JUNE 19, 2021 – Don’t tread on me . . . with your gun fetish. Hunt all you want (with your registered rifle and firearm safety classes) and skeet shoot until you drop (likewise, with a registered firearm and adequate instruction), but don’t think that because you’re obsessed with your “right to bear arms,” I’m not obsessed with my right to be safe in a store, café, or other establishment. This is 2021, not 1821, and my “right” to civilized expectations ought to override your right to “bear arms” in the way of Daniel Boone, who died in 1820 at the ripe old age of 86.
Like so many “radical, socialist, leftist” Democrats, I’ve had it—had it—with the position of so “extremist, authoritarian, rightist” Republicans on the issue of gun control. They’ve wrapped themselves so tightly in the “team colors,” they’ve restricted oxygen flow to their brains—and to reality, common sense, and civilized society. The freedom and liberty to own and carry guns—and the wholly out-of-control proliferation of firearms—render us uncivilized.
The issue of gun control is emblematic of the entire “Don’t Tread on Me!” mentality that has a lock on today’s Republican Party. Members of this soulless group cling to the illusion that they can live and do as they selfishly please, wholly independent of the other 7.87 billion people crowding the planet.
Instead of moving toward a modern, civilized, and enlightened perspective, the “Go-it-alone” forces in this country are pushing ever more rigorously in the opposite direction. Witness Missouri, where the (extremist, etc.) Republican governor recently signed a bill (at a gun store called “Frontier Justice”) that imposes a $50,000 fine on any local law agency that enforces gun control laws. I’m not in the practice of using “WTF,” but . . . WTF?!
The militant opposition to public health efforts in the face of Covid-19 . . . strike that; the anti-social defiance of public health . . . on the part of “extremist, etc.” Republicans revealed just how dangerously selfish “Don’t Tread on Me!” is in practice. The evil that it spawned was manifest in its most concentrated, evident form on January 6. Yet even that sledge-hammering event didn’t quell the anti-American streak that dominates the Republican Party.
Did I say, “anti-American”? What if it turns out that this uncivilized streak is, in historical fact, quintessentially American? What if Medicare, the Interstate Highway System, safety inspections, land grant universities, the National Park system, and federal (God Bless Our) military are notable exceptions to the rule? What if we Democrats (moderates, as well as “radical, socialist, leftists”) who worry about public health—including gun control—are the aliens, the outliers, the exceptions to what is and always has been at heart, a “grab what you can for yourself, and grab it now” culture?
If rules and regulations don’t guarantee that society will be civilized, their absence guarantees that society will be uncivilized—and eventually, unraveled. If that’s is where we’re headed, it’s because that’s where we’ve always been.
(Remember to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.)
© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
