Posted on 09/24/2011 5:56:24 AM PDT by marktwain
“When all else fails … vote from the rooftops.” That’s how a T-shirt logo advertising Michael Dukes’ radio show reads. What can that statement, in blood-red lettering over a black background and paired with the image of an assault rifle, possibly mean except that people who aren’t satisfied with election results should use an assault rifle to take matters into their own hands. That they should climb to the top of a building and start killing people?
It is, of course, a despicable logo. Most people, conservative to liberal, get that. Just this month, an AK47 owner blasted 11 folks having breakfast at a pancake house in Nevada, killing three. “You can’t believe the firepower,” said a witness, “the kind of rounds coming out of that weapon.”
So when Michael Dukes suggests that the text and image of his 2007 logo is some kind of joke (“satire … not to be taken seriously,” according to the News-Miner), I wonder how many people think it’s funny. (View the logo at http://themichaeldukesshow.blogspot.com/2007/06/artwork-for-firearms-friday-show-almost.html.) Supporters in the online comments below the News-Miner article protest that the intent is serious, that people should prepare for armed revolution if “all else” — however you define that — fails.
I wonder what fraction of the Fairbanks population thinks that this moment in American political history is so desperate that we should be thinking about launching a civil war. Schaeffer Cox does, I guess.
According to the seven-count indictment, Cox told his militia “ … you also have to be ready to kill.” It’s alleged he envisioned “guerilla warfare” and was getting ready to kill judges and troopers, having amassed for that purpose “a tripod-mounted, belt-fed .50-caliber machine gun, a belt-fed, hand-cranked, tripod-mounted .30 caliber machine gun, at least one fully automatic assault rifle, multiple pineapple grenades, at least one grenade launcher … ” — the list goes on.
Dukes, a member of the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly who is running for re-election, cavalierly blends fatuous macho talk with gun-rights advocacy, but this kind of talk isn’t bluster to Cox and his ilk. In Cox, a sometimes political candidate, we see the fusion of a Second Amendment activist and a radical accused of actively planning to use gun violence as a political tool.
What kind of mind thinks this way? What sort of values must these people hold? What part of “Thou shalt not kill” eludes those who tend to tout Christian values? For that matter, what part of criminal law eludes this brand of conservatives, usually champions of “law and order?” What deep sense of victimhood and impotence leads one to prop up his inadequacy with an assault rifle and to snicker at the prospect of shooting his neighbors?
It isn’t just in our town, either, where it sometimes seems the lunatics are running the asylum. Tea Party-backed candidate Sharron Angle of Nevada offers the same message as Dukes and Cox when she refers to “Second Amendment remedies.”
And then there’s our gal Sarah Palin, saying “Don’t retreat — reload,” and graphically targeting congressional Democrats by placing rifle scope crosshairs on their districts. Of course, all it takes is one delusional fanatic, infuriated with the government, to pull a gun and send a bullet through the skull of one of those people, Rep. Gabby Giffords.
Michele Bachmann makes a point of telling audiences that her favorite gun is an AR15 assault rifle. She told Minnesotans that she wanted them “armed and dangerous” for upcoming political battles and that she needed her supporters to “take out some of these bad guys.”
Joyce Kaufman, a conservative radio host and Florida Republican Rep. Allen West’s chief of staff, said, “If ballots don’t work, bullets will.” Not much ambiguity there. Stephen Broden, a conservative candidate for Congress in Texas last year, is even less metaphorical: “Our nation was founded on violence; the option is on the table.”
This, of course, is the talk of children. Or of adults stuck at a profoundly immature level of thinking. It’s the kind of thinking that informs those who bring guns to public meetings, intimidating ordinary folk from testifying, or even attending.
It’s the kind of thinking that results in noxious smoke pouring into a grade school for years before the citizenry rises up and demands a stop to it.
It’s what allows our borough mayor, an unfailingly polite and thoroughly decent man, to be utterly pilloried — shrill voices threatening and denouncing him as a socialist — for an eminently sensible wood stove replacement program.
It’s what scuttles Vision Fairbanks, a modest proposal to revitalize downtown, never mind that the downtown business owners requested the reform.
It’s time for people with a little more maturity and soundness of mind to take back their town.
Dan O’Neill is the author of “The Firecracker Boys” and “A Land Gone Lonesome.”
Read more: Fairbanks Daily News-Miner - The voice of Interior Alaska since 1903
The picture above is a .50BMG rifle of some sort - there is some discussion of it (and a great summary of what "Vote From the Rooftops" really means in post # 58) HERE.
Sure, it's rhetoric. However, to dismiss it as "childish" like the writer above has, well - that would be unwise.
The left would NEVER use gun violence as a political tool.
Would they?
All these Vision schemes are part of Agenda21. Modest my azz.
Dan O’Neill sits to pee.
The Current President of the United States kicked off his campagin in the livingroom of an un apolegetic, unrepentant, blood drenched Terroist who has never backed away from his belief that 25% of the population of this country would have to be killed before this nation might be properly governable.
Am I worried about some clown and his gun? No. I am not.
Ah yes. Best sellers in Zimbabwe.
What is a libweenie like that doing in AK — and where’s the “Barf Alert!”?
Should I be shocked?
This post tore me up:
“But I have never been so amazed at the behavior of those carrying guns and using them in a dangerous way in innapropriate places - i.e. neighborhoods where there are close homes, children, and pets, when there is no need for self defense - unless an intruder were to come into your home. We have shooting ranges - how about using them? How about respecting the laws we already have on the books, as well as respecting your neighbors?”
Just shy of a couple weeks ago I took a 9mm to _3_ rabid coons running in my neighborhood, thereby sparing the ‘close’ neighbors’ grandchildren, pets and themselves the sickening rabies shots ~I’m~ now getting.
Aren’t I just such the epitome of an inconsiderate, selfish, trigger-happy bitch?
Who do I think I am, “using them in a dangerous way in innapropriate [sic] places” when I’m sure there’s a perfectly good shooting range *somewhere* near here?
[woulda been 9 yards of hell trying to bag up them coons and transport them there, though, for a more “appropriate” dispatching, I tell ya what]
It's a useful option to have on tap, just in caswe the Teamsters' boss should start telling his union thugs to start killing Americans with whom they have political differences.
Oh, wait- that's right. He already has....
You're quite correct. I can even tell you who the fella behind the trigger is. And so can a couple of other folks around here.
Shhhhhh.....:o)
Hey, I’ve been a guest on the Michael Dukes show a bunch of times. Even sent him books, to use as call-in guest prizes. More points on my Fusion Center accumulated score! Holy cow, I’ll bet I’m pegging that sucker.
I recently added a new accessory for my Mossburg, an inexpensive cloth nail apron from the local home repair bigbox store.
Cost should be around 2 bucks or so. Mine has 2 large pockets and a narrow pocket between them. The large pockets can each hold 2 boxes of loose 2 3/4 inch 12ga shells loose for easy access. The narrow center pocket now holds a spare mag for my .45.
Nice touch. I came up with something similar, using one of a pair of the one-dollar-apiece black fabric Wal-Mart shopping bags, fastened together over the shoulder, front and back, as ballistic plate carriers. Or for shotgun shells, or buzzgun magazines, if you're so inclined.
Oh, about the tacky Wal-Mart logo on them: I turned them inside-out before I started modifying. Works fine.
There's a much better essay on Precision Voting, with accompanying photos, *here.*
Dated info, but timeless, some of it.
Way things are going your gonna have to fill that with grenades......:o)
Or maybe not:
That’s 40mm ....yes I’d rather have those but...:0)
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