Mes Haines: The NRA

The name Ackerman McQueen may not ring a bell for you, but you've heard their catchy slogans: "Guns don't kill people, people kill people," and "I'll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hands," growled out by Charlton Heston.

The first is patently preposterous. No unarmed person can enter a school or church or assembly hall and kill or maim more than one or two people. If you want to kill or wound a lot of people you have two options: a bomb or a gun. Guns are far easier to obtain and use, and are the obvious choice. Guns kill people because people use them for that purpose.

As for the "cold dead hands," it's so outrageous I laugh out loud when I hear it.

Ackerman McQueen is the public relations firm that dreamed up those phrases for the National Rifle Association, the self-appointed guardian of Americans' right to bear arms. A&M, or Ack-Mac, is headquartered in Oklahoma City, the capital of a state where anyone over 21 can openly carry a gun without a permit, where machismo runs in the streets, and the mascot of the state land-grant university is a gun-toting cowboy named Pistol Pete.

Founded in 1871 to foster the skill of rifle shooting, the NRA was a respectable organization for nearly a century. It became involved in lobbying and politics in 1934. From then until the late 1960s it was nonpartisan, and consistently supported gun control legislation.

Throughout the 1970s the organization grew more conservative and more heavily involved in lobbying. In 1977 a right-wing activist group within the organization took over leadership with the agenda of seeking expansion of Second Amendment rights and resolutely opposing any legislation with even a whiff of gun control. This was a 180 degree policy change and was the event that brought the NRA firmly into the slimy embrace of the Republican Party.

NRA marketing strategy shifted from the "Field & Stream" model to making up bogus threats to gun rights: "The government is trying to take your guns away." 

That, my friends, is the Big Lie of the NRA's very own the-sky-is-falling conspiracy theory.  It has been fed to the American people for more than 40 years and too many continue to believe it.

And let's not forget the Great NRA Politician Blackmail Con.

They called it The Political Victory Fund. The purpose of the fund was to support pro-gun candidates and to work against those who supported gun control. Political candidates at all levels were "graded" by the traditional letter-grade system, with A+ signifying a true believer and F grades going to sworn enemies of the cause.

"Now just be a good little Congress member and vote the way we tell you and we'll send you money to keep you close to power where you want to be. If you don't follow our suggestions, well, . . ."

In 2008 with District of Columbia v. Heller the Supreme Court made gun control personal, ruling it legal to keep a loaded handgun in one's home for the purpose of self-defense. That was when the floodgates of the Second Amendment lie opened. Everything and everyone who even mentioned gun control was suspect.

Anyone who knows anything about the Constitution--and that should include every member of Congress--knows that warnings about threats to the Second Amendment are empty rhetoric.

No Amendment nor any part of the Constitution can be "stolen" or diminished in any way by the whim of a president or any group--not even Congress. Repealing an Amendment requires supermajority approval of Congress plus similar approval by two-thirds of the legislatures of the 50 states. That's 33 separate legislatures. It can be a lengthy process, and many attempts have fallen by the wayside. Moreover, as an element of the Bill of Rights, the Second is probably untouchable anyway--for better or for worse it's a genuine "third-rail" issue.

The NRA became apologists for mass shooters, suggesting Trump-worthy remedies before the Orange Ogre was even in the frame. "Arm teachers!" "Arm students!" "Deny guns to the mentally ill!" "Surround schools with armed guards!" "Protect the sacred Second Amendment."

Guns, guns, guns, always more guns. The NRA has a morbid gun fetish.

As the organization became ever wealthier and influential it also became more corrupt. As Lord Acton noted, "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely."

In 2017 the FBI found reasonable cause to believe the NRA had acted as a funnel for Russian money to flow into Donald Trump's 2016 election campaign and indicted a number of Russian nationals.

In 2020 the attorney general of New York filed a civil suit against the NRA alleging fraud, financial misconduct, and misuse of charitable funds by some of its executives. The DC attorney general simultaneously filed a similar suit. The New York suit sought the dissolution of the NRA for being "fraught with fraud and abuse."

The NRA mission has never been about "protecting" the Second Amendment; it has been about selling guns.

The NRA has had the gall to call itself a civil rights organization. It is not. The classes of Americans protected by true civil rights legislation are protected against discrimination based on personal qualities over which they have no control: e.g. their race, color, and sex. 

Owning and using weapons is a choice made by each individual. One is not born with the genetic need to carry a gun. Under the Second Amendment we may have the right to keep and bear arms, but the Framers could never have imagined the proliferation of weapons in the modern world. It is a right that must be tempered if chaos and violence are to be overcome. 

