Who are You Going to Shoot?

Forgive me for breaking up my stories from Ireland but I’m back home now taking a fresh look at the country I live in and its politics.  I’ll send you ‘Tales from Donegal’ very soon. It is half-written.  This one is done.

I have quite a few FaceBook friends and have gained more over the years by slowly finding people from my past. One group is people from the small Central Illinois town where I went to public school.  I graduated with 26 other students.

I always felt like I knew everyone in that community, and they knew me.  That was not true then and is even less true now.  Lots of us have moved away and others have taken our places.  But I find individuals, both living there and elsewhere, and when I do, I ask them to be friends.  Usually, they say yes.

I can’t help but think of those people as they were when we were both young, 50 or more years ago.  We’ve both changed a lot, and by reading their posts I learn more about them; what they did or still do for a living, the make-up of their families, what political beliefs they hold.

I want to stay close to them for who they are, not what their politics happen to be, or their interests.  We can’t help but have a lot in common because our childhoods were remarkably the same, or at least it seems to me they were.  We didn’t look for each other’s differences back then.  We assumed, or at least I did, that we were all in this thing adults called “life” together.  We’re all from the same place after all.  Same school, same town, same cornfields.

I unfriend very few people  Occasionally I reject the really over the top political posers on either side, right or left, who keep sharing false or questionable posts.  I welcome exposure to how those who differ from my beliefs feel, and how they react to the events we both experience.  I’m a liberal democrat, but plenty of my friends are not.  We’re still friends.  At least I think we are.  But sometimes they go silent and I fear politics has come between us.

That happens sometimes.  I had this exchange with a former friend from my hometown, an actual friend from high school and then a FaceBook friend for a few years.  He was a couple of years older than me, a Vietnam Vet (I was lucky not to be drafted), and a staunch defender of the second amendment.  He posted something along these lines.

“If the libtards try impeaching our president, we’re going to have to get our AR 15’s out and take control of the situation.”

Don’t quote him or me, but that was the sentiment.   A threat of violence, exercising his second amendment rights if our government used a constitutional process to remove a sitting president from office. 

This is a guy I know.  I played basketball with him.  Good guy.  I didn’t believe he would resort to those tactics, gun violence against people who disagree with him politically, joining a violent right-wing mob in the streets.

 

So, I replied with this message to make him think and perhaps spark an answer and a discussion:

“Who are you going to shoot?”

He didn’t reply.  In fact, after I saw nothing from him for weeks, I checked his status and discovered he unfriended me.  I guess I crossed a line of some kind in his mind like a few people have in mine.  He didn’t want to hear any more of what I had to say.  And now we have no opportunity to trade views of any kind.  I hope he’s doing OK.  We were kids together after all.

I thought it was some random sentiment until this week when once again the same idea popped up in an unlikely place, Major League Baseball.   An umpire posted this on his twitter feed

“I will be  buying an AR-15 tomorrow, because if you impeach MY PRESIDENT this way, YOU WILL HAVE ANOTHER CIVAL WAR!!!!!!!!!”

He quickly took it down, but not before it became national news. MLB is concerned enough with its image that it is taking his threat seriously.  He’s issued an apology.  The standard spin is happening.  The story has not yet died.  But there it is again.  Impeach my guy and I start shooting.

 

Years ago, I used to argue with gun rights advocates about the growing mass shootings and lack of background checks.  Once, with a particularly frank friend, after more than a few beers, he shared his sort of background belief in a low voice.  Like he was telling me a secret.  The heart of the matter.  He was a former cop.

“You know why we’re free, don’t you?  The government knows we’re armed to the teeth.  They can’t screw with Americans or their rights, because they know what would happen.”

“What would happen?”

“We’d get our guns out and the country would go up for grabs.”

“You mean in England, and Ireland, and Belgium, and Japan and most other developed countries where governments have kept a lid on guns, they’re not free?  They still have working democracies.  It seems to be going well for them.  Why are they so different than us?”

“Oh, you poor naïve liberal bastard you.  Haven’t you learned anything?  Power comes from the barrel of a gun.  Give up your guns and you’re dead.  That’s why the second amendment is so important.  If they come for us, they’re going to have a fight on their hands.”

