ELECTION PROMISES TO AID VETERANS AND FEARS OF NEW GUN LAWS KEY
REAL ACTION MAY BE SOMETHING ELSE
By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER
For those who don’t know, the election is over. I stipulate to the fact that we have now elected a president from Kenya with terrorist ties who plans to take our guns and make us all be "reeducated" as Communists. We have some good things we are finding, our new president can actually talk and only say a few idiotic things instead of everything and we are clearly getting out of Iraq. Hillary Clinton is going to be Secretary of State. With a black president, we are no longer obligated to give out cabinet positions based on race.
Something quite odd, of course, is that Obama seems to have taken office, perhaps against his will, months in advance. Bush seems to have relinquished power and Republicans fearful of indictment for financial crimes tied to economic and legal abuses are keeping their heads down or trying to sound less crazy as with Karl Rove. I don’t think any of us really give a hoot about any of this anymore and I don’t blame anyone. The election was really dumb and Republicans are clearly afraid of screwing anything else up.
With the recent report on military finances indicating that money for new weapons development has mysteriously disappeared and that military cutbacks are now recommended by the outgoing administration, the dangers of Bush economic policies have, it seems, already made us vulnerable. This can be seen in the realignment of our French allies with our Russian enemies. This is, to those who follow history, no surprise, of course.
In the past few days a couple have things have hit home with me. Saturday I went to the local gun show here in Maumee, Ohio. It was the biggest crowd I have ever seen at a gun show. As I looked for a handicap space next to the door so I could park my "foreign" SUV close as possible, with no success I must add. I imagined groups of fearful NRA readers buying everything in sight and prices running thru the roof. This was not to be the case.
My only real hobby other than "French cooking" is gunsmithing and restoration of military "relic" weapons. I never miss a gun show and know half the vendors personally. Ohio has very liberal gun laws and buying from an unlicensed owner is easier than picking up a pack of cigarettes.
Getting to the tables took some work. Crowds were a bit different than usual. What was surprising was the number of people bringing in guns to sell and the few actually making purchases. The shows run two days but, as this was after 1pm on Saturday, vendors had already seen the writing on the wall. There was little money to make from the thousands of people there, maybe with the exception of an increase in ammunition sales.
The tables in the front had pistols, the Glocks and Colts, prices thru the roof with no takers. As I got to the familiar guys I had been doing business with for years, I saw prices drop, drop to levels I hadn’t seen since the world was young. People wanted to see guns, get out of the house, but had no money left for guns when food, gas or house payments came first. It was clear that these fears outweighed the desire for new "toys" and getting thru Christmas for some was going to put the desire for that new assault rifle or pistol on hold.
Few Americans that want guns don’t already own one or more, some many. Guns have usually been a good investment but also something too easily stolen or used in settling household disagreements. My view, not always shared, but one from experience, is that one poliitical party, unmentioned, talks "guns" but fears an armed population that could resist a government grown out of control supporting a wealthy class finally caught "with their hand in the cookie jar."
The other party is feared because they would have us all riding around in cars wearing bicycle helmets and would inspect our homes to make sure our guns had trigger locks, were inside safes with ammo buried in the back yard. The NRA loves talking about old ladies shooting burglars and searches the media for stories that support this myth. Actually, my mother, living alone on a farm in Southeast Kentucky, kept a pistol next to her.
That crime rates in some rural areas are actually beyond those in Cleveland and Detroit is not known to some. The myth of rural "good neighbors" is one I am glad to "bust." Thieves made my mothers life miserable and their connection to local Republican politicians made them impossible to arrest. I always had my brother around to restrain my natural tendency to visit them and deal with them in Marine Corps fashion.
Anyway, enough of that. Yesterday I made a $10 bet that Obama wouldn’t pass any new gun laws. I have until June to either pay off our collect. We will see. I believe the unsupported lies passed on by the NRA and other gun groups were more tied to the number of paid Washington DC "weenies" who had infiltratred gun groups than to their former position of supporting responsible gun ownership.
The current NRA has fallen under the control of country club types who would hunt drugged or penned animals or, better yet, shoot them while they are in cages. They should simply cut the crap. Any meat they eat is brought to them by a waiter and you, the taxpayer, pick up the bill. Even Sarah Palin’s "Apocalypse Now" hunting, shooting stray dogs from oil company helicopters with machine guns, seems sporting in comparison.
As it went, people who may have taken these stories seriously would rather vote to keep their homes and jobs than their guns. My hope is that we stop passing laws entirely. We have had 8 years of useless laws taking away our freedoms. Removing the ones we have, the ones that let police do anything they want, any time they want and daring us to do something about it need to go. We have already voted out the idiots who wrote those laws although the Democrats themselves voted for some of them. Please, don’t start trusting Democrats just because they aren’t as stupid as Republicans.
Yesterday, just to cause trouble, I sent an article on "talk radio" to one of my gullible "neocon" friends. I found the article thoughtful and informative and was surprised that one of my DC "weenie lobbyist" friends would miss some of the points made. He still lectures me on how misunderstood the Hoover administration was.
