'Walter Mitty's Second Amendment' Revisited
Shades of Jeff Snyder via Conor Friedersdorf:
"If you were a malign leader intent on imposing tyranny, what would you find more useful, banning high-capacity magazines... or a vast archive of the bank records, phone calls, texts and emails of millions of citizens that you could access in secret? Would you, as a malign leader, feel more empowered by a background check requirement on gun purchases... or the ability to legally kill anyone in secret on your say so alone? The powers the Republican Party has given to the presidency since 9/11 would obviously enable far more grave abuses in the hands of a would be tyrant than any gun control legislation with even a miniscule chance of passing Congress. So why are so many liberty-invoking 2nd Amendment absolutists reliable Republican voters, as if the GOP's stance on that issue somehow makes up for its shortcomings? And why do they so seldom speak up about threats to the Bill of Rights that don't involve guns?"
Why?
'cos they hate the imaginary monolith Other they like to call The Left* far more than they in their psychic maladjustment will ever love liberty as in one form and another it is understood among 99% and counting of those of us as far outside the GOP-right "gun rights" fever swamp as it is possible to be this side of Alpha Centauri Amos. I thought you knew that.
*I am not now, nor have I ever thought to self-designate as, anything other than a man of the (smallest of ls) left. And not to tell tales out of the Little One-Room One-World Red-Diaper Schoolhouse That Could, but there are enough of us, especially among those of us of the gauchiste persuasion of a decidedly elitist bent in matters of kultur, who, find ourselves somewhere along the vast leeward side of the rocking and pitching ship of state though we might, loathe enough of the more piously authoritarian among our fellow seasick, and with a passion matching that lapping with tongues of fire those on the deck opposite, to all but guarantee that a monolith will always bid fair to be among the last of the names for whatever cod-formation we over our ragged ranks might at any kaleidoscope turn assume. And so, knowing you've read your history and can still recall without prompting at least a few of the naughty bits, I pass on and unto today's musical selections, none of them, to the best of my knowledge and wholly unlike all posts here so far to do with American politics, in the key of F and seldom beneath fortississimo at that.
"If you were a malign leader intent on imposing tyranny, what would you find more useful, banning high-capacity magazines... or a vast archive of the bank records, phone calls, texts and emails of millions of citizens that you could access in secret? Would you, as a malign leader, feel more empowered by a background check requirement on gun purchases... or the ability to legally kill anyone in secret on your say so alone? The powers the Republican Party has given to the presidency since 9/11 would obviously enable far more grave abuses in the hands of a would be tyrant than any gun control legislation with even a miniscule chance of passing Congress. So why are so many liberty-invoking 2nd Amendment absolutists reliable Republican voters, as if the GOP's stance on that issue somehow makes up for its shortcomings? And why do they so seldom speak up about threats to the Bill of Rights that don't involve guns?"
Why?
'cos they hate the imaginary monolith Other they like to call The Left* far more than they in their psychic maladjustment will ever love liberty as in one form and another it is understood among 99% and counting of those of us as far outside the GOP-right "gun rights" fever swamp as it is possible to be this side of Alpha Centauri Amos. I thought you knew that.
*I am not now, nor have I ever thought to self-designate as, anything other than a man of the (smallest of ls) left. And not to tell tales out of the Little One-Room One-World Red-Diaper Schoolhouse That Could, but there are enough of us, especially among those of us of the gauchiste persuasion of a decidedly elitist bent in matters of kultur, who, find ourselves somewhere along the vast leeward side of the rocking and pitching ship of state though we might, loathe enough of the more piously authoritarian among our fellow seasick, and with a passion matching that lapping with tongues of fire those on the deck opposite, to all but guarantee that a monolith will always bid fair to be among the last of the names for whatever cod-formation we over our ragged ranks might at any kaleidoscope turn assume. And so, knowing you've read your history and can still recall without prompting at least a few of the naughty bits, I pass on and unto today's musical selections, none of them, to the best of my knowledge and wholly unlike all posts here so far to do with American politics, in the key of F and seldom beneath fortississimo at that.
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