| The Daily Show with Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| NRA Convention 2013 | ||||
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| The Daily Show with Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| The Good, the Bad and the Crazy | ||||
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God, we haven't seen a bigger bunch of crackpots since CPAC - or the Republican presidential primaries last fall, I guess.
And you know, the NRA has a new president, James Porter. I don't suppose he's completely batshit crazy, is he?
Porter got things going yesterday by pledging to fight a “culture war” against “fake President” Barack Obama. He also says that all Americans should be trained to use standard military weapons for possible use against the United States government.
Two other things stand out about Porter. First, he appears to signal a doubling down on the NRA’s base among older, white male Southerners or to put it more frontally, on racists, calling the Civil War “the War of Northern Aggression.”
Secondly, Porter’s background as an attorney defending firearms manufacturers from lawsuits points to what is many ways the organization’s real role as a trade organization for firearms manufacturers.
In any case, with Porter’s ascendency we seem to have moved a big step closer to the NRA leadership’s full embrace of milita-style rhetoric and increasingly open threats of violence against government officials and workers.
Get that? Porter isn't just pushing guns, he's pushing military-grade weapons for fighting our democratically elected government. Barack Obama is a "fake" president - somehow - so I guess those Obama targets make sense now, huh?
Keep in mind that it was George W. Bush, not Barack Obama, who lost the popular vote and was appointed president in 2000 by the five Republicans on the Supreme Court (5 to 4, it was that close). But it's Obama who's supposedly the "fake" president?
Of course, to Porter, the Civil War is still the "War of Northern Aggression," so it's pretty clear that "fake" means "black," don't you think? Bush was a "real" president by that calculation, since he was white. Doubling down on racism, indeed!
This is the guy the NRA chose as their new president. Incredible, isn't it? But then, he's a lawyer for firearms manufacturers, the people who actually run the NRA.
Let me just conclude with this clip from the Colbert Report. He focuses on a slightly different angle, that massive government conspiracy to buy up all the ammunition in America:
I know I keep asking this, but is there no limit to the crazy in America? Sure, we expect crazy when it comes from Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh. But should we expect crazy from United States senators? Should we expect crazy from Republican presidential and vice-presidential candidates?
Crazy in an insane asylum, or from talk radio or cable TV, isn't overly surprising. Manufactured crazy, to push the commercial interests of gun and ammo manufacturers, isn't too surprising, either, I suppose. But absolute, batshit crazy in a mainstream political party? Crazy in the political leadership of that party? How did that become normal?
And think about James Porter and his "War of Northern Aggression." These people are still unhappy at the end of slavery! Incredible, isn't it? Is all this crazy just the revenge of the Confederacy?
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2 comments:
"Porter got things going yesterday by pledging to fight a “culture war” against “fake President” Barack Obama. He also says that all Americans should be trained to use standard military weapons for possible use against the United States government."
I don't get too worked anymore watching these freaks puff their chests out and talk tough. It seems , more often than not, they TALK a good game. Case in point:
http://www.mediaite.com/online/2nd-duhmendment-would-be-armed-marchers-on-the-white-house-wuss-rapidly-out/
Nonetheless, my message to them is always the same:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7ajdZzgR74
Sure, they're full of bluster and bullshit, Jeff. But it only takes one guy crazy enough to start killing people.
It's not going to be Porter or LaPierre, of course. No, it's going to be some anonymous loser who's crazy enough and dumb enough to take them seriously.
After all, it wasn't Glenn Beck who loaded up his truck with guns and headed out to kill everyone at the Tides Foundation. It was just one of his fans, some complete idiot who didn't laugh at Beck's rhetoric like we do.
Fanatic Muslim imams don't typically kill people, either. They just convince other people to do the killing.
So I'd say that you're right, but you're also wrong. They're still dangerous, even when they're too chickenshit to do anything themselves.
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