I place responsibility for every mass shooting and a great many street crimes since 1980 on the policies of the National Rifle Association and the political toadies who accepted their money. 

They should--they must--be held to account.

La lutte continue!

--- Diogenes, 10/2/2021

 

Mes Haines: We Deserve Justice Too

On Saturday September 18 a few hundred deluded individuals showed up in Washington DC to demand justice for the criminals jailed for the January 6 insurrection.

Where were the hundreds of thousands of Americans who should be demanding justice for themselves? For four long years we the people were lied to, swindled, disrespected, disregarded, and flimflammed by a pretender to the presidency, a parasite on the body politic, who cares for nothing and no one outside his own skin, and who came frighteningly close to dismantling our democracy for no better reason than because he could.

And yet Donald Trump remains free to work his mischief and manage his cult.

We all know that Trump is a criminal. We all have a pretty good idea of the crimes he has committed. We all want to know why he isn't locked up.

I expect a number of us have a fantasy in which DJTrump is snatched, hooded, thrown into the back of a windowless van, delivered to a secret penal facility, and habeas corpus be damned.

My personal fantasy is based on a short story from 1955 by Steve Allen, called "The Public Hating." Simply put, a traitor is strapped to a chair in the center of an arena, and the huge audience he betrayed focus their loathing at him, literally hating him to death.¹

I think that would be wonderfully poetic.

Only there's that pesky idea called presumption of innocence. It's not spelled out in the Constitution, probably because it has been a cornerstone of civilized legal systems for so long the Framers took it for granted. 

It is one reason why the legal process is slow. It is slow because it has to be done right. If there is the faintest flicker of reasonable doubt in the prosecutor's case the accused could well go free. But while the process plods on, we feel the need for speed because the 2022 elections are coming at us, and we want to know something that will assure us of Trump's criminality.

Just Security, a litigation tracking site,² lists a total of 16 federal and state major criminal and civil cases pending against Trump in DC, Georgia, Michigan, New York, and Scotland.

Complaints include conspiracy to disrupt congressional proceedings, defamation, election tampering, fraud, incitement to violence, money laundering, personal injury, tax and insurance fraud, and violation of civil rights. 

Yet the most crucial and necessary charges that should be brought to bear on him, those that would prohibit his ever again seeking public office, are absent. He could be found guilty and imprisoned on any of the charges listed above and still run for any office, including president. 

To the best of my knowledge there are only two potentially applicable crimes that, if he were found guilty, could prohibit Trump ever from holding office again: Treason (18 USC 2381) and Rebellion or insurrection (18 USC 2383). Prosecutors at every level seem to be dancing around the more serious charges.

In 2020, 81,284,666 Americans voted against Donald Trump. Could not even one thousandth of one percent of them--813 people--organize to petition the government for redress of their grievances? As citizens of the nation that was victimized by its alleged former leader we surely have grounds and standing. 

If 813 people gathered each week, or each day, in different parts of the country and the gatherings were covered by media, might that not call some attention to the importance of prosecuting the man who has done so much damage to our nation and society? And still does, through his minions?

Justice for the people!

 

--- Diogenes, 9/23/2021

 

¹ Allen, Steve. The Public Hating: A Collection of Short Stories. Dembner Books, 1990.

² https://www.justsecurity.org/75032/litigation-tracker-pending-criminal-and-civil-cases-against-donald-trump/ 

Mes Haines: Insurrectionists, Anarchists, Terrorists

This is September 18, 2021. Will it be another day of infamy, or just 9/18/21?

It's interesting that this date falls just one week after the 20^th anniversary of only the second time in our national history that our homeland has been attacked by forces of another country.

One week ago everybody who is anybody in the United States was attending a 9/11 memorial ceremony. The latest former president was not. The Orange Golem was announcing a pay-per-view boxing match and flogging his Great Lie between blows.

Are you listening, Donald? This is you we’re talking about. You, the utter disgrace to your family and blight on your country, the most egregious waste of space in this land's history.

Yet people whose minds have been infected with your filth may gather in the national capital and other cities around the country today seeking justice for those who may not deserve it. They come in the name of justice, but seek amnesty.

Justice involves due process, with the emphasis on process. Facts are gathered, statements taken, pros and cons weighed, past offenses considered, juries empaneled; it moves deliberately, not precipitately, to ensure fairness to all. Your people just want all the jail doors to open.

The genuinely fake news outlets, Fox, OAN, Newsmax, et al., have been spreading lies to the gullible. The usual suspects claim that arrestees from the January 6 uprising are held as political prisoners in 23-hour solitary confinement, denied medical care and legal counsel, trapped in a gulag somewhere, blah-blah-blah ad nauseam.

