When? And other musings
Tom Pinney
Once again, we come to a place where I have about three columns worth of stuff to say and one in which to do it, because since last Thursday, a year has passed.
Trump started a beef with the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, over the fact that she was asking for more help from the US government on clean up efforts. Trump said it was due to the laziness of the Puerto Rican people.
Never mind that he said that from one of his golf courses. Also never mind that, while he said that, Puerto Rican people were recovering from the worst disaster the island has ever received, having only a few days to recover from Hurricane Irma before Hurricane Maria made landfall and decimated what was left, and as he was tweeting, the mayor was waist-deep in water helping people out of their homes.
Once again, our reality show celebrity President is making a mockery of a strong woman who dared to question him. And in his toss, he blamed Democrats for persuading her to change sides.
Sure. Because Democrats didn’t spend last week trying to knock down the Graham-Cassidy healthcare bill or Trump’s tax plan, they had plenty of time to worry about whether or not the mayor of San Juan liked you.
No, Mr. President, what caused the mayor to criticize you was a member of your administration who called the relief effort in Puerto Rico “a good news story.” In her words, it’s not a good news story. It’s a “people are dying” story, and you’re turning it into a ridiculous Twitter beef story.
For the love of chimichangas, can someone just take Trump’s phone into custody or lock him out of social media? Every time he pulls up the Twitter app, he embarrasses this country more.
Oh. Just for what it’s worth, we now have evidence that Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are both using private email servers to conduct official business. Hey, conservatives, where’s your rage?
That leads me to my second point: political correctness, the grand crutch that the right uses to say that Democrats are draconian rulers trying to control what people say and do.
The only arguments that I’ve ever heard against political correctness is that people can’t say offensive things without being called out for being offensive. And the hypocrisy makes me laugh.
First, some argue for political correctness to be removed from this country so that they can unabashedly use the R-word and “gay” in pejorative ways.
Is that really the best you’ve got? You want to use offensive terms to insult people? Come on.
Second, the “anti-PC” president is actually the worst offender of the anti-PC movement. Never forget that Trump called news outlets “fake news” simply because they reported bad things about them.
That’s not fake news. It’s called fair reporting and full disclosure. Of course, if he ever released his tax returns, he might know something about full disclosure, and if he didn’t stay on the birther bandwagon so long, he may know something about fair reporting.
Moving on, we have to discuss the tragedy in Las Vegas where a gunman used several rapid-fire rifles to kill 59 people and injure another 500+ at a music festival. As we recover from yet another mass shooting, Congressional Republicans and the White House have all said that “this is not the time” to discuss gun law reform.
You’re right, NRA-backed lawmakers. Now is not the right time to discuss gun law reform. Now is exactly the wrong time to talk about it.
The right time to talk about gun law reform would have been December 15, 2012, one day after a shooter stole his mother’s firearms and killed 20 kindergarten children and six teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
The right time would have been April 17, 2007, one day after a shooter used two legally-purchased guns to kill 33 people and injure another 17 at Virginia Tech.
The right time would have been June 13, 2016, one day after a shooter killed 49 people and injured another 58 at a nightclub in Orlando.
The right time would have been Monday, and even then, for Jordyn Rivera, Heather Alvarado, Candice Bowers, Adrian Murfitt, Derrick Taylor, Kelsey Meadows, John Phippen, Kurt von Tillow, Jack Beaton, Melissa Ramirez, Rachael Parker, Jordan McIldon, Christopher Roybal, Hannah Ahlers, Stacee Etcheber, Denise Burditus, Charleston Hartfield, Angela Gomez, Sonny Melton, Sandra Casey, Jenny Parks, Quinton Robbins, Neysa Tonks, Susan Smith, Bailey Schweitzer, Jennifer Irvine, Lisa Romero-Muniz, Rhonda LeRocque, Erick Silva, Jessica Klymchuk, Calla Medig, Tara Roe, Michelle Vo, Carrie Barnette, and another 24 as-yet-unidentified people, it would have still been too late.
“But it’s disrespectful to politicize this tragedy.” I agree. It’s more disrespectful to these people, and their families, to show them that they died in vain by not doing something about the problem the US has with guns.
The United States is the only developed nation without common-sense gun control laws in place, and not coincidentally at all, we’re also the only nation where mass shootings not only happen, but happen with such regularity that we’re now numb to them. So let’s not politicize the tragedy by politicizing the idea of gun control. Not having people die at the hands of mass shooters should be a bipartisan issue.
“But gun control only keeps law-abiding citizens from obtaining guns.” If you lock your doors, despite the fact that a crook will still get in if he wants to, then your argument is invalid.
Now is EXACTLY the time to be discussing common-sense gun control in the United States. Because every time we don’t have this conversation, every time we put it off, every time we say we’re honoring the victims by keeping silent about what happened to them, we’re justifying the next mass shooting because we didn’t do anything to prevent it.
If you’re truly praying for a solution, don’t be surprised when God answers. To me, he’s screaming loud and clear: it’s time for us to do something about it.
So let’s start talking.
Tom Pinney is a news reporter for the Maryville Daily Forum.
