NRA 500 NASCAR

I’m watching the NRA 500 NASCAR race on TV while typing this.  I guess that makes me……wait a minute….

If you support the right of citizens to own firearms, they have disparaging names for you. Gun Nut comes to mind. Knuckle Dragging Reprobate has been used. Somebody called me this once without knowing I was walking right beside him, as he stood there staring at the NRA sticker on my truck(not a Prius) window.

 I was parked at the national seashore, getting ready to hike among the wildflowers and the elk herd. I was coming back from the outhouse, which I had visited for the usual reasons. I was hiking for the usual reasons too, so I must have blended in with the various people this guy might have approved of. This time I wasn’t  wearing body armor, carrying a black colored military style large capacity high powered penis augmenting assault weapon, or for that matter, planning my next mass public shooting, so he didn’t recognize me as the enemy when I walked by. 

I was simply enjoying the wonder of the park. But I had a sticker on my window, deliberately, and without remorse. So I shouldn’t have been surprised at the less than cordial response from that other citizen. He was simply doing what he’d been trained to do. He was hating me.

Likely, he would have been surprised, for I didn’t shoot him.

Wasn’t even considering it. Wasn’t armed. Wasn’t angry. Wasn’t feeling vengeful. And of course, I don’t do such things. Did shake my head a little, cause I do that when attacked for no good reason, but ya get used to this abuse if you support the Constitution and the rights of citizens….you get used to it after a while, because it keeps coming.

Lotta talk about bullying these days. Gotta stop bullying in school, because it hurts feelings, and drives kids to suicide, or messes with their self-esteem.  But then there is that other bullying that is deliberate and encouraged, and it’s coming from the folks who claim to be the good guys. And they do it for a reason.

I’m familiar with the bullying when the other side was in charge of the country, and the House Un-American Activities folks went after the Communists hiding under the beds. Sure, the Communists had undeniably  infiltrated Hollywood, and they were doing their best to undermine our society, but that never excused the abuse heaped upon the innocent and the harmless that characterized those witch hunts.

And I watched as the other extreme, the folks who call themselves progressive, scramble to assume control over our country. They are clearly in charge now, and they know it. And it is their turn to bully, and to persecute folks under beds.

Got to give them credit, for they have done everything right in their power grab. They’ve taken over education of our children, most of the sources of news and information, (just like the Communists tried back in the 50’s) and they are working on locking down government to do their bidding. They’ve done an effective job so far. But the issue isn’t settled quite yet, and we are still in the demonizing, name calling, and misinformation (lying) stage of seizing power.

You remember my theory, (yeah, it’s probably somebody else’s idea, but I’ve fallen in love with it) where I postulate that if we didn’t have enemies, we wouldn’t need leaders, so any ambitious sociopath who wishes to assume a leadership role needs to invent an enemy so folks will clamor for rescue, and promote said sociopath to control. 

You see this at all levels. Remember that one girl in high school who turned the whole click against one helpless gal so she could bask in the thrill of power and control? Have you been caught up in office politics? Ever see this behavior from the ambitious or greedy leader of a church dressed in a shiny suit? Heck, ever not?

Military leaders, the leaders of countries, the leaders of revolutions all play this card. This is the history of human civilization. The leader points out somebody and instructs followers to hate, to abuse, to bully, all in the name of good of course, for those others are bad. Rally to the cause, or whatever. Hate for good.

So I’ve grown accustomed to being, ah, bad.

I was too young to notice the witch hunts of the early 50’s, but I wouldn’t have liked those guys. Now as I watch the other side pull the same hurtful nonsense, I don’t much like them, either. Both of these reprehensible groups want the same thing. Power and control. They want to run the place, and they choose their enemies to hate for no more reason than they were the folks who were in the way, and there’s only room for one on top.  And we get to watch as they name call, misinform, demonize, and otherwise manipulate people to hate and bully invented enemies so they can in turn take control of the power over us.

This all has been done many times before; it is all of history after all, and the people get caught up in it every single time. They get used by sociopaths who want to run their lives. 

Hitler turned his subjects against the Jews by comparing them to rats, lying and misinforming. He demonized an enemy the people would rally against, and oh by the way, put Hitler into power to save them. That worked out, right? Stalin pulled the same nonsense with all the various millions of enemies of the state that he imprisoned and executed to keep himself in power. Radical Islam instructs its followers to hate some folks, and guess where that leads? And dontcha wonder about the crew in Kansas that thinks we all should rally against and kill homosexuals?

