Hey Chris. It's always interesting to hear input from the outside looking in. A couple from England we are friends with came to visit and stayed with us a few years ago. He was very curious about it, and asked me to take him to the range to teach him how to shoot. If he was seeing signs of mental illness in me, he keeps it to himself anyway.
Hey listen man it's not Mad Max here, and there's no one walking the streets with machine guns, you have to obtain a special license to obtain one, and you certainly can't go running around with it. This society, for the most part anyway, is a very polite one, even if we are mentally ill. You would never even know there are average people walking around with a gun, or have one handy right below the cash register they are tending, in their car console, or whatever. If you weren't already pre warned you'd never have a clue.
Do you know why I started carrying back in 2003? Some guy walked into the local Radio Shack store, stuck a pistol straight between the cashier's eyes, and pulled the trigger. Somehow it didn't kill him, but he's blind as a bat for the rest of his life. That pissed me off so bad, I decided right there and then I was going to be someone who could potentially stop something like that from happening. I've been that person ever since, grabbing the old pistola on the way out the door is no different than grabbing the car keys. So yes, for sure it's normalized, but people like me who carry don't consider themselves mentally ill, they consider actions like that guy at Radio Shack mentally ill.
Here's our view looking out: Remember that rampage in Paris a few years ago, guys running around gunning people down at will even though guns are highly illegal? It's that if the bad guy wants a gun bad enough he's gonna get one, and if the good guy close by maybe had a gun of his own, maybe he could have stopped it before it got too far.
Soooo then, to a possible right wing coup. I posted a video here years ago showing a short conversation between me and a certain hardware store owner. It's a couple of towns on down the line, the guy is a Baptist minister, and one day our local paper ran a story on that this guy had put a sign up on his store front saying "No Gays Allowed". Well I just had to go talk to him, and got his permission to video tape it on my phone.
Let me tell you it was quite the experience, and one I'll never forget! I just started out by asking him about his sign, and flop, out came his fucking Bible OMG! He took us to Romans 1 to prove where his authority to do this came from:
Anyone who doesn't know what "reprobate" means, it ain't pretty:Romans 1:27-29
King James Version
27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
Abbreviated
As our conversation went on, I realized the locals were gathering to the side and in back of me standing at the counter paying very close attention, and as he read and preached could be heard the occasional "here here!", or "amen!". It was almost like something out of a Steven King novel, with the small country town following the crazy preacher who hates anyone not just like him.reprobate adjective
Definition of reprobate (Entry 2 of 3)
1a: morally corrupt : DEPRAVED
b: foreordained to damnation
4archaic : rejected as worthless or not standing a test : CONDEMNED
1: to condemn strongly as unworthy, unacceptable, or evil
reprobating the laxity of the age
2: to refuse to accept : REJECT
3: to foreordain to damnation
So anyway we DID keep it a polite conversation, went on to talk a bit about the Constitution a bit, and parted ways. I told my wife something along the lines of "people like him had better not ever get their hands on any real power in this country". I could easily see them arm banding, and eventually rounding up of the undesirables just like you spoke of. Until Captain Chaos and his merry men came along doing their thing, especially during the 2020 election fiasco, I couldn't really imagine how this could ever happen. But then I "saw" it as described above, I saw how it could possibly begin to happen, and it was and still is frightening to the core.
I think the numbers now would still be wildly insignificant to cause any deep rooted trouble. What worries me is this undying devotion to Trump is like a fever, it's not well reasoned out, and if thinking starts getting too muddled and blinded by things like the Bible, patriotism, and dear leader type of thought, the sentiments of "who are the undesirables?" may well not seem so extreme any more. Mob mentality sort of thing setting in. The fever.
So anyway there's nothing Mad Max going on here yet, no jeeps with mounted machine guns lol, but if the fever spreads and catches a good spark, that could conceivably change. The real question might be how much does it spread to the Average Joe like myself? I had to run into a gas station yesterday, and there was a big 4x4 pickup truck flying three huge flags from its tailgate. There was "Fuck Joe Bide" and "Trump 2024", with the American flag in the middle. The truck was empty so he must be inside, there were several people in there, a guy here, a guy there, two guys talking to each other, and waiting in line I was wondering "which one of you guys thinks like this, and so proudly?"
That's likely the kind of guy who's very susceptible to "the fever", or maybe he's already got it but is thus far asymptomatic.
But rest assured law and order has not broken down here in the States. Not yet anyway.
Interestingly, there's also a middle way seems to slowly be gaining traction, that is the typical divorce situation of separating the parties with irreconcilable differences. That is namely, to basically separate the country in two between red states and blue states. As best I understand it would actually be two separate nations. People like me would be kinda fucked. There's some things I prefer red state, and others I prefer blue state, that would be a hell of a choice!
It would beat a civil war though... I have no idea how this thing can be reconciled though. Essentially we have MSNBC and FOX NEWS bitching about and at the other, and no one's gonna give an inch. They're the ring leaders, we have to choose which one is speaking complete truth, which one is a conniving back stabbing liar, and follow the truth teller. Ain't no middle ground.