John McCain will certainly be missed. The Republic this Republican with big "R" fought for as a military and a senator is under stress test by the forces of incivility unleashed by the Trump presidency. McCain minced no words to warn against the "half-baked nationalism" and its "blood and soil" dark undertones. But while fighting his last battle against cancer, he scored two magnificent blows to those who have turned the Republican party against republican principles. First, with his "no" vote on dashing the Obama healthcare act without proper debate and support -precisely the reason he opposed Obama's law as vehemently as Trump's: civility. Civility in Congress matters maters. It's about following the original design of the Framers and a 250-year-old tradition of making key laws in a bipartisan way. The difference between "Jacksonian democracy" or populism and a republic is precisely that. Popular vote is the ever-changing matter that must be opposed and controlled by Republican form and rule. That's the difference between "majority rule" and rule of law, between "democratic republics" (code name for dictatorships) and "republic of laws" that apply equally to everyone. Included the President of the United States, who's not the King of the United States, even when and if acting like one. The second blow that McCain gave to those who want to skip the rule of law and rule by tweets was his own funeral, carefully orchestrated as the old senator and formidable campaigner McCain was, into a remarkable display of civility and bipartisanship. President Bush and Obama were selected on purpose to speak and show how the Republic stands above party and -hopefully- in good health. President Bush made special point in condemning hatred and bigotry against Latino immigrants and non-white people, as well as vulgar personal attacks and comments that demean the offices of the US as a Republic.
President Obama joined the display of civility, reminding how his political duels with McCain in both campaign and government helped him (and president Bush before him) to rise their game and check their own mistakes.
McCain had indeed his last hurrah and also his last laugh. Perhaps this was not a funeral but a baptism. Perhaps the public display of civility across the political spectrum and public officers -past and present- will help those who believe in our Constitution keep faith that the Union will prevail and come out of this uncivil war stronger than before. Perhaps this is John S. McCain's lasting victory.
The progression of Special Counsel Mueller probe on President Trump's possible grounds for impeachment has unveiled new and troubling evidence with his personal lawyer's confession.
After months of campaigning publicly against the Special Counsel's "witch hunt", Trump has been rendered legally mute. Illegal conspiracy to hide evidence of unethical behavior that might have affected the election's results has been exposed.
The most disturbing element of the new developments are not the accusations and probes but the fact that even those defending President Trump are assuming in fact that he has committed crimes such as to be impeached if his associates "turn on him" and reveal what they know. Or -to be more precise- what everybody already knows (conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and collusion with Russian agents) mostly because the same candidate Trump announced it during the campaign.
This is not a horror but a suspense story. Spectators know who and how committed the crime, they just watch the unfolding events waiting for the next shoe to drop. Some with fear, other with joy. All carried away by two years of endless and mindless antagonistic and hyper-partisan politics fueled by the President that might end being victim of his own showmanship.
As with chess, in constitutional law there are also "checks". Like in chess, constitutional checks -like a Special Council probe- announce impending doom for those who trespassed their consitutional limits and their office duties.
As in chess, the next stop can be another check, a loss or the ending of the game.
The Constitution of the United States was specifically designed to check those in power and prevent them from abusing their offices. In 250 years, it has been tested by several former presidents and worked effectively.
James Madison wrote the famous Federalist 10 explaining that:
"No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest
would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity.
With equal, nay with
greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the
same time"
Madison warned that:
When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens.
And proposed institutions to check majorities (always circumstantial) and factions (always self-serving) from breaking or bending the law:
To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed.
Those who think that social media and showmanship can trump (no pun intended) the Constitution have met their first check. There are evidently plenty more down this road.
Madison had "obnoxious presidents" in his mind when he wrote:
Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of the people.
And conceived an intricate -yet not unassailable- set of rules written in the Federalist papers and then into our 1787 Constitution. The new form of government was not a democracy -democracy was already 2000 years old and had time and again turned presidents into Caesars- but a republic, a system with checks and balances between three separated powers.
Come November, the balance of power in Congress can -and probably will- swing to the opposition party, making more likely President Trump's impeachment.
