Stating The Obvious

And this is a surprise?  To whom?  The political landscape has become a pressure cooker with no release valve and some nut will take the opportunity to do what the voices tell him to do.  Unfortunately those voices belong to pundits and preachers who influence millions of people and that makes it increasingly likely that more than one person will decided to take matters into their own hands.  When you talk about someone as if they aren't human, as if they are the devil in disguise, the hate factor is ratcheted up into the stratosphere and logical thought flies out the window.  It won't occur to the perpetrators that they have lost the moral high ground, listening to the right justify killing someone at church is proof of that, and that the repercussions of their actions will bring about almost everything they fear.  Martial law, restrictions on what few civil liberties we have left and confiscation of as many weapons as possible.  But that won't stop them because their hatred knows no bounds.

My issue is with the Secret Service and the cavalier way they seem to be doing their job.  There is never, and I mean never, a good reason for people without a badge to have weapons around the President.  It has been almost 46 years since the last successful attempt to take the life of a President and there have been unsuccessful attempts since then.  Squeaky Fromme, Sara Jane Moore and John Hinckley spring to mind and you would think that the Secret Service would do everything in their power to prevent another attempt.  Especially since they were so good at making sure that people who were wearing tee shirts protesting the war or the administration and who were exercising the right of free speech, weren't allowed into events where Bush and Cheney were speaking.  Why does the Secret Service hold the Second Amendment in higher regard than the First?  But then I remember, the Secret Service has members that are comfortable hanging ropes that look like nooses in training facilities.

In October 2000 there was a television show named Freedom whose premise was a coup that started with the killing of the President by flying a plane into the White House.  It wasn't on long but as I think back it doesn't seem to be that far fetched.  No matter how many times the previous administration and their cheerleaders repeat the opposite, somebody did foresee using an airplane to attack the United States and it isn't that far of a stretch to think that someone will use the diatribes of Cheney and the encouragement of "pastors" to set the country back on the "right" course.

To the detriment of us all.

BBB