Some Thoughts on the Republican Convention

From the article by Austin Bay: 

"But GetRealLand’s a bitch of a place, where you wake up and the accelerating whine you hear isn’t dream noise but an incoming 82 millimeter mortar round."

One more point…to the Republicans who have snubbed the Convention…while you're traveling around wherever it is you're traveling with your collective thumbs up your collective butts, I'd like to reintroduce myself.

I'm the guy who came to Washington numerous times. I met you in your offices or at Congressional Sportsmen events. Several of you I shot alongside in shotgun events. Hey, you might even remember I spoke at several of those more formal events! Do any of you remember what I said?

Let me give you a little bit of a reminder. I'm the guy who said I was there for "guns." You know…"firearms"…not the "growth of wetlands"…not "America's hunting heritage" although I am an avid big game hunter…not the Second Amendment in the abstract, but as an armed civilian who carries a gun — a loaded gun…I remember that caused some of you a bit of heartburn — every single day, every time I walk out of the house, in fact.

And if you recall, I pushed every one of you on that point. Thinking back, you might remember the guy who refused to let you get a pass because you said you owned a gun, a $25,000 Beretta shotgun, to be specific. I'm the guy who said, after speech after speech of how much money you had funneled into "wetland reclamation," that I didn't give a damn whether every duck in America, including Daffy and Howard the Duck, spontaniously combusted (is that why you never asked me back?). I said then, and I say now, that I was and am here for the guns.

I stand for the Second Amendment — unequivocally, unashamedly, unapologetically, unconditionally. I told you then and I tell you now that I live the Second Amendment, that my friends, my viewers, my listeners, my readers LIVE the Second Amendment…it is an integral part of our life every single day. I told you that we carry guns not because we are afraid, but because we are responsible, that we take our role as citizens as seriously as our Founders hoped we would.

I told you that we train and we train hard; that the gun on our hip represents the line that cannot and will not be crossed; that we pray on the day when everything slides in all drections, one of us is there rather than an unarmed mom and her children. You smiled, and you listened politely, and I'm sure you thought I was full of shit.

Well, probably…but the majority of you who are NOT at the Convention, who are making cutsie-pie remarks more suited to, say, a 14-year-old girl than someone who was actually elected to represent people, all assured me that you stood with the Second Amendment…even though you don't own guns…and don't have carry permits…and don't hunt, unless it's with your $25,000 shotgun and its paid for by a lobbyist. In fact, one of you said to me that, "You stood with the Second, until the very end."

Well, here we are, at the very end. The Second, not to mention the First, the Fourth and the Fifth (and probably all the rest) is imperiled. We face a candidate who wants door-to-door confiscation of our guns, the end of concealed carry, the destruction of Heller and McDonald, who basically wants the complete destruction of the gun culture — our, or at least my — culture and our butts in boxcars headed East.

Where are you?

You said you would stand with me and the Second until the end. I say again, where are you? Checking dumpster fires? Scamming a few more free trips with some lobbyist and hot members of the opposite sex?

Where are you?

I recall song lyrics from the 1960s, the last time America was pushed to the very brink, the last time we looked into the abyss and decided to step back. From Steppenwolf, the song "Monster;"

"America, where are you now
Don't you care about your sons and daughters
Don't you know we need you now
We can't fight alone against the monster"

How are those dumpster fires going for you?