Insanity

Every day, it seems like the world gets more and more insane – I just shake my head at what I’m reading or hearing.

First, a 100-year-old gun law was struck down by the Supreme Court. The 100 years part is what makes me go “whoa”, but I have to remember that in many rural places, people used to be able to go to school with rifles in their cars as a normal everyday occurrence. So, owning and carrying guns was a normal everyday thing for most people living in the rural or suburbs. So I now get why they think owning the guns is not the problem; it is something else. What that something is that increased the mass shootings is what we have to figure out.

The law was a New York law that required one to specify a need for a handgun before one could get a permit to carry a concealed gun outside of the home. Hopefully I captured all of the elements in that sentence: a permit required, concealed handgun, outside of the home, and specifying why you need the gun for self-defense. I heard in one video that the specifying the need was what the Supreme Court regarded as unconstitutional. Clarence Thomas declares the 2nd Amendment protects every individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside of their home.

There are some nuances in the ruling which I’m trying to understand because supposedly the ruling expands where one can carry their guns without any restrictions and impacts other considerations such as age, assault weapons bans, and limits on high-capacity magazines. The ruling apparently changes the “framework” on how the courts are to interpret the gun rights laws.

The insanity comes in where there doesn’t seem to be a recognition of the dissonance between people being able to carry guns everywhere and the non-allowance of guns around their homes. Of course, due to the Supreme Court’s recent rulings, especially on abortion, it is understandable to increase security around the Supreme Court justices. That is as it should be. But they should note that other people’s right to carry guns have been impacted by their security measures, so the 2nd Amendment rights have been abridged. Just noting the irony.

Another insanity concerns the Texas Republican Convention, namely, that of gay Republicans. Why would gays vote Republican when Republicans have recently shown that they don’t support gays? They are living in an environment that is not safe for them, even if they say they are “the good ones”. For some of the super religious which resides mostly in the Republican party – fundamentalists or evangelicals – there are no “good” gays. Due to the latest abortion ruling, there is talk that the Supreme Court conservatives (aka Republicans) will most likely revisit the same sex marriages and the same sex activity, amongst other things. Why in the world would gays continue to support Republicans?

But the really insane thing is the continued support of Trump, after all of the bullying and death threats received. Rusty Bowers conveyed very powerfully in the January 6 commission hearings on Thursday his position that what he was being asked to do by Trump and allies was illegal and against the Constitution, which he considered “divinely inspired” and against his faith. For his efforts to uphold the law under intense pressure, he and his very ill daughter received death threats.

His testimonial was extremely powerful and riveting. He came across as a hero for standing up to immense pressure to violate the laws and the Constitution.

And yet, he said he would vote for Trump again if Trump was nominated “Simply because what he did the first time, before COVID, was so good for the country. In my view it was great.”

I’m having a hard time wrapping my mind around that. Even after being asked to do something illegal and something that could have torn down the fabric of democracy (maybe Rusty Bowers didn’t regard the ask that way), he would still support the man. He didn’t illuminate what “was so good for the country” but from the religious overtones of his speech at the commission, I’m thinking it may have been the installation of conservative judges. Or it might be economics related.

Even so, as an analogy, that’s kind of like standing by Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling after they destroyed Enron with false lies and false accounting, in the belief that what they did before the rest of the world found out about the fraud was great for everybody. Shareholders made oodles of money and that was great.

Or another analogy, it would be shocking to hear Germans say that if they had a chance, they would support Hitler all over again because before the Allies successfully won the war, they had it great under Hitler: their economics had improved and they were winning the war.

It’s like throwing away your morals, and voting in a guy, knowing full well that he would continue with corruption. I guess the priority is either the economic well-being (or the installation of very conservative and religious judges) or your moral well-being. I guess he chose economic well-being.