It's not true. The people who participated in the January 6 riot violently attacked the seat of their own government, seeking to kidnap, injure or kill its leaders, to disrupt its constitutional processes, to deny the will of the majority of its people. 

In many countries they would be summarily executed.

But they are Americans, and the very system they denounce and seek to overthrow protects them and provides them justice as it does all its citizens. 

Those who come out today may do so under cover of the First Amendment right of the American people to gather together and to seek redress. Let’s just make sure we all understand the exact phrasing of that blessing of liberty: we have "the right . . . peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." 

We have the conditional right to gather, and that condition is “peaceably.” We have the right to petition for redress of grievances. A petition is a formal request, not a demand. 

The second this gathering becomes violent it will be in violation of the Constitution and its members will be subject to arrest for rioting or insurrection.

The far-right protesters who may gather today do so in the name of people who broke the most sacred of laws, and who were responsible for the deaths of others trying to defend their country. They claim they come in the memory of insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt, who was shot while attempting to attack members of Congress.

Let's be clear: the police officers who died as a result of the January 6 insurrection were patriots; Ashli Babbitt was a traitor.

 

--- Diogenes, 9/18/2021

Mes Haines: Flat Earthers

In the first post of this new series I mentioned Émile Zola's 1866 Mes Haines, a collection of his literary criticism whose title means "My Hatreds." I'm borrowing that title for this series because I do in fact hate the subjects I'll be writing about. 

I use "flat earther" as an umbrella term for people who against all evidence refuse to believe the truth, whether presented by science or law or scholarship or mathematics or divine revelation. They are willfully ignorant.

They are not necessarily stupid, although they seem so. But stupidity, denseness, foolishness and similar afflictions are incapacities of the mind that hinder people from learning, absorbing, or understanding information. Those who are willfully ignorant have chosen to be so. They ignore and choose not to believe truths that do not cohere with their world view, or that they simply don't like.

In short, they want to make the world in their own image, or in the image of something they have been told they should believe in. So they supplant the truth with something else.

There are still people in the world who believe the Earth is flat, although that error was disproved about 2500 years ago.¹ They are, I think, relatively harmless. 

Not so those who choose to believe more modern absurdities, e.g.: There are tracking devices in vaccines; World governments are dominated by an ultra-secret cabal; COVID-19 is a hoax; Joe Biden stole the 2020 election from Donald Trump; The space program is a lie; The Holocaust never happened; Absentee voting is invalid; Face masks are dangerous. The list, ridiculous as it is, goes on.

The more rational among us dismiss these theories out of hand. We should not dismiss the true believers, however, because they can be exceedingly dangerous--dangerous enough to overrun the U. S. Capitol seeking to overturn the will of the people and to do harm to former Vice-president Pence.

Millions of Americans believe Donald Trump's Big Lie that he actually won the 2020 election. They believe it because they want to believe it, not because it's true. They, and the Manure Spreader in Charge of Lies, must be called out, not coddled, not excused, not humored, not given any benefit of doubt.

We--the rational people of America of all political stripes--we need, we must, say "No, you're wrong." It will take time to deprogram Trump cultists, but we owe it to our country, to our children, to those infected with the Big Lie, to heal this pernicious disease now.

Consider this truth: "There is no nobility in stupidity, particularly when that stupidity is allowed to take up the mantle of power. Americans need to stop celebrating their ignorance. This is a country with too much influence to allow fools the opportunity to lead."²

 

--- Diogenes, 9/17/2021

 

¹ From The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/global/2018/may/27/is-the-earth-pancake-flat-among-the-flat-earthers-conspiracy-theories-fake-news

² From An Injustice! https://aninjusticemag.com/the-opinion-of-willfully-ignorant-americans-doesnt-matter-c8434b59fbb1   NOTE: Some security programs may raise a red flag on this site. I do not think it's hazardous but it is subversive, and doesn't document its sources as well as I would like. Visit at your own risk.

Vox Clamantis In Deserto

OK, we're not exactly in a desert, but we have a message we strongly believe in that we want as many people as possible to hear.

Here at Vox Populi we haven't the means to boost our posts or subscribe to services that do, so we're asking for assistance.

Nothing as crass as money, of course. We'd just be grateful if you would share some of our posts occasionally.

We're looking for coverage, not agreement. If you have friends or a group you think might be interested in what we have to say, or who might just hate it, send them over to diogenes8.blogspot.com. We welcome dialogue.

