The Divided States
Thoughts on politics and gun control - please don't shoot me.
At the Republican National Convention, Hulk Hogan gave a nice peaceful speech declaring that real Americans are… “Trumpites”.
He proceeds by ripping his American flag shirt in half and yelling into the mic:
“LET TRUMPOMANIA RUN WILD BROTHERRR”
It’s almost ironic, isn’t it?
The word “united” is in our name, yet we’re as far from it as we’ve ever been.
Competition and aggression have become more desirable personality traits than collaboration and compassion.
is right, this season of USA is insane. There’s some real game of thrones shit going on.1 Actually, I take that back… it’s as if we’re watching a reality TV show… like Jersey Shore or The Bachelor. Each episode is more absurd than the last. You want to change the channel, but you can’t because the drama is SO good.I started writing this way back when the debate happened and the plot just keeps getting thicker. When I heard about the assassination attempt, I was shocked, and at the same time, I wasn’t. Active shooters easily make their way into schools, churches, movie theaters, and concerts, so why not a Presidential rally?
As expected, the memes were amazing, but still, none of this makes sense…
On Google search, when you type in “Assassination attempt on Tr…” the autocomplete feature is disabled, instead it comes up with “Assassination attempt on Truman”.
Historians have ranked Trump as the worst president in history, he’s a 34-count convicted felon who lies any chance he gets, yet he remains unfazed.2 Not just unfazed, but picking up more and more support from big dogs in the tech industry because they know he’ll make them richer.
With the way he talks about women, it baffles me that he still has female voters.
And what concerns me the most, is not only does he have a desire to hurt us, but he has immunity when he does.3
at Candy for Breakfast is just as confused as I am:How we got here is inexplicable, unless you assume that Americans hate themselves and secretly crave punishment, in which case it makes perfect sense.
This summer has seen Donald Trump hit a string of lucky breaks so unlikely that I’m starting to wonder whether we’re all just NPCs in his simulation. Either that, or God is real, and he’s a Trump fan. If he somehow manages to lose this one, he’ll be the Republican nominee in 2028, 2032, and every four years thereafter until he dies. If he dies. At this rate, he’ll probably be the first person to live forever.
But alas… I’m not here to talk politics, there’s way too much to unpack there and I’m not ready to tackle that beast yet.
What I’m curious about, is whether or not this assassination attempt will open up conversation around some of the deeper-rooted gun violence issues playing out in the United States.
what it means to be ‘great’
When I think of the current state of the U.S. I think of this scene from The Newsroom where Jeff Daniels’ is asked why America is the greatest country in the world:
It’s funny, we tout “freedom” as one of the reasons we’re the greatest, but the U.S. didn’t even make it to the top 10 list.
I guess if you define freedom as being able to walk into a store and buy a gun to shoot up a school, then yes, we have TONS of freedom.
On average, we have one mass shooting and about 57 gun-related homicides per day.
THAT’S WHAT I CALL FREEDOM BROTHERRR!
To put things into perspective, here in Spain, where I live, there have been two mass shootings in the past 50 years. Two. In 50 years.
The media and the internet are polarizing us like never before. We’re stuck inside echo chambers being shown the most extreme views on either side and the headlines are mostly negative because that’s what sells.
Add in the fact social media makes it so easy to repost and share information. All of a sudden, it seems like EVERYONE is an expert on EVERYTHING.
People on social media seem so certain that they have the answers and they alone are right. I see people who don’t know a damn thing about gun violence stats, but they speak with such strong conviction about the 2nd amendment. It’s insane.
another day in ‘MERICA
Like I said before, this doesn’t even come as much of a surprise.
Thomas Crooks. 20 year old white male. No real motive other than him being bullied from time to time. Classmates described him as “a quiet, shy kid who usually ate lunch alone”. Others said, “You wouldn’t have expected this, the parents and the family are all really nice people.”
We’ve already heard this story. Except this time, the attack was on a former President. In my lifetime, there’s never been an assassination attempt on a current or former President. I feel like this should be a bigger deal.
I can’t help but wonder… would there be more discussion around gun policy had the bullet hit its mark? If Trump got whacked, would we still just shrug, accept it, and move on?
The AR-15 is designed to be a weapon of war, but now there are roughly 25 million circulating in civilian hands. Some questions I’m asking myself:
Why do we make it so easy for an 18-year old to walk into a store and purchase these things?4
How many more innocent lives have to be ruined before we change these policies?
