Discharge

 I am really not sure why I keep watching. I can only liken it to the response many of us have after blowing our nose. That urge to take a peek inside the Kleenex to see if anything mysterious may have been extruded. In the best possible case in this scenario you are looking at a blob of snot. All other instances would be call for alarm. 

What I am suggesting here is that sometimes it's best to just blow your nose and move on. No peeking. 

This is the tack I am trying to generate when it comes to things like the National Rifle Association. I know that this organization exists, much in the way that I know snot exists. I don't need to be a pulmonologist to know that I would rather not have mucus in anything but the tiniest amounts. I have this same feeling about the National Rifle Association. 

And yet, somehow I feel drawn to their gatherings. What sort of twisted and vile reasoning are the most prominent Second Amendment Worshipers clinging to this year? Members of the Grand Old Party, heretofore known as "The Right" showed up in force to promote the case that one of them should be running the country so that all this nonsense about "gun control" could be set aside so that we could get back to the business of saving fetuses so that they could grow up to be innocent third graders killed in an underfunded classroom somewhere. 

Whoops. See what I did there? I started messing with the boogers. I could have just let it stand that there was a convention in Houston and a bunch of guys with red ties showed up. That sort of thing happens all the time. Why should I care? I don't get my tissue in a twist just because the Texas Association of Magicians is gathering there in September. Why should it matter if a bunch of pistol-packing nutjobs are all hanging around together in a conference center deep in the heart of Texas? 

Sorry. "Nutjobs" was perhaps a little overstated, but for those wishing to pander to the heavily armed fringe of America that believes that if God didn't want us to have guns he wouldn't have given us trigger fingers, the National Rifle Association Convention would be where you would want to land. If it was in your campaign's best interest to tell these folks that America didn't have a gun problem, it has a “left-wing crusade to weaponize government against law-abiding citizens.” And if one of those red tie guys just happened to have recently been arrested for lying and cheating, would you still have to pay attention to everything he said? 

Sadly, in my case, that turns out to be true. I kept looking in just to see how awful it could be. Hundreds of dues-paying cult members, waiting to be told that all those dead men, women and children were just part of some evil conspiracy to take away their guns. Another red tie who used to work with that other guy exhorted the crowd: “Stop endangering our lives with gun bans, and stop trampling on the God-given rights of the American people every time tragedy happens.”

So much snot. So little Kleenex.