You think you’ve seen everything, and then…
On December 4th Thomas Massie, a Republican U.S. congressman from Kentucky, felt it was quite appropriate to publish a family Christmas picture with all displaying weapons. These weapons are not hunting rifles…they are weapons meant to kill people.
On top of that, the Guardian reports that Iowa senator Chuck Grassley, the leading Republican on the Senate judiciary committee, blocked a request on Thursday to proceed on gun control legislation in the Senate following the Michigan school shooting last week. He condemned the request as “hostile towards lawful gun owners and lawful firearm transactions.”
Dr. Heather Sher wrote about the differences in wounds from a 9mm handgun and an AR-15. She says, “With an AR-15, the shooter does not have to be particularly accurate. The victim does not have to be unlucky. If a victim takes a direct hit to the liver from an AR-15, the damage is far graver than that of a simple handgun-shot injury. Handgun injuries to the liver are generally survivable unless the bullet hits the main blood supply to the liver. An AR-15 bullet wound to the middle of the liver would cause so much bleeding that the patient would likely never make it to the trauma center to receive our care.”
Read her entire article in the February, 2018 issue of the Atlantic.
Heather Cox Richardson does a superb job of bridging the relationship of this event and the movement of the Republican party towards authoritarianism.
She writes, Laura Thornton, the director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, lays out what American authoritarianism looks like and shows that it is already here. Focusing on Wisconsin, she deplores the statements of Senator Ron Johnson and Republican lawmakers who are openly demanding control over election management in the state.
“I spent more than two decades living and working overseas to advance democracy and credible elections—giving me plenty of opportunity to see the lengths to which autocrats will go to gain power,” Thornton writes. “Even so, the proposed Wisconsin power grab is shocking in its brazenness. If this occurred in any of the countries where the United States provides aid, it would immediately be called out as a threat to democracy. U.S. diplomats would be writing furious cables, and decision makers would be threatening to cut off the flow of assistance.”
How can we stop the march of authoritarianism? Thornton says that “it is up to us, the people. No party or leader will save us here. No foreign savior will shake us out of our stupor. Americans need to start caring about democracy enough to act on it…. Apathy is how democracies die. I’ve seen it.”
What does minority rule look like? It looks like individual liberty and violence to make others do what those in power want.
Buckle up, folks. 2022 might be a bumpy ride.
And now…
You might find this interesting - from The Bulwark
https://morningshots.thebulwark.com/p/the-gop-becomes-the-dck-pic-party
You might find this interesting - from The Bulwark.
https://morningshots.thebulwark.com/p/the-gop-becomes-the-dck-pic-party