The Deep Hypocrisy We Have all Gotten Accustomed to Accept as Truth.
Phu Quoc Island, Vietnam, July 15th, 2024.
Salaroche

A day after the assassination attempt against the most unfit and undeserving presidential candidate the United States has ever had, President Joe Biden went twice before the cameras to say that “There’s no place in America for this kind of violence or any violence for that matter. An assassination attempt is contrary to what we stand for as a nation. Is not who we are as a nation. Is not America”.

Does that sound in any way familiar to you? Doesn’t it sound like an old CD we have all heard many times before? Earlier, the Editorial Board of the New York Times had published an opinion piece titled “The Attack on Donald Trump Is Antithetical to America”. Again, haven’t we read similar statements somewhere else in the past? I could almost swear I have.

Some other news outlets have published articles citing politicians saying that the attempt was “Un-American”. Really? Isn’t the American reality quite the opposite of what they’re saying? Biden says “there’s no place in America for this kind of violence”. Is he kidding? Is he trying to take us all for fools? America is precisely the place for this kind of violence.

Among the countries classified as part of Western Culture, America is notorious for its high incidence of acts of violence of this kind. In the western world, America is No. 1 in gun violence. Don’t we all know that?

Biden also says that “An assassination attempt is contrary to what we stand for as a nation”. Ha! What about the attempt against Ronald Reagan, or Gerald Ford? Or, what about the actual assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King? Not to mention Abraham Lincoln? Political assassinations and attempts are quite common in America.

And then the Times Editorial Board says that gun violence is “antithetical to America”. Again, really? I don’t see any antithesis between gun violence and the wishes of the American people. You cannot enforce by Constitutional mandate a wide availability of guns like we have in America and not expect to have gun violence in America. There is no antithesis there. The one is the direct cause of the other.

You cannot legalize the widespread use of guns and then complain because people keep killing each other with guns. You cannot have one without the other. But this is such a worn-out truism that we just ignore it and refuse to accept it. Will Americans ever come to their senses and reinterpret the 2nd amendment to fit the present national reality and not that of 1791?

Back in 1791, when the Bill of Rights was ratified, there was no nationwide US Army, so there was a legitimate need for the general population to be armed in case the new nation would need to quickly form armed militias to defend itself against any foreign attackers, particularly against England.

But that was way back then. Now we have the most powerful Army in the world to defend the country. There is no need for militias anymore. But go tell this to those Nefarious Retrograde Americans, meaning the members of the NRA, and they will call you “un-American”.

There are no two ways about this. If you legalize the widespread availability of guns, you are basically encouraging gun violence and, to a large extent, you are encouraging political assassinations and attempts as well.

Societies across the world have each their own set of hypocrisies that they turn a blind eye on. Claiming that there is no place in America for gun violence and political assassinations just tops the list of our own quintessential American hypocrisies.

Salaroche