August 30, 2023

The Far-Right and the Riflemen (and Women)

 

By Hal Brown 


This morning Raw Story published this article: 

Far-right lawmaker wants to defund Fani Willis: 'I don't want to have to draw my rifle' Click to read.


This is the part of the story that led to the title and some mockery in the comments (my emphasis):

Moore said during a recent conversation with a fellow state senator they discussed “taking action right now because if we don't, our constituencies are gonna be fighting it in the streets.”

“Do you want a civil war? I don't want a civil war. I don't want to have to draw my rifle. I want to make this problem go away with my legislative means of doing so, and the first step to getting that done is defunding Fani Willis of any Georgia tax dollars."

This brought to mind the ABC TV western The Rifleman which aired between 1958 and 1963. Chuck Conners played the hero Lucas McCain. Some trivia: Sammy Davis Junior played Tip Corey,  a super fast, black gunman who killed the 5 men the law allowed to murder his father years ago, demands that deputy McCain symbolically throw his badge in the dirt in the episode Two Ounces of Tin (Reference).

The Rifleman was one of the first popular TV shows to feature a single parent raising a child.

Like any Western TV show or film, The Rifleman had plenty of villains and gunplay. But that isn’t what really made the show work. The driving force behind the show was the relationship between Lucas and his son.  

Lucas was a widower raising his son all by himself. Each week, he attempted to deliver justice and do what he considered to be right but also set a great example for his son.  

He may have been handy with a gun, but he only used it when it was absolutely necessary. He was kind, fair, and most importantly, not quick to action. Lucas provided the program’s moral center. 

In the current TV landscape, a character like Lucas may seem ordinary or, to some, boring. But that undersells just how influential Connors’ work in the role was at the time. It was about more than the character or dialogue — it was about the simple fact that it was a father raising his son without a mother. Read more here

The Rifleman was the only TV western hero who eschewed a six-shooter and wasn't the fastest handgun draw in town. Instead Lucas McCain shot from the hip  firing his rifle 12 times in five seconds in the introduction to every show (watch video here) It was in fact akin to what can be done with modern AR-15 style assualt rifles only without the skill required as shown in this demonstration by an expert.


The rifle was a Winchester Model 1892 44.40 caliber

The AR style assault rifle which is favored by gun nuts, mass shooters, and far right zealots doesn't require the skill of a fictional TV hero to shoot with deadly consequences. Bozos Boebert and Greene pose and post pics of themselves with thse big black badboy blasters and AR-15 pins are worn by members of Congress to express their far-right bonafides. 

Male or female, whether they are in pictures or wearing pins the AR-15 says to liberals "I'm more macho* than you." The message is that you should fear me because I'm a mighty monster and you're a minuscule mouse and I can mash you into mush.

It more than rhetoric coming form Trump and Trump wannabes portending violence if he ends up going to prison. These words are already leading some people to "draw" their AR-15 rifles. Chaucey DeVega writes in Salon today:

Over the weekend, for example, a white supremacist murdered three Black people in Florida. National security and other experts continue to warn that there are millions of Trump's followers and other members of the right wing who support and are potentially willing to engage in acts of terrorism and other violence – including a second coup attempt, civil war, or insurgency, to put Trump back in office. From: Don't look away: It's a mistake to ignore Donald Trump's interview with Tucker Carlson "The discussion normalized violence as a response to political disappointment"
Would it be that the heros of the MAGA GOP were truly as rightious as  they were in the early TV Western shows like The Rifleman. Instead they play at being righteous, but they are really saying they are holier then thou with the thou being everyone they think is twarting their agenda.

You can watch the first episode of The Rifleman, The Sharpshooter, here. In it Lucas (Chuck Connors) and Mark McCain (Johnny Crawford) finally find the ranch they have been looking for, but the ranch comes with a price, and Lucas may have to decide between the ranch and his son's life.


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* The term macho has had a masculine connotation, however consider this book from 2003 which may have portended the likes of Boebtert and Greene
A remake of the cult classic tongue-in-cheek RPG. A new and exciting development in d20 Modern that is set to raise more interest than a certain well-known lingerie advert. Macho Women with Guns puts its scantily-clad and inordinately-proportioned heroines through situations tighter than a Baywatch swim suit, with machineguns in hand and grenades between their teeth. A light-hearted journey through a post-apocalyptic world where women call the shots and men cower to their will. Lavishly illustrated throughout, Macho Women with Guns features everything required in a great night of humorous guns, women, bombs, women, attitude, and more women. So slip on your thigh-high boots, pad your bra out with shotgun shells, and head into the new and terrifying world of Macho Women with Guns.



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August 29, 2023

GOP is missing a chance to call Biden "Beelzebub" and Kamala "Hades Harris"

 

Upper right: Anonymous from a page in an 18th-century demonology book. 
Lower left: "Beelzebub and them that are with him shoot arrows" from John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress (1678)

By Hal Brown

Trump wants his supporters to believe he has been sent by God to rule, or is the Second Coming of Jesus (and many Trumpers have these beliefs). According to Democrats Trump might as well be Satan. 

