01.19.13
National Gun Nut Day
Today’s the time to go to your local gun store, or collect in a crowd of churlish white men at the capitol building in a red state, curse the president and liberals, vow you will defend the Constitution against tyranny, and menace everyone who isn’t in your tribe of play-acting insurrectionists.
From the wires:
Hundreds of people are gathering in state capitals nationwide to rally against stricter gun control measures.
An estimated 600 people turned out so far for Saturday speeches in Austin, Texas. Many are carrying signs with messages such as “An Armed Society is a Polite Society” and “The Second Amendment Comes from God.”
A great way to commemorate a famous African American civil rights leader. Who was shot by a white guy.
The “come and take it” thing is a derivation of the Greek “molon labe,” a phrase of defiance allegedly thrown at the Persians by the Spartans at Thermopylae. Of course, at Thermopylae, the weapons were pikes, spears and blades, not AR-15s and .50-caliber semi-automatic sniper rifles.
Co-opted by WhiteManistan, it’s now deadeningly used in merchandising, on asinine T-shirts, placards and flags which absurdly try to sell the delusion that crowds of mouthy fattish white guys with semi-automatic assault rifles are the only thing standing between America and tyranny. It’s just another part of the act in which gun nut WhiteManistan finds satisfaction in symbolically threatening others with (in the case of the photo at the top of the page) … heavy weapons.
The National Gun Nut Day Song.
A few lines from an editorial at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, via Frank at Pine View Farm, encapsulates it:
Any American who needs an assault weapon for possibly making war on his supposedly dictatorial government is really contemplating another Civil War … At least the Civil War was about real issues, not the sour fruit of paranoia that makes some of today’s alleged patriots so dyspeptic …
Indeed, if you think you must have an assault rifle to fight your own government and people, you might as well think about joining al-Qaida and have done with it. I understand that if you join this month, you get a T-shirt and a complimentary bag of dates.
It can’t be emphasized enough. What this part of WhiteManistan is about is threatening others and denial of the legitimacy of the current democratically elected government.
The ongoing dilemma is how to escape and divest from WhiteManistan with the least amount of damage in the years ahead.
In terms of publicity, the gun nut demographic has spent the last few weeks fucking the dog under the spotlight. It has built a repugnant image, laughably so. The president understands this and it now remains to be seen whether the nation can make something happen in gun control.