The article is a bit long and showed, in detail, how radio hosts treat listeners like idiots, all for a buck. Why shouldn’t they be like everyone else? My issue with them is that they do damage. The response I received was to compare me to them. My response, of course, is that I support broad freedoms and resistance to government involvment in our daily lives. We will see if the Democrats start moving down this course and how I handle it. Of course, since we went so far the wrong way that we reached a dead end, box canyon or whatever and obviously have to turn back and disassembled the "police state" tends to lower the threat a bit.
Ideas that the rich are "strong" and the working people, wage earners, are somehow weak and inferior infuriates me. When "rich" and "crooked" tend to mean the same thing, people doing real work at real jobs may be the only "real people" we have left. They may not be "real Americans" or "real patriots" but without working people, the rich would have nobody to steal from.
Americans are prettymuch aware that, while they were looking under their beds for the boogyman, someone stole their jobs, their savings and, for those who are keeping their eyes open as they should, their rights as American citizens.
As I try to focus some of what I write on military and veteran affairs, writing something substantive while our government is in a paralysis state is not going to be productive. Keeping General Motors alive seems to fill the news lately. For those living in the "rust belt" this is a critical issue. For others it is not. Obama and Bush seem to be on the same page on almost everything, including this. I simply shake my head and wonder what has been going on for 8 years.
Yesterday it was announced that Gulf War Syndrome is actually a disease and the thousands who have been sick and who have died, many after years of scorn from VA doctors and abuse by their government are now vindicated. This is almost 2009. If anyone who reads this doesn’t feel uncomfortable about the wait, considering our history on Agent Orange and PTSD, please try to work yourself into at least 5 minutes of rage. Thousands of sick veterans deserve at least this much of your attention.
I see we signed an agreement to leave Iraq in 2011, including, according to stories, giving up our airbase, lynchpin of our foreign policy in the Middle East. I don’t suspect Iraq will fall into the civil war promised during the election. Now that the lying can stop, we can admit we are actively negotiating with Iran toward normalizing relations, something Obama was criticized for suggesting. We may also want to start asking questions about the conflict in Georgia and how both our government and our media lied like dogs about everything that went on there. We wonder why the Russians hate us.
Afghanistan and Pakistan will fill our agenda for the next 2 years. As with Iraq, the government Bush and his cronies sought to put in place was the one they thought they could control. Iraq got rid of the criminal element we put in power to replace the criminal element we wanted to change and is now getting rid of us. Welcome to the "Miller Time" of reality.
Afghanistan is something else. First we said the Taliban were the opium producers and had to be fought. Now we find the Taliban is fighting the opium producers and that President Karzai’s brother controls the opium trade. If you don’t detect something wrong here, perhaps some study is in order.
The Taliban has some extremely backward views about women, law and alot of things.
In fact, they are so backward they are almost exactly like the Saudi’s, our best friends in the region.
Imagine how much we might love the Taliban if they had oil.
Instead, we send our kids to Afghanistan to die and are involved in a civil war supporting a "total joke" central government, a pack of drug dealers who are fighting religious nutcases exactly like our other religious nutcase friends.
Actually, this sounds alot like the election we just had here. One election ago, half of America talked about joining Canada. Now, after this election, half of America wants to get in a time machine and go back to the 18th century. Listening to all this stupid talk about "palling around with terrorists" and "socialism" when we actually landed in the 10th century, a feudal society with a dissolving middle class, serfs and baronial rulers who neither bathe nor use central plumbing, should give rise to humor.
To troops leaving Iraq to be sent to winter in Afghanistan, none of this will be funny.
To Gulf War Syndrome sufferers, now told, nearly 20 years later, that it wasn’t really their "imagination," it may not be funny either.
To veterans whose disabilty applications have been shredded, burned or ignored, sometimes for years, while their kids do without, humor may be hard to support.
Can people losing their homes and jobs get pleasure out of turning on the radio and being told to blame everyone but those responsible get pleasure? It seems, maybe, yes. Maybe if stupidity makes some feel better and they really aren’t the danger to others that they seem to be, maybe we should leave them alone.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Gordon Duff is a Senior Staff Writer for VeteransToday.com. He is a U.S. Marine Vietnam Veteran and regular contributor. He is a specialist in banking and economics and holds a United Nations diplomatic post.
Gordon Duff posted articles on VT from 2008 to 2022. He is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War. A disabled veteran, he worked on veterans and POW issues for decades.
Gordon is an accredited diplomat and is generally accepted as one of the top global intelligence specialists. He manages the world’s largest private intelligence organization and regularly consults with governments challenged by security issues.
Duff has traveled extensively, is published around the world, and is a regular guest on TV and radio in more than “several” countries. He is also a trained chef, wine enthusiast, avid motorcyclist, and gunsmith specializing in historical weapons and restoration. Business experience and interests are in energy and defense technology.
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