A gun on a T-shirt at work spells trouble ahead for all sides
A White man over 6 feet tall with a wiry, muscular build walked around in the outdoor adventure store where I work in Downtown Seattle today. He was dressed in solid black clothing. Black shorts cut off below the knees. Shiny steel pocket chain. Solid black, tank top muscle shirt. Black, military style baseball cap. Across his chest on the shirt was a stylized white image of an AR-15-style semi-automatic assault rifle. You can guess where this is going, yes? Underneath the AR-15, however, was stamped in white letters the following words, “This machine kills racists.” This was on the day after the attempt on the life of former President Donald John Trump.
Yes, Trump is a bigot. He usurped the Election of 2016 even tho he lost the national popular vote by the greatest margin ever in a case where he intimidated the Electoral College delegates to vote for him. He intimidated delegates who initially refused to vote for him to go ahead and cast their ballots for him anyway. During the Second Black Lives Matter Revolt breaking out in May 2020 after the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Trump allegedly came close to invoking the Insurrection Act to suppress riots and other violent protests.
He attempted a sloppy, incompetent coup to maintain power on the 6th of January 2021. He had his destructive mob of followers attempt to lynch his own Vice-President as well as the Speaker of the House as Congress attempted to certify the carefully tabulated EC vote. Trump supposedly came close to invoking the Insurrection Act once more even tho he was the one attempting an insurrection. His supporters cry nonsense as he can’t overthrow himself as he was already POTUS. They conveniently forget he was trying to overthrow the established order of government to maintain himself illegally in power and turn the Presidency into a dictatorship. The Far Right refuses to see the differences between Black Lives Matter rioters and the January 6 Insurrectionists. BLM and their supporters did not seek to overthrow the government but to call attention to a long list of grievances including violent police abuse. They advocated reforms, not overthrow. Trump’s MAGA cultists, Alt-Right racists, and militia groups, on the other hand, clearly sought to overthrow our constitutional democratic republic and replace it with Trump’s protofascist dictatorship. They were not interested in reform at all.
This crooked, wannabe dictator is a known racist, misogynist, sexist, homophobe, adulterer, and a convicted felon who calls everyone else crooked liars. Yet solving political disagreements with violence is wrong. If civil warfare breaks out and one is defending themselves and their loved ones against aggression, then, OK, fight and kill if necessary as an absolute last resort. Now I loathe Donald Trump and his rabid MAGA cult of weird, enraged Maggots, but the man doesn’t deserve to be killed. He does deserve to be arrested and put on trial on multiple counts of treason, and if found guilty, sentenced accordingly. But don’t shoot the man. Arrest him, treat his person with respect even as he abuses everyone else, and put this particular human on trial. Allow him the freedom to destroy himself in public.
Will we, tho? There are people on both sides armed and arming themselves. Not all gun nuts are on the Right. The Left has its share, too. There are those who wish Trump dead. I even argued with some who wished him dead by pointing out it would make everything worse. He would become a martyr to the Far Right, violence would erupt nationwide, our foreign adversaries would gleefully leverage our sudden absence from the globe, and all of our lives would be in danger. Civil war isn’t some distant disaster. War obliterates the moderate middle and forces people to pick a side to fight or flee in fright or freeze with your head down in fawning compliance.
Meanwhile, this White American adult male with the militant Leftist muscle shirt spouting murderous rhetoric to sound cool and anti-racist continued to shop around. I avoided interacting with him as I sought to be professional on the job, but, hey, if civil war broke out he and I would be forced together on the same side. We both abhor the Far Right. Me, I just don’t have any firearms nor do I want to own any guns. I did keep an eye out for any offended Trump-supporter who might challenge him there in the store. We get customers from all over the nation and the world in our global business. The man seemed friendly and moved about the store with fluid grace. With him was a female partner and child. He treated the child as his own in a gentle, loving way while wearing the white emblem of a firearm on his black shirt. Yes, I felt he was inappropriate and insensitive to wear his particular shirt on this day, and at the same time we would be on the same side if war broke out. Because otherwise I’m a moderate independent too old to fight for whom the devastation of all-out civil war in this post-industrial empire would be a nightmare apocalypse sucking in the rest of the planet.
What do you think and feel about these matters? Oh, and by the way, if you one of those wincing, scoffing cynics with sociopathic tendencies who dismiss feelings as irrelevant, then know your thoughts are not relevant either regardless of how cerebral and aloof your intellect may be. You still will have to choose along with the rest of us to flee, fight, freeze, or fawn. May we Americans find a way forward to heal our ugly, deep divisions and learn once more to work together for our common good as citizens of a noble however imperfect United States of America.
William Dudley Bass
Sunday 14 July 2024
Monday 29 July 2024
Sunday 25 August 2024
Shoreline/Seattle, Washington
USA
Copyright © 2024 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.