennas and all, watching us and listening in.
Me: You’re nuts.
Wayne: No man, I mean it. Look, they’re probably listening to what we’re saying right now. We better cool it.
Me: And why would the UN care what a couple of chumps like us are talking about? I mean why would they pick us out with their tons of fancy equipment? Think about it Wayne! These guys deal with the big movers and shakers in the world.
Wayne: It’s too risky pissing off the big boys. They’ll get to them later when the time is right, when they got the noose tight around millions of us little guys.
Me: I’m listening to you like I’m listening to men from Mars. You’re way over the top. You should see somebody. You’ve got what’s called a condition, and its messing with your stuff up there.
Wayne: Messed up, you think I’m messed up do you? Let me tell you before it’s too late. They’re shooting micro-rays into us right this very minute as we speak.
Me: Micro-rays into our heads as we speak? Hey Wayne, you may be right, there’s smoke coming out of your ears. Your brain is being fried by those micro-rays.
Wayne: Think I’m kidding?
Me: Let’s get out of here. I’ve seen enough of the UN.
Wayne: I’m telling it like it is.
Me: The more you talk, the worse I feel.
Wayne: It’s those rays man. They make you feel nauseous. Let’s double time out of here!
