The looming threat

Our former president's mug shot.  

No matter what they say about Trump, things could be worse.  The man was totally incompetant and not able to change the nature of our political system, but he came close to doing so.  He normalized being openly hateful of vulnerable minorities, and unleashed a movement of malcontents which will likely survive his potential incarceration. 

So why do I say that there is a looming threat?

Several things have happened as a result of this man's time in office.  First, this man has said that if he regains the office of president, he will attempt to consolidate political power in the executive branch.  This is dangerous, as our system was designed to work (or, not work, as of late) with the powers of each branch of government being checked and balanced by the other two.  Second, this man has only anger to propel him.  He has never forgiven the public, nor the honest officials that some may have elected, for not putting him in office for a second term.  What revenge would he try to take at the expense of his perceived enemies?  Most elected leaders in his party are afraid of his cult, and are following his mob to stay in office.

But what happens if this man is not nominated to be his party's presidential nominee?  Will the followers of his cult believe that the elections weren't rigged?  On 01/06/21, we saw the violence that his cult was capable of.  Could it happen again?  What if the man were convicted in one of the courts? Even worse would be the chaos that might happen if the election were close.  For years, Americans have been self-selecting into like-minded communities.  People live in communication bubbles where they select news from sources that reinforce their views, and find it hard to imagine how others could have different views when "the truth" should be self apparent.  If you lived in Rural America, watched Fox "News" on a regular basis, and have been trained by your church to see the world in binary terms, would you be able to challenge the orthodoxy that you've been fed for years?  Wouldn't you want to defend your country from "criminals" from the left?

Years ago, Senator John McClain held a campaign rally where one of his loyal GOP constituents started labeling then Senator Barack Obama as a communist traitor.  Senator McClain interrupted this woman, saying that Senator Obama was a good man with whom he had political differences.  Could anyone see this happening today, where radicals from the far right are calling for President Biden's impeachment? The leaders of one political party have enough "sober" people to govern, while the other's leaders are afraid of the mob who elected our former president.

In 2016, our former president ran for office with the campaign slogan:  

Make America Great Again

Did any of his constituents ever ask: 

When did America stop being great?  

Why is America not great anymore?  

What needs to be done to make America great again?

I never heard any of these questions answered to my satisfaction.  Instead, MAGA anger comes from people who have lost their place in society.  They see our former president as someone who would (at least) give lip service to their feelings, if not restore their former positions in the larger society.

The next year, the former president held a campaign rally in Charlottesville, where he effectively said that there were good people in the neo-Nazi movement :

“You had some very bad people in that group,

 but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”

Once a person implies that there some good neo-Nazis, where does permission to act on one's hatred end?  I can still remember chants of:

"Jews will not replace us!"

As if any self respecting Jew would want for his/her children to grow up with skills so limited that they could not earn a good living.  What successful person of any ethnic group would want for their child to become a bagger at the local Piggly Wiggly?  Many of the MAGAloons are poorly educated, resistant to change, and follow bombastic leaders without bothering to ask: "Does what they are saying make sense?"  They gravitate to "strongmen" who say things that validate their feelings, and not to people who understand the nuances of objective truths.

So, what is the looming threat?

In short, the threat is that our ex-president has unleashed a monster that can not be sent back to its cave before it causes a lot of destruction.  As I started writing this, Jacksonville, FL is dealing with the aftermath of a white nationalist killing 3 black people at a local supermarket.  What will it take to stop this?  I don't know.  But if the ex-president again comes anywhere near the levers of power, god help us.

Reflections - Post San Bernardino

As much as I disagree with the NRA, I'll agree with them in regards to mass killings - it's not a gun problem, but a people problem. Gun free zones are meaningless in the same way that Drug free zones are meaningless. They are only a public statement that guns (or drugs) are not welcome, and not a reflection of reality - because those unwelcome items are already there.

Even if we were to take the NRA's stance that we have a mental health problem (in the case of the Connecticut school massacre in Sandy Hook), how do we change the mental health and legal systems (as well as provide adequate funding) to deal with such issues? If we focus on terrorism, how many freedoms do we want to sacrifice in the name of security? Can we trust our governments, with the history of corruption we have in this country (from both parties)?

We need intelligent regulation that crosses state lines, and has few (if any) loopholes. Population density and homogeneity is important. In areas of low population density, where people tend to be from a single ethnic group, we find a very low level of gun crime. In areas of high population density and a heterogeneous population base (such as in most urban areas), we find a high level of gun crime.

So, what do we do?

In the case of potential non-terrorist gun crime, we can work on providing better mental health treatment to people at a low cost. We can look for people who are alienated from society in general, and find ways to better integrate them into society - jobs, friends, social networks, etc. - so that they feel they have something to lose from going on violent rampages.

In the case of potential terrorist gun crime, we can allow the government to use a limited amount of spying tools (with appropriate warrants and vetted public monitoring to help protect us from becoming a police state) that analyze content and traffic on the internet (and associated social networks) to detect these terrorists (such as could have been done for the San Bernardino killings) and stop them.

Federal regulation based on population density and population heterogeneity must be enacted to supersede that existing on state levels, and must reflect the reality of metropolitan areas that cross state lines, as well as trafficking materials from areas with lenient regulation to those areas with restrictive regulation.   

Will this end all gun crime?

Certainly not!  America is a nation in love with its guns, and we have a constitution that protects our gun rights, in part, to insure that we can overthrow a tyrannical government. But, if we can cut this crime by a significant amount, we can start focusing on other problems that are just as important - such as seeing that ALL Americans who want a job can get a job (or have one provided to them that supplies them with a reasonable income).  I am tired of hearing Americans shout past each other, not listening to the valid points their opposition brings up. We have it in ourselves to make this nation a greater nation than it already is - Let's find a way to make it so.....