 

Thanks,

Richard L. Brown, 9/15/21

Still Mad As Hell

This is the second part of a list cataloguing the most despicable people in America. To no one's surprise it consists entirely of politicians.

 
Addison Mitchell "Mitch" McConnell III (R-KY), Senate Minority Leader.

I didn't put the Archdemon in the first list because I wanted to include him at the head of this list of other deniers of science, logic, decency, truth, goodness, and the American way. Their only allegiance is to their political party and their own deluded world view. They have their own little circle of Hell, as it were.

Mitch would have been the perfect snake oil salesman. He can lie all day long, switch policy positions at the drop of a hat, deny statements he made just yesterday--or even ten minutes ago.

He's an adept at what George Orwell in 1984 called Newspeak: Saying one thing while doing the polar opposite. Claiming to be fighting for peoples' rights while undermining the Constitution, for example.

He's a dyed-in-the-wool racist. At the beginning of President Obama's first term he said that his priority was to make Obama a one-term president. The GOP order of the day was always and everywhere to block Obama--not because he was in the opposition party, but because he was Black. McConnell stunned the nation by holding a Supreme Court nomination hostage for a full year. Yet four years later he forgot the spurious reasoning behind that act ("a nomination in the last year of a president's term should be held for the next president") and nominated Amy Coney Barrett obscenely soon after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He has no sense of shame and he has no loyalty to the Constitution.

Gregory Wayne Abbott (R-TX), Governor of Texas, Trump minion, the bigoted reactionary leader of the Southern charge back into Jim Crow days--and beyond, if he had his way. He has sponsored and supported legislation that has no purpose other than to keep people of color and people with disabilities from voting. He has also signed a Draconian anti-abortion law that allows private citizens who think a woman has had an abortion to sue her and anyone who assisted her, down to and including any person who provided transportation to the clinic.  By my reckoning the two laws together violate Article IV, section 2 and five separate Amendments to the Constitution, the Americans With Disabilities Act, and Roe v. Wade, which is still in force. Abbot is at very least a traitor to the Constitution.

Ronald Dion DeSantis (R-FL), Governor of Florida and another Trump minion, is following his master's example. According to the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel, throughout 2020 DeSantis "suppressed unfavorable facts, dispensed dangerous misinformation, dismissed public health professionals, and promoted the views of scientific dissenters who supported the governor’s approach to the disease." DeSantis is currently battling and suing school systems over the adoption of mask mandates, which he has specifically outlawed. He claims he just wants parents to be free to decide whether their kids go masked to school. In reality he's a power-drunk bully having pissing contests with school boards. He is no friend of children--or of their parents, for all that.

Kristi Lynn Arnold Noem (R-SD), Governor of South Dakota, is another follower of the Trump way. Prior to the pandemic she was a typical far right-wing politician, opposed to legalization of marijuana, abortion, and in favor of carrying firearms without a license. When the pandemic arrived she followed the Trump line to the letter, denying the science, spreading disinformation, implementing no safeguards, and using millions of dollars of pandemic relief funds to support tourism during a surge in COVID-19. She supported the 2020 Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, which resulted in hundreds of new cases spread across 29 states; there were similar results following the 2021 rally. Like Trump, Noem just doesn't care.

In each of the headlines about governors my fingers slipped and spelled "governot" the first time. Sometimes typos can be instructive.

New subject next post--stay tuned.

 

--- Diogenes, 9/14/21 

Mad As Hell? You Damn Betcha!

In case the title didn't alert you, I am angry. 

I am in fact so utterly flaming furious at the state of the world and the people who brought it about that I am reviving this blog to express that anger before I explode.

In 1866 the French author and activist Émile Zola published Mes Haines, which translates to "My Hatreds," but was actually a collection of his literary criticism. This post begins a series of my hatreds, and I do indeed hate the subjects, which are presented in random order beginning with - - -

Despicable people:

DJTrump is permanently the head of this list. Others may come and go. First up are the two faithless politicians who have shamefully prevented passage of the For The People Act and other important legislation.

Joseph Manchin III, (DINO-WV). Refuses to support the For The People Act on grounds that it is not bipartisan. I don't know what part of Cloud Cuckoo Land Manchin lives in. It's apparently a region where Republicans actually care about their constituency and Americans' right to fair elections. In this real world the Republican Party will do anything it can to deny the American people their constitutional rights, and to block passage of President Biden's programs. That is why the For The People Act lacks bipartisan support. Manchin needs to get his head right and understand that there are bigger issues at stake than his Pollyanna notion of a collegial congress where both sides play fair.