The next check can become a check mate. We haven't had time yet to look at the consequences of a premature end of Donald Trump's presidency. We should.
a: something that is falsely or delusively believed or propagated
delusion
delusions
bpsychology: a persistent false psychotic belief regarding the self or persons or objects outside the self that is maintained despite indisputable evidence to the contrary
delusion
; also: the abnormal state marked by such beliefs : the act of tricking or deceiving someone : the state of being deluded
"Sic transit gloria mundi" was the inscription at the top of the Caesar's victorious banners and in the crown wags of Popes' and monarchs. It s purpose was to remind absolute rulers that "all glory is transient", all power is passing.
It didn't help.
Even seeing how easy was to get his once powerful enemies stabbed, shot, hanged, beheaded or dismembered by an angry mob didn't prevent Caesar, Saddam, Robespierre or Qaddafi from falling into the delusion of thinking they would not end up like them. Nor did the risk of public embarrassment and humiliation prevent Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton from creating a web of lies and deceit that destroyed their own careers, harmed their families and tarnished their legacies.
The greatest danger for those with unchecked power is not corruption, but delusion.
That's precisely why the Framers of US Constitution created checks and balances and instituted limited term, limited re-election presidencies. All that POTUS, COTUS and SCOTUS institutes, their successors can undo. That's what makes the United States the longest uninterrupted republican democracy in the world. Donald J, Trump is its 45th president. The one between Barak Obama and the 46th, who will take office either in 2 or 6 years from now.
Donald J. Trump seems to have a hard time thinking beyond his two-terms (if reelected). And yet, as a 72-year old man without a party, in a non-dynastic system, no matter how much he "wins" his political battles, how hard his hardcore believers hang to his zig-zagging definitions and decisions, Donald J Trump will be replaced by our 46th President in 2020 or 2024.
The 46th president might, like him, devote his (or her) presidency to unravel and erase each and every one of 45th's decisions. The more Mr. Trump revels in his conquests and in humiliating a growing number of foes, the more this is likely to happen.
Mr. Trump seems obsessed with getting rid of any charges of collusion and any opposition to his own, grandiose self-image. Paradoxically, in doing so, he's spreading insurrection among his own Republican party, his donors, staff, and even those serving in the country's Armed forces and Intelligence and Security communities. That's how deep the "deep State" actually is if we follow the delusional course charted during the almost two years of the 45th President.
Admiral McRaven didn't mince words in his response to President Trump's treatment of CIA and FBI career officers that dared to testify in the ongoing probe about Mr. Trump's campaign possible collusion with Russia during the 2016 campaign and perhaps after the election.
Dear Mr.
President:
Former CIA director John
Brennan, whose security clearance you revoked on
Wednesday, is one of the finest public servants I have ever known. Few
Americans have done more to protect this country than John. He is a man of
unparalleled integrity, whose honesty and character have never been in
question, except by those who don’t know him.
Therefore, I would consider
it an honor if you would revoke my security clearance as well, so I can add my
name to the list of men and women who have spoken up against your presidency.
Like most Americans, I had
hoped that when you became president, you would rise to the occasion and become
the leader this great nation needs.
A good leader tries to embody
the best qualities of his or her organization. A good leader sets the example
for others to follow. A good leader always puts the welfare of others before himself
or herself.
Your leadership, however, has shown little of these qualities. Through
your actions, you have embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated
us on the world stage and, worst of all, divided us as a nation.
If you think for a moment
that your McCarthy-era tactics will suppress the voices of criticism, you are sadly
mistaken. The criticism will continue until you become the leader we prayed you
would be.
Even if President Trump is vindicated in his claims of "no collusion", his efforts -like Nixon's in the Watergate case- in obstructing the investigation are turning the entire process into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Even tough President Trump believes his base would absolve him even if he shot someone in New York's Fifth Avenue-
his behavior might cost him the majority in Congress , the last firewall protecting him from impeachment. Moreover, Trump's growing list of enemies might increase anti-Trump turnout into a "blue wave" in spite of the good economy over which Trump presides.
President Trump tweets and personal insults about his own disgruntled Secretaries of State, WH staff, campaign and personal lawyers show growing evidence of delusion, a problem that sent previous presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton to face articles of impeachment and lasting shame.
These later episodes might be remembered as a turning point in the Trump presidency. Even if President Trump survives to become a two-term president -a goal that his own behavior is pushing farther and farther away with each passing news cycle- , there will be another President after him. And certainly, there will be a retaliatory push back against his initiatives. Delusion is thinking otherwise.
