Olden Days

 I think i's important to point out that people are still dying from COVID-19. Entire cities are being bombed out of existence in Ukraine. Heat continues to ravage the planet as drought plagues the west. 

Meanwhile, we can't seem to negotiate a ceasefire within our own borders. Most Republicans shudder at the thought of any kind of restrictions on what they feel is the unfettered access to guns. When asked if he would support any incremental change in the age limit for citizens to buy weapons, Alabama Representative Mo Brooks explained it all away thus: “I expect that the people who were polled by way of example were not properly explained what the purpose of the Second Amendment right to bear arms is, and I will use my own history as an example. There are many times when I went to school with a shotgun in my car. Why? Because I just got through duck hunting. There were other teenagers my age at that point in time that also brought their weapons to school and they had been hunters, too, for whatever it is the hunting season was about.” Representative Mo is sixty-eight years old. He went to high school in the seventies. Representative Mo does not seem to have any sense of recent history, but he does have a firm grasp on his own carefree adolescence. Representative Mo would also like to be Senator Mo, and it seems unlikely that any sort of panty-waisted waffling on the absolute and unrestricted right for every American to carry a gun around wherever they go might infringe on his right to stuff his pockets with money from the gun lobby. 

Instead of blaming the number of guns within easy access of All Americans, including those who would most likely fail the cursory background check, RepMo points to the "decline of American values" and single parent households. I've got a hot tip for Mister Mo: if indiscriminate killing of one another is "an American value," I don't want anything to do with it. And I'm wondering if he's considered that the number of single parent households is exacerbated by the number of parents being shot. 

Meanwhile, what most Americans see as "common sense" continues to evade those who could make necessary changes in a heartbeat. If they chose to. Which is why those of us, even fifty-three percent of Republicans, need to vote as if our lives depend on it. Why wait for some sort of Dickensian epiphany from one of these dull wits who can't seem to face a future with less carnage? These are the stone hearts that look at the faces of children who will never have a chance to grow up and continue to insist that the problem is us. Not them. 

Time to send them packing. We, the people, in order to form a more perfect union will vote RepMo and his gun club out of office. So we can get to the business of saving the planet.