Krysten Lee Sinema (D-AZ). Ditto of Manchin. As she has advanced in politics Sinema has become progressively more conservative. She considers Joe Manchin a role model, which says something about her grasp of reality. She consistently votes against measures that could help Americans financially or socially. As of April 2020 more than half her votes in the Senate followed the Trump position. Both she and Manchin have been praised by Archdemon Mitch McConnell for their conservative stands. On issues that touch her personally she leans to the left. Otherwise she is firmly in the conservative lineup. She calls herself bipartisan and moderate but is clearly a DINO in the making. At her swearing-in Sinema had her hand on the Constitution rather than the Bible; one has to ask just how cynical that was.

Kevin Owen McCarthy (R-CA). House Minority Leader. A dedicated follower of DJT who has bought into the Big Lie hook, line, and sinker and continues to spread it. McCarthy will automatically speak and vote against anything even vaguely democratic. Like many in his party he employs doublethink and doublespeak, in one voice promoting the Constitution while actively working to overthrow it. He is an enemy of the American people.

Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). The resident wingnut of the House. There is nothing she won't say, however illogical, stupid, crass, harmful, loony, hurtful, absurd or ridiculous. She embraces QAnon, which immediately tells us most of what she says is fantasy or an outright lie, usually the latter. She apparently has no sense, and she certainly lacks filters. One wonders if her base is as unhinged as she is. She has been stripped of her committee assignments, roundly denounced by members of both parties, and banned from some social media sites. Yet she has not been formally censured, let alone expelled from the House, because despite her egregious nastiness her fellow members can't muster the political will to take action. She is an enemy and a verbal terrorist.

Stay tuned for Part 2.  

La lutte continue. 

--- Diogenes, 9/10/21

 

Remembering The Presidency: No. 11, James K. Polk

This series was begun on Facebook, but was starting to feel too big for that platform. We will continue to copy posts to FB, but we're temporarily re-establishing Vox Populi for the remainder of the series.

 

 

 

James K. Polk was president from 1845 to 1849. For a one-term president Polk brought much change to the United States. Doing so risked war with two other nations.

Polk supported the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, the idea that America was destined to stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The Oregon Territory, which comprised what are now the states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and parts of Wyoming and Montana, was jointly occupied by the United States and Great Britain, and Polk risked conflict with Britain by annexing the territory. Negotiations between the nations finally resulted in splitting the territory at the 49th parallel, establishing the southern boundary of Canada.

Polk also moved to annex Texas, which led to the Mexican War. When Mexico was defeated the terms of the treaty required that country to cede not only Texas, but also the territory that is now California, and parts of Arizona, Utah, New Mexico and Colorado.

 

Polk's term was politically controversial, but he achieved all his goals and set in motion events that would ultimately add ten states to the union. Not bad for a dark horse candidate from Tennessee.

 

 

Quod Scripsi Scripsi

What I could write I have written.

What I could say I have said.

What I could do I have done.

What I could endure I have endured.

It's someone else's turn.

--- Diogenes, 3 June 2021

Decoration Day

Here it is, Memorial Day weekend. 

Have you been anticipating the long weekend? Making plans? Let's see--so much to do: Break out the grill, brats, and beer; go to the beach; have the gang over for a cookout; take a weekend vacation; tune in the National Memorial Day Concert; go someplace to get a good seat at a fireworks show; go shopping for holiday deals; take the kids to a favorite theme park; get started on that big outdoor project you've been planning for months; go camping; settle in front of the TV to watch racing from Indy, Charlotte, or Santa Anita; go to the cemetery.

Huh? Wait--what?

You do get the word "Memorial" that gives this day its meaning, right?

Memorial Day, as designated by Congress, is the last Monday in May. The day is set aside specifically as a time to remember and honor deceased members of this country's armed forces who gave their lives in defense of the Constitution.

At this time, when the very foundation of the United States of America is under attack by domestic forces inimical to democracy, it is important to remember that members of the armed services, like all federal officers, take an oath of allegiance to the Constitution.

From the Revolutionary War to the continuing actions in the Middle East, approximately 1,264,493 Americans have given their lives to defend this nation "conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." 

To the end of her days my grandmother called this day Decoration Day because that was its name when she was a girl. It was proclaimed and so named in 1868 by General John Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic as a day “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion [Civil War], and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land.”

Perhaps we should revert to the original name. It would provide a somewhat more concrete notion of what the day is about than the rather ephemeral "memorial." The act of decorating would help us remember and honor our dead.

Then maybe we could move that visit to the cemetery to the top of our list.

 --- Diogenes, 29 May 2021