“Oh, come on.  If they really come for us, they also have the army, air force, navy, and marines.  I don’t think its likely a bunch of scared white men shooting guns in the streets are going to make a difference.  The thing that is going to make the difference is voting.  Free and open elections.  Using democracy the way it was intended.”

“Damn it, McClure.  I thought you were smarter than that.  I need another beer.”

Those conversations often dead-end and friends agree to disagree.  All the same, I thought, on that topic, he was crazy.  He thought I was a naïve pacifist.  I thought he held on to a violent fantasy. 

   

Apparently, that idea is still alive.  On Tuesday the 22^nd of October Rick Wiles, senior pastor at Flowing Streams Church in Florida made this remark on his right-wing TruNews TV program. 

Cowboys, mountain men, and “guys that know how to do violence” would start attacking and “hunting down Democrats”.  

He says a lot more.  He is particularly critical of Beto O’Rourke for proposing a ban on assault rifles and advocating the removal of not for profit status for churches who discriminate against our LGBTQ populations.  Beto is not popular with the Reverend at all.  As are all democrats who have “never accepted the election of our current commander in chief.”

I watched that broadcast, which was slickly produced I have to say.  Nice promo, computer graphics, background music.  You would think you were watching a network news special.  He started with a monologue then brought on a guest.  The lighting was good.  They wore nice suits with ties.  Here are their greatest hits.

•           We (I couldn’t tell how he defined “we”.  Democrats and Republicans?  Democrats and Christians?) are two different people sharing the same land.
•          The Civil War has already begun.  The policies are laid out.  The conflict has begun.  It’s just that no shots have yet to be fired. 
•  Our brothers the Southern Baptists and the Charismatics are preparing to defend their churches, and their homes, with militias if needed.
•     Christians in America are under assault.
•          I am not a violent man and I don’t want to cause harm, but I will defend the cross, the bible, and the church with my blood if necessary.  

I don’t go looking for these sites, except when I start to do research on a blog post.  I hadn’t heard of Breitbart News until our current president was elected and I became acquainted with former Breitbart exec Steve Bannon and his thoughts on America and its future.  Breitbart is almost mainstream now.  But you don’t have to seek out the right's internet addresses to hear a call to violence.  You can get it on the evening news.

Heck, you can hear it from the president of our country.  They’re veiled threats, but threats all the same.  Here are parts of a POTUS speech delivered in Pittsburgh to the Shale Insight conference, an annual energy industry event focused on fracking in the Marcellus shale basin, a region in the key voting states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, on Wednesday the 23^rd.  A protestor interrupted his speech and our president responded this way, speaking ostensibly to the security guards but mostly the crowd.

“Don’t hurt him.  Don’t hurt him, please.  They don’t know they’re dealing with very tough people in this room.”

Wild applause and laughter.

“Oh, they don’t know who they’re dealing with.  They don’t know who they’re dealing with.  They just don’t understand.  All right.  Go home to mom.”

More laughter.

“Explain to mom that you tried to take on very powerful people and many of them physically as well as mentally.  That is not a good thing to do-not in this room.  Be careful.”

Big guys with hard hats were sitting near the President on the stage, grinning broadly. 

During his 2016 campaign, the presidential candidate that would go on to win the election but lose the popular vote was occasionally more explicit, at one point telling supporters at a rally if they assaulted a protestor, he would pay their legal bills.  At another rally he said, of another protestor, he would like to “punch him in the face.”

After incidents in which protesters at his rallies were assaulted, Trump modified his language.  He embraces physical toughness as a virtue and has demonstrated few qualms about those who speak out against him being handled roughly.  But he has mastered the ability to say what he means in a way that he can claim to have meant the opposite.  Like a hostage forced to read a letter on TV prepared by his captors to the folks back home. 

Our president embraces the idea that he’s the representative of the toughest Americans, people who would do battle for him if necessary.  In an interview with Breitbart News in March of this year, the president made the point more explicitly.

“I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump-I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough, until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”

I don’t really think my boyhood friend is part of that group.  I want to think his post was intended to be provocative.  Bluster and bravado.  But could that certain point, which the leader of our nation referred to earlier this year, which he claims would be very bad, be an impeachment vote in the house? 

And if it is, I still want an answer to my question.   Who are the tough people with guns going to shoot?  Could it be me?