Among many others, the socialists who are taking over this country, in the guise of being progressive, have assembled a long list of enemies their subjects are instructed to hate, and bully. The Occupy folks went after “the capitalists”, those nasty Tea Party people who opposed a government ruined healthcare system earned all manner of names and disrespect from our new bosses, and don’t forget the disdain with which our president reserves for the people who cling to God and Guns. Heaven help ya if you try to quietly live your own religion today, and you be damned if you own guns.

I haven’t become an enemy of the state because of my religion. Or because I am a capitalist…..yet.  I’m useful as a cash cow now, to be taxed mercilessly and to be held up as yet another enemy of the people.

But wow, if I own guns……well that’s the worstest, most dangerous  enemy of all, and I must be stopped. We need some leaders to stop me. And ya all better be calling me nasty names, cause that’s what you do to bully and demonize folks for the good of your leaders. 

I’m not really a bad person. Even my guns aren’t real bad, sitting as they do in my gun safe. It’s not their fault that some are black. But ya never know when I might go off my nut and start killing folks. That’s what guns do. They make people like me into killers. It’s just a matter of time. Just ask our leaders.

So I’m a gun nut. And a knuckle dragging reprobate. 

And the worst, evil, nasty, enemy of the state….is the National Rifle Association. It’s all their fault that the decent people cannot feel safe. It’s the fault of the NRA that criminals act like criminals, that hopelessly overmedicated depressed people kill themselves, that….oh hell….whatever is wrong with America is the fault of the NRA, so let’s save the ink and just blame them for everything. They are the perfect enemy to demonize, to recruit and rally folks to support the new leaders of America, the leaders we need to protect us from the enemy.

Newtown is the NRA’s fault, as are the 500 killers killed in Chicago each year, the crazy man in the tower, the woman-beating-raping man who won’t obey his restraining order, the freak who kills Bambi. All the NRA’s fault. So the venom drips from lips of the news and entertainment media, in the schools, around the water cooler, in the halls of Congress. 

I have another theory. Listen carefully because that’s why this ramble was written. 

The Brady Campaign is the most powerful antigun group, besides the politicians and media, in this country. They have been around for years. They claim to have a million mom march against guns. They claim to be the reasonable and common sense source of information about crime and firearms, and they, uh, lie often. They have 28,000 members scattered about the nation. Their million mom march is even smaller. I think there still might be two ladies in Lafayette who write the newspaper often. The paper of course, publishes their anti-gun letters, obediently. 

The Brady Campaign has the president’s ear, and they have unlimited access to the media, the congress, to any opportunity to get their message out. And they can say most anything without being challenged.

The NRA doesn’t have the president’s ear, and although they occasionally get to talk with an antagonistic congress, their limited opportunity to spread their message to the public through the media nets a tad bit of editing designed to turn their arguments into the raving of lunatics. But…

The NRA has a bit shy of 5 million members, a rather large chest full of money, and the ability to influence some elections, because when they tell 100 million legal, law abiding gun owners in America their version of the truth, said Americans vote, and often those politicians who would deny the citizens their Constitutional rights find themselves out of work, simply because those American voters choose to keep their guns, and the people get rid of some of the worst of the politicians. 

And here is the dirty little secret…Those out of work politicians who lost their gigs over the last few decades because the evil NRA has been helping to save the citizens’ rights….they are the very same politicians who would have been furthering the agenda of the progressive, socialist, or use your favorite term for the current crop that wants to rid us of our freedom and control our lives. Let’s just say…that if we hadn’t been tossing politicians out of office for infringing upon our gun rights, we would be far further along the slide into absolute government control of our country. 

Now you’d think the folks manipulating the information and instructing people who to hate so they will put the socialist folks into leadership, would have figured this out, and they would have adopted a less self-destructive path to control. But perhaps they realize that an armed citizen is not their friend under any scenario they concoct, and their totalitarian dreams cannot be realized as long as freedom can oppose them.

So they continue their assault on gun rights, and upon those of us who own guns, and thus we walk through the shower of insults and attacks on our ethics and our relevance. We endure the bullying and name calling, we try to ignore being called baby killers, and we look for and don’t find the blood on our hands, because we know this is the game, and we must continue to play, or lose our country and our freedom. We refuse to be bullied into silence.

And so I’m watching the NRA 500 NASCAR race, and I have a NRA sticker on the car too, as well as the truck.  The one side says the NRA sponsoring a public event is polarizing, which they say is not right. They are the only ones allowed to polarize, for they need to name enemies to recruit more haters. So no doubt I’ve earned whatever nasty name they want to apply to me this time, too.

 And I can only hope that the next well indoctrinated guy who sees my NRA sticker in a public parking lot supported by my tax dollars, will stop at only insulting me.