Ted Cruz, sociopath.
Days after one of the most horrific mass killings in recent history, Senator and Presidential candidate Ted Cruz did what you would expect a leading statesmen of the Republican Party to do after such a tragedy. Lead a prayer, condemn the neo-Confederate movement, and speak in grave tones about the need to reduce gun violence in America? Nah. Of course not. Cruz instead cracked incredibly inappropriate jokes about gun control, and then reminisced about his recent excursion firing off some machine guns on the range.
As reported by the Huffington Post, Cruz, at a campaign stop in Iowa, joked, "You know the great thing about the state of Iowa is, I'm pretty sure you all define gun control the same way we do in Texas -- hitting what you aim at." Ha, ha. Ted, you're such a card! I'm sure this "joke" knocked 'em over in South Carolina. Conservative Christian, States' Rights enthusiast and undoubted Cruz supporter Dylann Roof certainly would have guffawed.
Just in case anyone in the Iowa crowd was under the misapprehension that Cruz was some pretend gun fanatic, he also elaborated on the delightful time he and his wife had recently spent in New Hampshire firing off fully automatic machine guns. He then added this lovely anecdote: "My wife, Heidi, who is a petite, 5'2 California blonde, she was standing at the tripod unloading the full machine gun with a pink baseball cap that said 'armed and fabulous.'" Isn't that cute? Ted's little wife is as big a gun fanatic as he is. Perhaps their children can look forward to receiving machine guns for their birthdays when they graduate middle school.
This man is sick. His wife, also, is apparently sick. Cruz is, of course, fully supported by an organization known as "Gun Owners of America," whose leader, Larry Pratt, recently alluded to the need for a right-wing coup d'tat to murder President Obama and "Democrats," because he believes their holy text, the Second Amendment, fully authorizes and in fact encourages them to do so. If you are under the impression that this type of rhetoric will change once the Black Guy leaves the White House, you are mistaken. Yes, some gun fanatics are driven by suppressed racism, but their sense of entitlement transcends race. They must have a gun fanatic in the White House, and anything less is a threat to them.
What bothers me is not so much what sick sociopaths like Cruz and Pratt say or think. What I do find disturbing is that what they say is no longer controversial. The Huffington Post was the only media outlet to even report Cruz's comments as inappropriate. This kind of thing doesn't even make even minor news anymore; it's simply accepted as "conservative" political speech. It's normal.
If you don't find this shift toward ISIS-style totalitarianism in the USA terrifying, you should. We don't need a Jon Stewart anymore making fun of the Republican Party and its loony ideology. That is too pat, too soft. We need a Martin Luther King, Jr., a strong moral voice, shaming the Republican Party for their sins against humanity. Every "gun control joke" by elected officials that is allowed to pass without comment or condemnation -- on any day, but especially after one of the worst gun tragedies in recent memory -- is a strike against that humanity, and brings us closer to the hellish reality that Ted Cruz imagines for America.