The world’s greatest democracy has a cancer. It’s pathology is found in disenfranchised folk with an easy access to heavy artillery. And yet the glib constitutional righteousness remains.
Paris would’ve been much different had the victims been carrying guns, opined Donald Trump, in one of his latest tender soundbites. While conveniently ignoring the almost weekly mass shootings on the streets of America. But will a manic right wing agenda make people feel any safer? Not when you put arms into the hands of the disenfranchised and they’re tipped over their edge.
Republicans in Congress and on the campaign trail vehemently eschew the rights of women to have access to abortion; a man picks up a gun in Colorado and shoots. The tipping point appeared minimal; the result is more lives lost through an intolerance readily espoused as right.
Was that a terrorist attack in California? It’s premature to reach full conclusions – although one look at the surnames and copies of the Quran will undoubtedly guarantee knee-jerk headlines. But in a country where black lives are still persecuted and a potential presidential candidate readily falsifies a memory of Muslims dancing in the streets of New Jersey at the fall of the Twin Towers; suggests closing the borders to all Syrian refugees; and having a national database of Muslims [in a rather eerie parallel to a certain Nazi philosophy!]. A leading Republican presidential candidate. It makes you wonder.
Intolerance breeds tipping points. And then puts guns into the hands of the disenfranchised. Gun control feels increasingly like an important moral agenda. But at the same time feels like an attempt to desalinate the entire world’s seas. The world’s greatest democracy [self-titled grandiose epithet] has potentially shot itself in both feet.
Nige' Ollis 