Americans are a hunting people and we make no apologies about it.
How many guns are in private hands in America now?
About 400 million guns, or 120 guns for every 100 people.
Ask people why they support the Second Amendment, and a lot of folks will tell you it’s to fight off the communist Russians, or to thwart the rise of fascism should it appear on the horizon.
Nearly every American will tell you they would kill Hitler if they got the chance.
We believe in democracy so much, we will kill other people in other nations until they embrace it.
Yet the Russians are here, votes at home are being systematically suppressed, and fascists are ripping immigrant children from their parents and throwing them into cages without soap or even room to sleep.
And who has the guns?
And what direction are they pointed?
Where is Walter Mitty now that we need him?
And yet…. and yet.
Am I glad there are 400 million guns in private hands in the US?
I am, and for the simple reason that this current paroxysm of fascism will only go so far before American citizens will stand their ground and fire back.
No, we will not be fighting a war against B-1 Bombers and tanks.
Like every other country where creeping fascism slithers out of the drain, we will be fighting a police state where masked thugs “disappear” people.
When ICE shows up with 15 people and finds 200 people with guns, or 600 people without guns, what do you think they will do next?
And the answer is…. RUN.
These masked thugs are cowards, and it will only take a dozen dead to change the equation and the conversation.
Is that coming?
You bet your damn life it is.
And when it’s all over, it will be payroll records who tell us who the collaborators and traitors were.
It will not matter if there are trials, because names and faces will be on the Internet and those records will be one of the data bases a prospective employer, landlord, or date might check.
Today’s thugs will fall under a pencil, victims of an unblinking and never-forgetting computer culture.
The ICE thugs are already scared of this — it’s why they wear masks.
And yet the masks are already slipping as citizen activists match names to pictures, with the promise of addresses to follow.
Imagine names, faces, and addresses, cross-tabbed to employers, churches, mortgage holders, credit card files, and bank records, all of it easily accessed and housed on 20 servers in as many countries.
How many pictured and named ICE agents need to be on wheat-paste posters afixed to the sides of mailboxes and the back of street signs for the sense of impunity to dissolve?
When American fight back, we will not lose, and the only question now is the one there’s always been: “What side are you on, brother, what side are you on?”
No comments:
Post a Comment