I’m watching this all go down from afar, sometimes people here in Spain ask me why it’s so easy to buy guns in the United States… I never have a good answer for them. It doesn’t make sense that a country so advanced still allows people to run around like a bunch of cowboys. I get that when the Constitution was written in the 1700s, it made sense to let people own guns…. But does it still make sense today?
When the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, there were no semi-automatic weapons. They had muskets that could hold one bullet at a time. Never in their wildest dreams could they have imagined we would allow children attending school to get shot at time and time again.
How is it possible that we let anyone having a bad day have such easy access to military-grade weapons?
“The final result was a gun that could fire a lot of bullets really rapidly, was extremely easy to shoot and keep on target. And it was just what some people in the military wanted.” - Zusha Elinson, American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15
We see how divided the country is, and when you add guns to the mix, the U.S. is a scary place to be right now. Our two-party system causes this ‘us versus them’ mentality. It’s gotta stop if we wanna see progress.5
Who wants to live in a country where you constantly have to think about which “side” the other person is on:
Are they Right or Left?
Red or Blue?
Elephant or Donkey?
I really don’t give a shit.
The outright disrespect, the name-calling, the accusations, the blatant lies… it’s sad and embarrassing. I’m not surprised when I meet Americans traveling who don’t want to admit they’re from the United States. We’ve let social media and news outlets bring out the worst in us.
disaster as a catalyst for change
Sometimes it takes a disaster for progress to happen.
In his book Tribe, Sebastian Junger summarizes a theory from an Englishman named Charles Fritz. The theory is that: disasters do not make societies panic. They bring them together in calm solidarity.
Disasters, he proposed, create a “community of sufferers” that allows individuals to experience an immensely reassuring connection to others. As people come together to face an existential threat, Fritz found, class differences are temporarily erased, income disparities become irrelevant, race is overlooked, and individuals are assessed simply by what they are willing to do for the group.
I think eventually we’ll reach a tipping point with gun violence and mass shootings. As Fritz observed, once the “community of sufferers” grows beyond a certain point, they will demand change.
Maybe we should at least CONSIDER a ban on automatic weapons?
Idk, is that a crazy suggestion? I guess with the amount of power the NRA has, it might be a long shot. We still have congressmen handing out AR-15 style lapel pins who think protecting our liberties is more important than protecting human beings.
Our nation’s “leaders” are still sending out Christmas cards with their kids holding rifles so I doubt change will happen anytime soon:
For the families who have lost loved ones to gun violence, to see our elected officials glorifying these weapons must be a constant source of pain. I read articles like this and it makes me sick to my stomach. Why are AR-15s still legal?
And to have their kids posing in the pictures, this kind of behavior is not only unethical, but the effect that all this has on children is absolutely insane:
I discussed with Angie Liskey, a mom from Indiana, how her 12-year-old was neither fazed nor concerned by the assassination attempt. “I think they are so desensitized and have been forced to dissociate from the threat of gun violence because they’ve been doing active shooter drills since kindergarten”
Of course, when one of these mass shootings occurs, politicians and gun advocates offer their “thoughts and prayers”. Maybe if enough gun advocates get shot there’ll be more change beyond just thoughts and prayers.
Because thoughts and prayers aren’t going to bring back all the dead children and innocent people who have lost their lives.
**Sniffs loudly**
Smell that? That’s the smell of FREEDOM BROTHERRR!6
Until next time my friends,
<3 B
Crazy to think Alex published that post before the assassination attempt, I keep thinking it can’t get worse, then it does
That ranking is based on a tally of 154 presidential specialists from the American Political Science Association
Mass shooters younger than 21 used AR-15-style rifles for attacks in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012; Parkland, Florida, in 2018; and Buffalo, New York, in May 2022. A National Institute of Justice study found that 77% of people who commit mass shootings "purchased at least some of their guns legally."
I wish everyone would take a moment to watch this clip from John Cena about the people who really make up America
For full effect, read in a Hulk Hogan tone of voice
Wow, I was so impressed by this post!
Well done, Brian!
https://substack.com/profile/33200324-ryan-walsh/note/c-63857027
Uvalde had a school shooting with 376 Law Enforcements showed up (good guys with guns) and most of the killings happened after law enforcement showed up but felt they were no match with a kid with an AR 15 . 21 people killed 19 were children .
If this doesnt break the mentality , nothing ever will .....no magic number to bring people together . The logic is broken and too much money is involved .