Sitting in the holster of the NRA
The United States will sell nuclear weapons to any nation with the cash, President Donald Trump announced to a stunned Washington press corp last night.
‘‘A well-armed world is a polite world,’’ the President said. ‘‘We will open an online store, plus a pop-up outlet in a mall down in the embassy district of Washington for those who like to see and get a feel for the warheads. It’s a lot of money, after all.’’
‘‘Sell to any nation?’’ the Washington Post gasped. ‘‘Any nation.’’ ‘‘You would hand an H-bomb to Assad in Syria?’’
‘‘Is he a licensed head-of-state? Okay then, all good. Come to think on it, we have a friend in common, so I’d vouch for him.’’
‘‘And North Korea?’’ the Post persisted.
‘‘Is that a fake question designed to make me look stupid?’’ Trump snapped. ‘‘Well the joke’s on you, buddy, because the smart answer is yes, North Korea. And also South Korea. And Japan. That’s the point, see. Kim Jong-un is not going to cause trouble if he knows his neighbours are packing heat. They have personal protection too.’’
The President was warming to his theme: ‘‘Africa, they need protection. South America – wherever that is. We’re setting big nuclear sales targets in those territories.’’ A sea of hands shot into the air. ‘‘You,’’ said Trump, pointing. ‘‘Yes, you, the blonde in the low-cut top.’’
(‘Scoop’ Baxter’s colleagues immediately recognised the wily old newsman had outflanked them again with his bizarre wardrobe choices for White House press conferences.)
‘‘Mr President, how will this promote peace?’’ Scoop asked. ‘‘Every trigger-happy despot will have obscene power. We’re talking carnage on a massive scale.’’
‘‘Now that’s where you are wrong. Firstly we’ll have thorough background checks ...’’ ‘‘Into their mental state?’’ ‘‘Into their financial state. Thermo-nuclear weaponry is not cheap. You’re not gonna find it in the Specials bin at WalMart. We don’t want any bounced orders. Thirdly ...’’ ‘‘You mean ‘secondly’?’’ ‘‘I let my accountants deal with those details. Thirdly, if everyone has weapons, concealed or opencarry, then it balances out. And fourthly, the right to bear arms is enshrined in our Constitution. We can’t deny it to others. That would make me a hypocrite.
‘‘It’s like our gun laws,’’ Trump continued. ‘‘Sure we have the occasional massacre in this great country of ours – which I deeply regret, by the way – but they happen because only one in three Americans owns a gun. If every man, woman and child was carrying a sidearm, or better yet a military assault rifle, these deeply regrettable things wouldn’t happen.
‘‘My friends in the NRA are fully onboard with this,’’ Trump added. ‘‘As they said to me, why deny hundreds of responsible world leaders the pleasure of owning lethal weapons of mass destruction just because a few loopies might abuse them.’’
The President waggled a finger at the journalists.
‘‘H-bombs don’t kill people. A 50 kiloton warhead is just a machine. People kill people. Write that down.’’
Seriously, what are we going to do about ugly America? Schoolyard massacres have become the speciality of their gunidolising culture.
Schools – from kindergartens to universities – are hallowed ground; our nurseries for the future. It doesn’t get any more repulsive.
‘Who is the Florida gunman?’ the news-site headline asks, over a picture of an expelled student who walked into a gun store on his 19th birthday, the day he became legal to buy a semi-automatic rifle manufactured for one purpose – to kill human beings, and as many as possible. Such is the land of the free. I don’t care who he is. I know enough – he’s a nobody who killed 17 Somebodies, and did his best to kill 14 more.
Isn’t it time we stopped validating these creeps? Banish his name. Tag him Nobody 5/18, (The number of massacres / year).
Never show me his picture. Consign all the other past monsters to similar anonymity.
When you take a life, you don’t deserve a life.
Now give me big pictures and long stories on the students and staff he slaughtered.
Repeat that rollcall of victims’ names every time this tragedy is revisited to background the next tragedy. (It won’t be long – fatal schoolyard shootings occur at a rate of one a week in the US.)
Stick to the same protocol for your run-of-the-mill American massacres, in nightclubs, malls, churches, concerts and the like, plus the copycat attacks overseas.
The massacres in Las Vegas (58 dead, 851 injured) and Norway (77 dead, 110 injured) are obviously going to take some time to reference.
Many of these gunmen have become famous. Books and plays are written about them – under the pretext of exploring why they did it (and a fat lot of good that’s been).
The victims, meanwhile, are just a statistic to the general public. The killers should be a statistic too.
The horrible part is, while US politicians betray their most precious citizens, school massacres are on the rise. In the 1950s they caused 21 deaths and injuries. By the 2000-2009 decade the toll was 244, says Wikipedia. Last week’s Florida massacre took the 2010-2018 tally to 398 – with two years left to run.
Schools are the new killing fields. What are we going to do about ugly America?