This does not, sadly, surprise me. The big kerfuffle over a petition to allow open carry at the GOP National Convention? Brought to you by a Democrat:
Jim wouldn’t say where he lives, only that he has roots in Philadelphia and works in the public health sector. Jim is a self-described liberal Democrat who intends to vote for Hillary Clinton should she become the Democratic nominee. He isn’t affiliated with a campaign or any advocacy group, but did some volunteer work on Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Jim is no fan of guns and he’s “pretty passionate” about his activism, he says.
Jim says he wrote the petition knowing it was somewhat preposterous — that law enforcement would never allow the Republican presidential candidates inside an arena with potentially thousands of armed individuals. “There were never going to be guns at the convention. Not a million signatures were going to make that happen,” Jim said.
And, no doubt, if it did happen, and a massive gunfight broke out during the convention, our dear Jim wouldn’t feel the least bit responsible for any of the damage, injury, or loss of life.
Just the other day I was talking to my wife about the whole controversy. She thought I was being paranoid when I suggested that, if they did ultimately allow open carry, some liberal true believer would try to get in and open fire, hoping to touch off a gunfight amongst thousands of hardliner GOP. But considering that the entire controversy was started by a Democrat with questionable intent (it certainly wasn’t out of kindness and charity, certainly), is it so hard to imagine someone even more fanatical would go that far?
I’m certainly not liking Jim’s explanation of why he did it:
But he also knew that if the Republican candidates sincerely meant what they have been saying about expanding Second Amendment rights, it would logically follow that they should support a move to allow firearms at the convention. “If they can’t live in accordance with the policies they impose upon us, they owe us that rational conversation,” Jim said.
He continued, “I thought, ‘How do we square how unsafe they’re going to be with what they say makes them safe?”‘ The petition was born.
Bogus logic. He is assuming they would be unsafe. He is assuming that they should want open carry at the convention. He is imposing his own beliefs on them, and then purposely trying to set up conditions where his beliefs can reach fruition. He seems to feel it is perfectly okay to behave badly because he wants to expose others behaving badly. There’s many problems with that approach, not the least of which is that liberals are always telling us that violence does not solve violence, war is not the answer to war. Do they really believe that is the lone exception? So while you can’t solve violence with violence, you can solve corruption with corruption? You can solve bad behavior with bad behavior? You can solve unemployment with unemployment?
Male domestic bovine excrement. Starting a fake petition to try and embarrass another party is bad behavior. Unacceptable behavior. I don’t care for the bad behavior of GOP candidates, either. But sinking to or below their level is not the answer. But Jim will be quickly forgotten. Frankly, I’m surprised that CBS even bothered to check–though they are still burning over Rathergate, and so maybe have learned to be a little more curious about sourcing. I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for other media sources to pick this up or for any talking heads on MSNBC or CNN to get worked up about the bad behavior of Democrats. Not going to happen.
Does Jim’s actions excuse the GOP? No. That’s my point here. Bad behavior breeds bad behavior. Excusing it on one side without clamping down on the other only continues the death spiral into the gutter. And no one seems the least bit interested in cleaning up their side in order to give the other side room to follow suit, well…see you in gutter. Are we really that surprised that this is the slate of candidates we wound up with? These are the candidates we deserve. These are the parties we deserve. This is the America we deserve.