“For example, the supporters of tariffs treat it as self-evident that the creation of jobs is a desirable end, in and of itself, regardless of what the persons employed do. That is clearly wrong. If all we want are jobs, we can create any number--for example, have people dig holes and then fill them up again, or perform other useless tasks. Work is sometimes its own reward. Mostly, however, it is the price we pay to get the things we want. Our real objective is not just jobs but productive jobs--jobs that will mean more goods and services to consume.”
Milton Friedman, Free to Choose
Back in 1929, at the onset of the Great Depression, Laurel and Hardy filmed "Big Business" ,a slapstick comedy that portrayed an escalation of hostilities, from small gestures to mutually assured destruction. (You may want to skip until 11 on the video to watch the climax that reflects what a tariff war looks like to a rational spectator and how it ends)
That was indeed what happened a few years later, when the US Congress passed the Smooth-Hawley Act and started the first global trade war.
Once upon a time Republicans listened to one of their eminent economists, Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman explain why trade wars and tariffs are self-punishment and bad economics:
That one brought Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Lenin and the Japanese fascists to power and with them, the logical next step that was World War II.
Sixty million deaths and seventy-five years later, a populist president toys with starting a tariff war with all US's major commercial partners at once: China, EU, Canada and Mexico.
The promise for the fools is the same than in 1932: jobs will come back, salaries will go up and the "unfair" competitors will surrender.
Economist Bryan Caplan explains why voters self-immolate for a second time in his educational book "The Myth of the Rational Voter"
"We don’t build walls to freedom and opportunity. We tear them down. To fear the world we have organized and led for three- quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership for the sake of some half- baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is unpatriotic."
Senator John McCain (R), 2017
John McCain was an American hero in many ways. He was a military POW how resisted 5 years of torture in the Hanoi Hilton, yet returned to Vietnam to make peace with his own captors and help reestablish diplomatic relations.
He followed Barry Goldwater as the senator for Arizona and championed just, unpopular and politically inconvenient causes such as campaign reform, immigration reform and lately, offended both Left and Right by supporting his rival George W. Bush's surge in Iraq and voting down President's Trump populist and popular repeal without replace of the ACA healthcare bill known as Obamacare -which he also opposed vehemently-.
His argument for opposing the latter was a call to a civility lost in the populist wave that brought Trump to the White House:
A populist wave that McCain lamented to have helped by selecting populist firebrand Sarah Palin over his democratic first choice, democratic senator Joe Lieberman.
He ran a uninspiring campaign against Barack Obama in 2008 and damaged his reputation with an uncharacteristic surrender to populist pandering. It was perhaps an example of his fighter jet pilot tendency to quick judgement that, like others on the USS Forrestal and over Hanoi, backfired badly. He somehow took distance by standing against deranged birthers that hated his rival more than any Republican principle.
McCain never hesitated in working and voting across the partisan divide, engaging in lively debates and lifelong friendships and collaboration with rival Democratic leaders such as Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden and Russ Feingold. He is and will certainly be admired and missed by the best of both parties. And certainly reviled and insulted by the worst. Thanks to John McCain's dedication to fight partisanship, he will remain a healthily divisive figure between those who put country over party and those who don't. The former will remember him fondly, the others will hate him stronger as time goes by. He would probably relish keeping such friends and foes.
McCain's contempt for Trump was just the latest rejection of his populist views and unpresidential behavior by most of the moderate Republican leaders, a long list that included a similarly embarrassing absence at Barbara Bush's funeral -where his wife Melania sat and chat with president's Bush, Clinton and Obama- and public denunciations by all of the living former presidents (including Bush 41 and Carter), 2012 and presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
In any case, what caused Cindy McCain's request was not just Trump's disrespect and incivility towards him, but toward the very American values and principles McCain fought for as a soldier and as a senator.
The best farewell to John McCain is following his advice and his example of civility and honor. Republicans will have a lot to do and a lot to change to meet John McCain's standards.
A new populist wave is sweeping the Western world. It's fueled by the same combustible than others before: global economic crises and their discontents.
