Murder on Main Street

A country that is stupid enough to elevate Donald Trump and Elon Musk starts to feel like it deserves them both.

Chaos agents and idiot provocateurs with an outsize influence on American life - as bullets ricochet off of bodies and walls on a daily basis.

We are living an extended nightmare and forgetting ‘we the people’ have the choice to do something about it.

If you continue to vote for Republicans you will get more dead kids and environmental calamity.

That’s not hyperbole - it’s a statistical fact.

Voting for Democrats won’t make all our problems go away overnight either but at least we will have a fighting chance.

Right now in America someone is purchasing an AR-15 with plans to use it to murder his (or her) fellow citizens.

Twenty-five percent of all guns sales in the USA are now assault-type weapons.

That’s not a peaceable kingdom, we are living in a war zone.

If you think it’s an accident that a racist white man shot a sixteen year-old black child for ringing his doorbell in the same part of the country where a few days later the NRA held a convention to pump its filthy bile into the hearts and minds of white midwestern America, you’re not paying attention.

Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis and Mike Pence all spoke in Indiana last weekend at the NRA freak show while news was breaking of the attempted murder of Ralph Yari in Kansas City, Missouri.

Both states share the dubious honor of being extremely gun-friendly and fertile ground for shameless-grifter-GOP-politicians looking to stoke race-based fears of political gain.

Had the 84 year-old man who shot the 16 year-old black child who knocked on his door just responded by opening his door and offering assistance he most likely would have been greeted with a smile and a polite young man explaining he must have gotten the address wrong as he was attempting to pick up his younger siblings.

Had he given himself a chance to interact with the humanity of Ralph Yari, who by all accounts is a polite, talented and gifted young man, it might have softened the cold heart of a bigoted old, fearful man.

Instead the grizzled old bastard responded with bullets - shooting him not once, but twice.

The details of which are almost too graphic to recite in lieu of the abject horror of the 16 year-old then making an escape and knocking on three more front doors before the third homeowner ordered him to the ground with his hands up, which Yari complied with before passing out from gunshot wounds to the head.

Who are we as a nation that this is how we treat our children?

And how is it that small white children were picking up guns and pointing them with smiling faces at the NRA convention in Indianapolis just a day after this horrific event.

Does a society that allows such things seem even remotely sane?

The man in Kansas City who opened fire instead of opening his door did so holding a product that is actively marketed by the NRA as the white man’s defense against the black intruder.

Ninety-percent of the Russian-backed gun lobby’s marketing materials use fear and racism as a motivator for purchasing firearms and the self-defense angle is one of deadly deceit.

For most gun owners are increasing their own chances of getting shot simply by bringing the product into their home.

If you don’t believe me just look at the deaths per capita from gun violence in the countries that have banned firearms on the consumer market.

Nobody understands these statistics better than the NRA themselves: they have treated the deaths of Americans by gun violence as a cost of doing business.

It is also viewed as ‘collateral damage’ by GOP politicians who hunger for NRA approval ratings and campaign contributions while classrooms full of innocent children get gunned-down in their districts.

Sometimes with the cops themselves afraid to stop the slaughter knowing the power of the weapons involved.

Weapons like the AR-15, which have become branding totems for GOP congressmen.

It’s become a billion-dollar industry and it’s turning otherwise mediocre, and perhaps innately racist white folks into outright murderers.

They themselves are turning into the very ‘monsters’ they’re taught to fear because they’ve been sold a boatload of apocryphal crap and fear by MAGA politicians and Fox News.

What happened in Kansas City should scare the hell out of you - and break your heart - for the lack of humanity shown by the neighbors and the murderous toxicity displayed by an 84 year-old racist.

I’m in my early 50’s now and my fear is that the folks of my generation, many of whom I know to be well-armed and at best, mildly racist (at worst extreme MAGA) will go into their later years and contribute to an epidemic of ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ after their mottled brains consume another few decades of Fox News and MAGA Republican rhetoric.

Sure, the lack of healthcare and the gutting of social services that so many of them happily vote for when they pull the lever for the GOP may take out a sizable chunk of them before they reach their twilight years.

But the ones who remain may become a deadly hazard to anyone who knocks on their doors.

We now have over 400 million guns in circulation in the United States; a number that is increasing exponentially. Two decades from now there will be an astronomical amount of firepower in the hands of a very aged population.

Is there a plan for this insanity?

Home healthcare workers are gonna need bullet proof vests lest they surprise an elderly patient and their complexion triggers (pun-intended) some pavlovian fear response in what’s left of their minds.

And what happens to grandpa’s guns if they family intervenes first?

Do they end up in the hands of yet another adolescent mass-shooter or back out on the street?

It’s truly a nightmare scenario if you game it out even now with more guns than people in the United States.

There is no way any part of this scenario does not lead to more tragedy and gun violence.

Does someone with dementia need a semi-automatic weapon of war?

The folks being poisoned by the NRA and MAGA right now will have this toxic hate calcified in their brains and will be armed to the teeth when they reach the age they begin to lose what remains of their already suspect cognitive functions.

In addition to the 84 year-old man in Kansas City a 65 year-old white male in upstate New York shot into a car full of young people that pulled into his rural Saratoga County driveway this weekend killing a 20 year-old woman.

They were lost and turning around on their way to a friend’s house on a Saturday night.

They posed no threat and had no interaction - the man responded with deadly force for the crime of being lost.

By every account, Kaylin Gillis, the young woman who lost her life was the light of her family’s lives and a sweet and caring person with her whole life ahead of her.

Angry old men are killing our babies at the same time they’re forcing women and girls to have babies via some neofacist interpretation of Christianity - aided by the largesse of billionaires upon the conservative judiciary that is all to happy to rule in favor of extremists because it pays so well.

In both of these latest cases the victims had committed no crimes or acts of aggression.

The only even remotely possible transgressions were being momentarily lost - but as a nation we are in danger of becoming permanently so if we don’t stand up to the NRA and the politicians they own.

I grew up in a country where strangers could ask each other for directions without being shot.

I would like to go back to that - and this time make it safe to do so for everybody, as I am not unaware that this privilege wasn’t extended to all.

What happened in both cases over the last week is extreme by any standard you apply - to any time in American history - and it’s only getting worse.

A nation with more guns than people has one of the two major political parties relying on divisiveness, outright racism and rancor to further the grift of their corrupt leaders, who achieve cult-like followings based on fear and their own criminality.

They don’t run for office to improve America, they do so to stay out of jail and further increase their personal wealth - the more craven and vitriolic their rhetoric the better.

I’m personally quite concerned about the prospect of millions of angry old men and women holed-up in their homes with a lifetime’s collection of guns and ammunition.

And God knows what else is in the armaments of the increasingly militarized and weapons-hoarding, paranoid, far-right living on Main Street, USA.

Places like Indiana, Missouri, Tennessee, Ohio and others will become terrifying redoubts of high-caliber insanity.

Florida will probably be off-limits to any sane person and may take on the aura of a tropical wild west if Ron DeSantis and the oligarchs that back him get their way.

The time to act is now - take inspiration from the brave and say no to the fear.

And stop the NRA.