What a long, hot, lousy stinking summer. We’ve spent so much time sending thoughts and prayers to Gilroy and El Paso and Chicago and Virginia Beach and Dayton and even Toledo, there’s hardly been time for ice cream and barbecues and theme parks. Who can relax with everybody so focused on being strong?
Fireworks are out of the question as the horrific spate of mass shootings has the entire country recoiling from any loud noises, and yes, that includes the strident denials by the president that his vitriolic rhetoric has anything to do with riling up the racist element often referred to as his base. We’re not saying all Donald Trump supporters are lethally ignorant racists, just that most lethally ignorant racists are Donald Trump supporters.
In response, he said, “I don’t think my rhetoric is racist at all. As a matter of fact, I think my rhetoric brings people together.” And it has proven to be effective in bringing white supremacists together with immigrant victims.
Under intense pressure from vulnerable GOP congressional candidates, Trump did manage to mumble something about racism being bad. Of course, his words might have been easier to understand if he had taken off the hood.
45 went on to blame video games, the internet, mental illness and all sorts of things, somehow neglecting to mention the word “guns” at all, while claiming the only true answer to this disturbing spray of terror is his desperately needed immigration reform. Yep. Everything is always all about the wall. Except Mexico paying for it.
Although blaming mental illness, Trump also failed to mention it was he who got rid of Obama’s regulation that kept people who received Social Security checks for mental illnesses and deemed unfit to handle their financial affairs from buying guns. Probably just slipped his mind. That’s one slippery mind.
It’s also worth noting that people hearing Donald Trump accuse hatred and mental illness for being responsible for the madness pointed out to their televisions in varying degrees of intensity, “you, that’s you, you’re talking about you.”
What nobody mentions about this 2nd Amendment brouhaha, it’s not the guns so much as the bullets that are the real problem. Guns don’t kill people, bullets do. They are the things that put the holes in the body making the blood leak out way too quick.
Trump declared he doesn’t have a racist bone in his body, so the general consensus is it must be his soft tissue. And that’s a lot of soft tissue. I can’t wait for the upcoming announcement by the president that there is no room in his administration for racists because all the slots have been filled by his family.
He expressed confidence he could work out a deal with Congress on “meaningful background checks,” but Moscow Mitch McConnell has gone full turtle, pulling his head into his shell and refusing to encourage or discourage any optimism. Which is his way.
Suspicions run rampant they’re both counting on the 116th Congress returning from recess on the Monday after Labor Day and being distracted by the umpteen other catastrophes, calamities and cataclysms that will surely arise before their arrival, once again making this issue as dated as the fashions worn by trustees at the Asylum of Charenton. Which in 1814 played a role similar to... Congress.
Will Durst is an award-winning, nationally acclaimed columnist, comic and former sod farmer in New Berlin, Wisconsin.