Historian Joseph Ellis has dedicated part of his notable career to explaining why our Founding Fathers didn't want a democracy in the mold of the French Revolution. Moreover, they saw the 20,000 killed on the name of the "people" under the Terror period as a stern warning for us, the stillborn Brittish colonies trying to become the United States.
Adams warned presciently against putting much hope on democracy per se:
“Democracy… while it lasts is
more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never
lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a
democracy that did not commit suicide.”
Adams saw executive power and human condition as a menace for freedom and the nascent Republic:
There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free
government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public
liberty.
– John Adams,
Notes for an oration at Braintree, Spring 1772.
He believed on giving full power to the people, but thought people as individual citizens with individual rights, no majorities or mobs getting beyond the law nor governments and presidents reigning beyond it:
“The way to secure liberty is to place it in the people’s hands, that is, to give them the power at all times to defend it in the legislature and in the courts of justice.”– John Adams
Adams stood against the majority almost all his political life and particularly eloquently when he defended British soldiers charged with the Boston massacre in 1770:
“The law no passion can disturb. ‘Tis void of desire and fear, lust and anger. ‘Tis mens sine affectu, written reason, retaining some measure of the divine perfection. It does not enjoin that which pleases a weak, frail man, but, without any regard to persons, commands that which is good and punishes evil in all, whether rich or poor, high or low.”
– John Adams, Argument in Defense of the British Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials, Dec. 4, 1770.
Against the prevalent fashion of idolizing Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, Ellis leans towards the more clear judgement of his rival John Adams, our second president.
Adams never thought much of democracy, the "people" or the American people for that matter. He saw the country as a motley crew instead of an Ethnic nation as Europeans' republics were.
There was a revolutionary summer when all the rather practical ideas of the framers came together, in a lasting collision as our 1787 Constitution is.
Unlike Madison -who thought the division of powers and states rigths would prevent the tyranny of any eventual majority-, Adams dreaded that the US Constitution and its institutions would not be enough to control people's lowest passions if excited by demagogues.
"Avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
Demagogues and populists always test the limits of existing institutional restraints looking for ways to circumvent them. From Mussolini to Hugo Chavez, that has been a constant trait. Democracies, however, elect populists and demagogues now and then and set the stage for erosion of the rule of law and the republican checks and balances.
Hopefully, Adams will be proven wrong once more. But that will not happen without a return to civility. Lets leave the last word on this subject to Adams himself:
“Remember,
democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There
never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say
that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less
avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere
appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of
simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud,
violence, and cruelty. When clear prospects are opened before vanity, pride,
avarice, or ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most
considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist the
temptation.”
(Quoted
from page 406 of The
Political Writings of John Adams, Regnery Publishing, 2000.)
Immediately after criticizing the sitting president's lack of respect for not attending the 2018 White House Correspondents Dinner, the amateurish comedian tasked to deliver the roast -as well as the organizers of the dinner- demonstrated an equivalent lack of civility and respect that allowed the entire show to derail into insults.
The treatment of Secretary of Press Sarah Huckabee Sanders -who had the civility to show up and sit at the dais in front of the cameras- was an exhibition of vulgarity, personal aggression and disrespect for her office and even her family.
The comedian -a woman- made fun of Sarah Sanders physical appearance mocking her looks and family in the kind of bullying and sexual harassment that plague Facebook teenage pages and provoke immediate legal action from parents and schools.
Secretary Sanders exhibited a degree of grace and composure under public aggression that demonstrate her qualifications for the position she holds and her upbringing and values.
Michelle Wolf's performance, with her lack of self-control- did in fact remind us another "wolf": the one played by Leonardo Di Caprio in "The Wolf of Walls Street". Ms. Wolf -who also comes from Wall Street- with the help of a podium and a microphone in prime time TV looked like a too long impersonation of Tavis Kalanick abusing an Uber driver. This is yet another step in the wrong direction. It's even more unfortunate because it precisely reinforces the image of "enemies of the people" that our current POTUS has been promoting onn the campaign trail.
The big loser of this unfortunate and forgettable White House Correspondents Dinner is precisely our First Amendment.
One after another, the speeches given by Bush's family members, friends and political foes rivaled each other in respect, grace and self-deprecating humor. They turned the majestic cathedral and the pain of the circumstance into a celebration of American political traditions at their best.
