Whereof I am commander,
With a burning spear and a horse of air,
To the wilderness I wander.
By a knight of ghosts and shadows
I summoned am to tourney
Ten leagues beyond the wide world's end:
Methinks it is no journey.
-Tom O'Bedlam-
America's already tenuous grasp on reality is constantly being tested and we are constantly failing that test while moving ever closer to hysterical fugue. Hark, hark, the Trump does bark and the outrage peddlers have driven us mad
Modern awareness contains a galaxy of causes: some real, some imaginary and most are struggling for attention over all the others by ginning up outrage and pulling us into one dark circus tent or another. Reality makes us fear, but the game is in fantasy outrage and a thousand pipers whistle their tune for us all to follow -- and so we do.
The NRA is a very skilled user of outrage, having convinced millions of people that the major objective of ever politician who doesn't march to their piper is a demon out to get your guns. They have little to do with having created America's traditional love affair with weapons, but they have made firearms into a fetish, a flag, a symbol of all our dreams of liberty. Some simply can't conceive of being a free country without unlimited access to firearms. It's a religion of sorts and nothing fires up the imbecile like threatening his religion. It works.
What politician doesn't wish he could enlist the outrage of the masses to make himself the hero, the Hercules, the Sampson, the Gilgamesh who can lead us to vote for him and protect us from every enemy his imagination can conceive of?
Enter Donald Trump, or adventavit Asinus if you prefer. Obama is going to grab your guns he says - the same thing his party's bilge rats have been squeaking since he first ran for office. Some of us watch aghast as he says things designed to attract the confused and angry and focus their power with his daily outrages. In fact he can predict things that never happen, he can demonstrate total ignorance of things that are all important for an American president but none of it matters to those all in a perpetual rage against all those who seek to grab their guns. It doesn't matter that no one has yet tried, just as it doesn't matter than prophets have warned us of impending apocalypse since the dawn of politics. Every tomorrow is the end of days and any Democrat is the end of your guns and you can certainly fool enough of those good folks all the time. It doesn't matter than there was no secret hidden in Obama's birth certificate or that any of his claims to secrets have come to nothing. It's all about the guns. No one ever went broke predicting the Gungrabber Apocalypse.
So are you surprised that that immigrant-bashing grandson son of immigrants is warning us of an imminent executive order by the Devil Obama to grab your guns? Illegal, can't be done, won't be done, but it's not about reality and never was. No politician has a good chance of winning anything if he's seen as a gungrabber and any accusation is as good as a death sentence to anyone challenging the Dark Knight, the NRA..
I wonder if Hillary has grown so arrogant as to ignore this, with suggestions of Federal buybacks, the kind of program that's been a waste of time up until now, or a promise to "go after" manufacturers whose legal products are used illegally - something she should know has no legal grounds.
But of course there's that outrage addiction on the other side too and perhaps she thinks she will be seen as a savior for the real phobics and magic thinkers who somehow claim they're liberals and aren't interested in compromise or in restricting legislation to the possible and rational.
So does this last gungrabber plot prediction suggest Trump is running out of fake outrages and is now at the bottom of the barrell? Could be, but do we want to bet on it? Are you feeling lucky?
America's already tenuous grasp on reality is constantly being tested and we are constantly failing that test while moving ever closer to hysterical fugue. Hark, hark, the Trump does bark and the outrage peddlers have driven us mad
Modern awareness contains a galaxy of causes: some real, some imaginary and most are struggling for attention over all the others by ginning up outrage and pulling us into one dark circus tent or another. Reality makes us fear, but the game is in fantasy outrage and a thousand pipers whistle their tune for us all to follow -- and so we do.
The NRA is a very skilled user of outrage, having convinced millions of people that the major objective of ever politician who doesn't march to their piper is a demon out to get your guns. They have little to do with having created America's traditional love affair with weapons, but they have made firearms into a fetish, a flag, a symbol of all our dreams of liberty. Some simply can't conceive of being a free country without unlimited access to firearms. It's a religion of sorts and nothing fires up the imbecile like threatening his religion. It works.
What politician doesn't wish he could enlist the outrage of the masses to make himself the hero, the Hercules, the Sampson, the Gilgamesh who can lead us to vote for him and protect us from every enemy his imagination can conceive of?
Enter Donald Trump, or adventavit Asinus if you prefer. Obama is going to grab your guns he says - the same thing his party's bilge rats have been squeaking since he first ran for office. Some of us watch aghast as he says things designed to attract the confused and angry and focus their power with his daily outrages. In fact he can predict things that never happen, he can demonstrate total ignorance of things that are all important for an American president but none of it matters to those all in a perpetual rage against all those who seek to grab their guns. It doesn't matter that no one has yet tried, just as it doesn't matter than prophets have warned us of impending apocalypse since the dawn of politics. Every tomorrow is the end of days and any Democrat is the end of your guns and you can certainly fool enough of those good folks all the time. It doesn't matter than there was no secret hidden in Obama's birth certificate or that any of his claims to secrets have come to nothing. It's all about the guns. No one ever went broke predicting the Gungrabber Apocalypse.
So are you surprised that that immigrant-bashing grandson son of immigrants is warning us of an imminent executive order by the Devil Obama to grab your guns? Illegal, can't be done, won't be done, but it's not about reality and never was. No politician has a good chance of winning anything if he's seen as a gungrabber and any accusation is as good as a death sentence to anyone challenging the Dark Knight, the NRA..
I wonder if Hillary has grown so arrogant as to ignore this, with suggestions of Federal buybacks, the kind of program that's been a waste of time up until now, or a promise to "go after" manufacturers whose legal products are used illegally - something she should know has no legal grounds.
But of course there's that outrage addiction on the other side too and perhaps she thinks she will be seen as a savior for the real phobics and magic thinkers who somehow claim they're liberals and aren't interested in compromise or in restricting legislation to the possible and rational.
So does this last gungrabber plot prediction suggest Trump is running out of fake outrages and is now at the bottom of the barrell? Could be, but do we want to bet on it? Are you feeling lucky?
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