A Bit to Read

It’s frigid here, 5 F/-15 C, but that doesn’t matter because I am running hot.

Settle in, my friends, there’s an inferno coming your way. It’s going to be a longer one.

Ever since a man slaughtered dozens of people, including 20 little kids, at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012, we have been told that the corpses of children riddled with bullets is just “the price of freedom.”

Where many of us grew up with fire drills only, students of all ages have endured year after year after year of active shooter training, which, incidentally, appear to increase depression and anxiety and decrease mental wellness.

Children contemplating being killed at the schoolhouse door is included the price of freedom.

So we were told.

Over and over and over again, while destroyed bodies cooled, while souls departed this plane, before any final arrangements were made, Republican told us in cultivated, somber tones, about the price of freedom.

Well.

On Saturday, the very exact situation they have described for decades unfolded, and a white male gun owner legally exercising his First and Second Amendment rights was, according to accounts, disarmed and then shot for having a gun in the first place while Border Patrol was, for some reason no one ever seems to question, policing a protest hundreds of miles from any border.

This is is the LITERAL TYRANNICAL GOVERNMENT they’ve been chest thumping about. The government reportedly TOOK AWAY HIS GUN and then shot him.

All those wasted tears about Democrats coming to take away your guns.

Protesting isn’t illegal. It’s certainly not a death penalty offense, and that would require, oh I don’t know, a broken law, an indictment, actual evidence, a prosecution, a verdict and a sentencing.

And concealed carry in Minnesota isn’t illegal for a person with a permit. There is no special law saying you are not allowed to exercise your First and Second Amendment rights at the same time, either, despite what the semi-sentient glob of Botox and maliciousness at the top seems to be floating.

Look, if you have read me for any amount of time, you know I’m not a gun person. You also probably know that I don’t think anyone should own a gun.

But I also cannot stand hypocrites, liars, and people who will profit even from the murder of children.

It’s not freedom.

It’s greedom.

Now is the time, Republicans. Now is the very moment you’ve waxed on about, pointed to, warned darkly of in carefully concerned rants.

Now.

Put up.

Or shut up.

Because the entire Republican identity is tied up in the Second Amendment. And for people who have long acted like they own the Constitution, that it is theirs and theirs alone, but the very greatest within it is Two, you sure seem to have taken an about face.

What we are seeing from the executive branch is “cancel culture” to its extreme. Say only what we want you to say or we will kill you. We will invade your cities. We will take away your funding.

This is real First Amendment stuff, as it is the government itself doing it.

Fine, fine, you kind of like the First Amendment, though we always knew you didn’t mean other people’s speech. Just yours.

But now there is nowhere left for you to wriggle. Alex worked at the VA, helping those veterans you love for photo ops but not so much when it comes to delivering what they were promised.

He was reportedly protecting a woman when he was shot. Isn’t that what’s wrong with us leftist, shrill, can’t-get-a-man women? We don’t understand that men are here to protect us?

And Alex was lawfully exercising his Second Amendment rights when the government reportedly took away his gun. The government coming to take away your guns, I’m pretty sure that’s launched many an AM YouTube podcast.

It’s finally here, Republicans, the thing I have said repeatedly. It could be you. I will be you if this continues unchecked. You can finally not help but see yourselves in a victim.

Everything you claim to stand for, executed on a public street.

It’s your move, Republicans.

Put up.

Or shut up.

Have an enraged Monday. I know I will.