Those who dress down their own appointees in public and double down on personal attacks seem not to understand that Americans like candor and kindness and are turned off by bluster and arrogance. For Americans, courage is showing grace under pressure. And the Bush family showed what courage looks like in parting with their beloved matriarch.
Those who don't appreciate our Constitution and its institutions call them instead the "deep state".
That "deep state" also has a long-standing tradition: a "Presidents Club", that was informally instituted by Jefferson and Adams when they asked their predecessors for advice. Harry Truman established it formally at Eisenhower's inaugural and Herbert Hoover was its first manager. Richard Nixon presented the Presidents Club with a brownstone building as a permanent lodging for its members, who have been using it regularly for the last 60 years.
There is also a tradition of the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner. Every year, presidents are "roasted" in public and forced to show they can take and make jokes about themselves.
A tradition that First Ladies also enjoy publicly lambasting their powerful husbands:
Last year, for the first time in almost 60 years, the sitting president declined to attend the dinner.
Mr. Trump's absence at Mrs. Bush's funeral went beyond a lack of humor.
Declining to show up to Mrs. Bush funeral is a further step downhill -from the shining city of civility on top of it we look up for leadership to the swamps and moats that surround it and Mr. Trump promised to drain-. It is so because it demonstrates Mr Trump fears the embarrassment of facing Mrs. Bush's family without apologizing for his past insults than the embarrassment of sending his wife to do his job.
Harsh words are normal currency during political campaigns, even during the arguments and political fray that come before and after.
Even boxers shake hands after butchering each other 12 rounds on the ring. And show respect once the match is over apologizing for the insults and vulgarities they threw at each other to sell tickets for the show.
The word "President" means among other things, to "preside", to lead by example and set the tone of public discourse and public behavior. This is way below the office that George Washington left warning against extreme partisanship.
The Trump administration will pass.
Mr. Trump will then also become a former president.
There's still time to join the Presidents' club, Mr. President.
It would be good not just for you, but for the institution you currently represent and your successors. You might find some experienced friends as well.
Let's start with some historical facts about NRA and gun control in the United States:
In the 1920s, the National Revolver Association, the arm of the NRA responsible for handgun training, proposed regulations later adopted by nine states, requiring a permit to carry a concealed weapon, five years additional prison time if the gun was used in a crime, a ban on gun sales to non-citizens, a one day waiting period between the purchase and receipt of a gun, and that records of gun sales be made available to police
A decade later, NRA led the enactment of further gun control legislation:
In
1929, Al Capone’s St. Valentine’s Day massacre saw men disguised as Chicago
police kill 7 rivals with machine guns. Bonnie and Clyde’s crime-and-gun spree
from 1932-34 was a national sensation. John Dillinger robbed 10 banks in 1933
and fired a machine gun as he sped away.
A
new president in 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt, made fighting crime and gun
control part of his ‘New Deal.’ The NRA
helped him draft the first federal gun controls: 1934’s National Firearms Act
and 1938’s Gun Control Act.
The
NRA President at the time, Karl T. Frederick, a 1920 Olympic gold-medal winner
for marksmanship who became a lawyer, praised the new state gun controls in
Congress. “I have never believed in the
general practice of carrying weapons,” he testified before the 1938 law was
passed. “I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it
should be sharply restricted and only under licenses.”
The current position of the National Rifle Association (NRA) against any kind of gun control is historically speaking a red herring and, arguably, an infringement of the Second Amendment -the one that states that:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." .
Consistent with that first sentence of the Second Amendment -usually invoked to protect the individual right to bear arms- states and federal government are charged with keeping "well regulated" militias. That is a clear mandate for strictly controlling with regulations the purchase, carrying and use of arms of any kind.
In fact, creating and keeping "a well-regulated militia" could (and perhaps should) include charging states and communities (the levels of independent government Second Amendment was meant to preserve to prevent federal tyranny) with organizing armed citizens to protect their schools, churches and neighborhoods helping and complementing the police. That would channel their enthusiasm for and expertise in guns towards positive, measurable social impact. Such as lowering mass-shootings at schools and churches near zero.
