If by chance your Monday was going too well, check out Rick Perlstein's piece in Salon on the gathering storm of American open carry gun culture and armed paranoia. Anybody who believes this problem is going to get better all by itself is deluded.
Perlstein's thesis:
When legitimately constituted state authority stands down in the face of armed threats, the very foundation of the republic is in danger. And yet that is exactly what happened at Cliven Bundy’s Nevada ranch this spring.
Why did the chain of events at the ranch jeopardize the republic?
Because Cliven Bundy used guns to flout the law, and got away with it.
Please don't give me any of this "time will tell" garbage. Hopefully, anybody who imagined that the Federal agents were simply regrouping, or hashing out a new plan to bring Bundy to justice, has by now set fantasy aside and embraced the reality of the matter: our government surrendered to a deadbeat gang of criminal thugs. Why? Because those thugs had "the drop" and because they brought superior firepower.
We all know what's happened since, but here's a useful recap:
- Two of Bundy's former disciples with sun-dried raisin brains addled with notions of armed revolution killed two Las Vegas police officers and an innocent bystander after being "excused" from Bundy's ranch.
- An anti-government conspiracy nut named Douglas Cole shot and wounded two more cops in a park in Nevada County, CA.
- Also, more shootings.
- Sheriff candidates summited with Bundy on a radio show to seek his endorsement and promised him that if they had been in office, they would have deputized his men against the Feds (among other genuflections).
- Carbon County, Utah declared itself sovereign from the United States, disinviting the BLM and all other federal agencies from enforcing Federal law within its borders.
- Also, too, more: false flag CTs, NRA posturing, and right wing defiance.
Anybody who expected that de-escalation and retreat would produce any other result was in denial. Anybody who still believes these people are interested in negotiating a new equilibrium has simply not been paying attention.
Their new catch phrase? "Molon labe" (disturbing image alert) -- which translated literally from Greek means "come take." It's what King Leonidas I allegedly screamed to the Persians when they ordered his men to surrender their weapons at Thermopylae.
Many have noted that if Bundy and his flunky bunch had been brown or black, the Federal government would have rained hellfire on their heads, and that is almost certainly true. However, it is also almost certainly true that there has been public outcry from citizens against neither the theft of a million dollars of their national treasure nor the terroristic acts these men and women have committed against their neighbors. Why is the country at large failed to raise its voice in support of justice?
If the answer to that question is "fear," then we have to ask ourselves the next question: when will it be too late to speak out and insist that something be done?
Perlstein's conclusion (emphasis mine):
Once upon a time, Democratic presidential candidates robustly argued for gun control... [and then] the mainstream of the Democratic Party simply gave most of the gun control argument away. Al Gore ran on a platform in 2000 that devoted about 250 words to gun control [...] Then, after Gore lost his home state, Tennessee, and other “border” Southern states, the geniuses running the Democratic Party decided to abandon gun control as an issue in order to court Southern white men (how’s that working out?). The gun-control portion of the platform in 2004 was slimmed down to 46 words. 2012’s version gave away the store.
In other words, there is virtually no countervailing power to the now-hegemonic acceptance that there’s nothing much to do about the proliferation of guns in America. Democrats, as usual, gave an inch. The right, as usual, took a mile. And now we face the consequences.
It is time for our government to stand up to these thugs, and for our republic.