If you take religion out of Satan and just consider him and his metaphorical demons to be pure evil, to be akin to psychopaths who enjoy making people suffer, you can make a reasonable case that it is Trump and mini-Trumps like DeSantis (who critics often call DeSatan) are incarnations of the Devil as a figure of speech meaning evil.

Illustration of the Devil on folio 290 recto
 of the Codex Gigas, dating to the
 early thirteenth century.

Republicans making the news want to demonize Biden but they throw around other words to refer to him like communist, Marxist, socialist, corrupt, and criminal. Others are more restrained. Chris Christi, for example, said in a town hall:

"Joe Biden has let this country down in just about every way you can think of."

"He ran for president in 2020 saying he's gonna bring the country together, that he was going to be a moderate leader for the country and try to bring the two extremes of both parties into a place where they could work together, and a lot of people − I mean − that a lot of people voted for him based on that idea. And he came into office and he ran as far left as he could." Reference

The Republicans may be missing a golden opportunity to turn Biden into a demon straight out of the Hellmouth.

A few so-proclaimed religious leaders have tried to make Biden into a demon from Hell. For example the article 'Prophet' Claims Biden Has Demonic 'Serpent Eyes,' Defends Trump's Election Win, in Newsweek, by Robin Bullock, a self-proclaimed "prophet," who doesn't recognize President Joe Biden as being duly elected and accused him of being aligned with Satan.

Here's another: 

Pastor Greg Locke Says Biden Is 'Demon-Possessed,' Insists Trump Is 'Legitimate President'

Greg Locke, a right-wing pastor, told his raucous sermon attendees Sunday that President Joe Biden and "jezebel demon" Vice President Kamala Harris are overseeing "child-trafficking" tunnels beneath Washington D.C.

Snopes did a fact check (here) on social media claims that a demon appeared in the back of the room when Biden gave his 2021 State of the Union Address.

Even President Biden addressed the way some people compare him to Satan:

President Biden on Wednesday (July 21, 2012) said he doesn’t care if someone thinks he is “Satan reincarnated” but there is no looking away from the 6 January Capitol riots.

“I don’t care if you think I’m Satan reincarnated, the fact is you can’t look at that television and say nothing happened on the 6th (January)”, said Joe Biden at a town hall in Cincinnati, Ohio, organised by CNN News. Reference

According to a Pew Research poll 58% of all American adults  believe in Hell. These are the breakdowns by politcal party and whether one is conservative or liberal:

Click to enlarge images


We are currently going back and forth between watching the British series Unforgotten about solving decades old murder cases with forensics and good old fashioned police work and Warrior Nun (see reviews) where magic and superpowers are used to fight evil.

The most dangerous demon on the show who is trying to kill the hero is called a Tarask. If he succeeds he will literally open the door to Hell. If Trump watches the show I expect he identifies with the Tarask.


The demons who represent the next most dangerous are called wraith demons. They can only be seen by the Warrior Nun as they move through the air as wisps of red smoke and find and possess vulnerable people and cause them to act out their worst impulses.

Season Two of the series had the highest NetFlix rating ever which demonstrates that lots of people really like shows about nuns fighting demons. If the Pew poll is accurate it may mean that a there's a significant percent of the population open to believing that Joe Biden is actually Beezlebub. 

If the Republicans catch onto this we may see more rhetoric literally demonizing Joe Biden. Let's face it (see addendum below) Beezlebub Biden and Hades Harris has a ring to it.

Addendum:

It is almost impossible for me to come up with anything totally original to blog about.

For example this is an opinion piece from the website The Published Reporter Op-Ed: Beelzebub Biden And Hades Harris Vow To Veto GOP’s HR 734 That Keeps Bio Males Out Of Bio Female Sports

:

It begins:

PORTSMOUTH, OH –  Deception and deviancy continues to govern in D.C. as the Deep State cabal bashes and trashes sports competition for biological female athletes. The militant Democrats receive their marching orders from the New World Order megalomaniacs (aka The World Economic Forum, the United Nations, The World Health Organization). And the dominant male minions delight in denigrating and destroying the rights of bio women.

Alas, the creepy Joe Biden and kooky Kamala Harris administration continue to push their poisonous propaganda that discriminates against biological females playing sports and promotes unscientific gender ideology. VILE R US. 

The author's bio: Melissa Martin, Ph.D., is a former professional child therapist, early literacy advocate, book author, and syndicated opinion-editorial columnist. Her work appears in various national and international newspapers. She lives in Southern Ohio.  

This is the only book I can find by her on Amazon.

A glance at her OpEd show she is preoccupied with issues related to gender, like this one about Assistant Secretary of Health Rachel Levine

Predatory Richard ‘Rachel’ Levine Claims Child Mutilation Transitioning Is “Medically Necessary”


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