Rampant crime waves like those in the days of Capone and Luciano were addressed by the NRA by promoting successful gun control laws, such as the Federal Firearms Act of 1938, that imposed licensing and controls to sell and buy arms and was replaced by the Gun Control Act of 1968, . In both cases, NRA supported the gun control laws. At the time of its passage in 1968, NRA executive vice president Franklin Orth wrote in American Rifleman that "the measure as a whole appears to be one that the sportsmen of America can live with". It was only in 1977 when a group with extreme anti-regulation positions seized control of NRA and turned into political lobbying by targeting lawmakers "scoring" their votes and targeting those who didn't agree with the new NRA positions pouring billions against them in campaigns.
Along the entire US history, Black Americans found themselves often as targets of guns and racist violence.
Then they also turned frequently pro-gun and created their own armed militias -the Black Panthers- during the same period the NRA adopted its anti-gun control and White-supremacy extremist stance. During the violent and riotous 1970s, pro-gun Black Panthers claimed the Second Amendment and gun-control Republican Party Ronald Reagan passed the Mulford Act banning public arm carrying (open or concealed).
The latest attempt to "regulate the militia" was the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, that banned precisely the AR-15 and other war weaponry for a limited period (1994-1996) . The law passed Congress under the proviso of verifying its impact in a short 3-year period. The National Institute of Justice was charged with conducting the research in states that previously had and those that hadn't gun control.
It appears that the assault weapons ban
had clear short-term effects on the gun
market, some of which were unintended
consequences: production of the
banned weapons increased before the
law took effect and prices fell afterward.
These effects suggest that the
weapons became more available generally,
but they must have become less
accessible to criminals because there
was at least a short-term decrease in
criminal use of the banned weapons.
Evidently, the excess stock of grandfathered
assault weapons manufactured
prior to the ban is, at least for now,
largely in the hands of dealers and collectors.
The ban’s short-term impact on
gun violence has been uncertain, due
perhaps to the continuing availability of
grandfathered assault weapons, close
substitute guns and large capacity
magazines, and the relative rarity with
which the banned weapons were used
in gun violence even before the ban.
Based on those tentative early findings, COTUS didn't renew the ban, which to this day makes AR-15 and other assault weapons available to private citizens.
The continuing wave of mass killings in schools and universities might force immediate measures such as protecting schools with armed guards and check up points as airports and banks currently are.
These kind of measures, long overdue, might not suffice to protect adequately students and teachers without an equally intensive reinforcement of background checks and banning online sales of arms that make now particularly easy for the mentally deranged and terrorists (domestic or otherwise) to have access to them.
In any case, it is paradoxical that the NRA, originally chartered to prepare a "well-regulated" militia of armed citizens and promote civil and lawful use of guns have degenerated into a major obstacle to the full application of the Second Amendment.
A careful inspection of how NRA officers get "elected" for such long terms -decades- and why individuals that would hardly get elected for a school district gained control of it shows that only 7 percent of NRA membership currently votes:
To their perpetual shame, the vast majority of NRA members eligible to vote simply don’t bother. While the NRA has the reputation of being able to deliver huge numbers of votes for, or against, politicians in state and federal elections, the members take little interest in the internal political matters of their own organization. While every NRA member eligible to vote receives a ballot in their regular NRA magazine, fewer than 7% bother to return them. That’s a pretty poor showing for the oldest and most powerful civil rights organization in the country.
Perhaps it's due time to take back the NRA replacing their current leadership with other more interested in upholding the Second Amendment in full. NRA board elections should get at least the same public and press coverage than any district with 5 million+ electors. Meanwhile, un-regulated militias (and loonies making "armies of one") will continue to grow with the uncivil discourse on both sides of the issue and all sides of an increasingly fragmented society. Un-regulated white supremacists or anti-government militias that operate in fact as "boot camps" for potential mass shooters:
Un-regulated gun-carrying black Americans citizens and communities caught in the middle of drug wars and living in arms-infested drug ghettos, exposed to "black on black" violence (90 % + of black victims of homicide):
Un-civil militians might eventually force governments to enact gun protection and control and gun owners to take back the NRA (and out of extremist politics) and enact the gun control and other measures at state and community level-. The best hope for our schools and students is that states and communities can do it sooner rather than later to cut the spread of copycat mass killings in schools and unprotected public places. Un-regulated militias armed and kept un-regulated by the current co-opted NRA show the wisdom of the Second Amendment -if we care for read it from the beginngs.
