Friday, June 30, 2017

That NRA ad? How to open the clenched fist of truth

Wow. My liberal friends have their tails in a wad over this NRA ad. "Chilling," says Business Insider; "violent, terrifying," says Salon.

"Ho hum," says Bathrobes Pierre. "Yet more vapid rhetoric from the inauthentic defender of a fake Second Amendment."

Have political opponents, regardless of opinion, become so brittle and hysterical that they've forgotten how to think? Or maybe it's true what foreigners say about America: we're so inundated with marketing that we've become completely defenseless against it.

C'mon, break this thing down. It'd get maybe a C in a class on public relations. "Violence of lies"? Who was around the NRA writing table that day? They need to go back and read Strunk and White: Excise excise excise that extraneous verbiage and don't employ Latinisms! "Bloody lies" would be great, except for it's a damn Britishism. "Violence of lies" is pretentious and will make people think you go to Shakespeare plays to watch Julius Reagan not get assassinated. So, what about "assault rifle of lies"? That works! Go with that, NRA!

Further:

1. Spokeswoman Dana Loesch is a caricature of a scary person. Her voice drips with the venomous scorn a black widow feels before she jumps onto your pillow when you are just waking up. She wears a perpetual snarl of contempt: Her face is the mask the Statue of Liberty puts on for Halloween. The only difference is that you laugh when you open the door and see the Statue dressed like that.

2. "They" and "their": If you haven't looked at the ad, stop now and look at it--it's only a minute long. It starts out suddenly by accusing "they" of doing things. I took it back to the beginning three times thinking, "this can't be the beginning; they've cut into it somewhere;" but no: that was the beginning. "They" is apparently some kind of bogeyman that:

        a. "assassinates real news": Assassinates? Really? The real news I see hasn't been assassinated; it's been executed! I mean, come on! This isn't the work of some shadowy assassin. It happens in broad daylight, outer and prouder than the rainbow after the Ark's pride parade! Those are editors at work, and that's what editors do! They cut and snip and re-assemble body parts into clickbait headlines with more glee than Sanson the Guillotiner! It's their job! So at least I've identified who "they" is: editors.

     b. "use their schools to teach children that their president is another Hitler": OK, so editors apparently have schools. This I did not know. But let's play along. The editors have executed the news and have put the body parts in formaldehyde jars to teach the kids some science. One jar says "Hitler;" another jar says "Trump." So what they do is say, "OK, kids, compare and contrast: which one of these has a backbone? Which one of these is a soldier? Which one of these, due to a warped sense of history, is murderously devoted to ethnic purity? Which one of these is an empty-headed self-promoting con man who doesn't know what history is, but 'oooh, North Lyin' Hillary Korea is bad and I have missiles!'?" The editors obviously want to promote the development by elementary-age children of genetically-modified dragons teeth that the kids can take outside and fight kudzu with.

     c. "use their movie stars and singers and comedy shows to repeat their narrative over and over": man, these editors are something else. Did you know that editors had all that talent chained to their nose rings? I sure didn't. Tell you what, though, it's what I miss about vinyl records: skipping. Talk about repeating a narrative over and over! You just bumped the needle (my saying which will lead some editor-possessed audiophile to scream, "You just assassinated the record!") and everything was fine. C'mon, y'all: bump the needle. Please? For me?

Anyway, the executioner editors are doing this why? "Make them march, make them protest, make them scream racism and sexism and xenophobia and homophobia, make them smash windows ... terrorize law-abiding citizens" etc. etc. (btw be careful of my quotes; they might not be pure; I don't have an editor) etc. etc. until what? "Until the only option left is for the police to do their jobs and stop the madness."

This is when it gets really weird and funny, if you know the history of the 2nd Amendment. It's when Dana Loesch morphs into a British regular with a mitre hat shooting at an ice-throwing mob on a cold night in Boston: "Make them march, make them protest, make them scream 'taxation without representation' and 'placing a standing army in our midst' and 'protecting soldiers from punishment for any murders they might commit' and 'destroying the lives of our people,' make them throw tea overboard and tar and feather tax collectors until the only option left is for the standing army to do its job and stop the madness."


Bump the needle.

Here's what everyone should be learning in school about the 2nd Amendment, but which the NRA--its self-proclaimed apologist--is not teaching: It was meant to ensure that the nation would not only defend itself but enforce its laws through the power of a trained, self-armed citizen militia to which all citizens were called as a matter of duty, just as they are called to jury duty.

It didn't work out. The citizen militia, self-armed and called as a matter of duty, was already a thing of the past by the mid-19th century. Today our laws are enforced by professional police forces, not by a citizen militia.

That might be fine. It's just not what they envisioned. No, not the bogeyman editors. The Founders. In the 2nd Amendment. About which the NRA is either ignorant or ... hmm, what was that about an assault rifle of lies?



     




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