Never Bring a President to a Gun Fight

Where is Clint Eastwood when we need him? While tools of menace have historically been preferred to dogs as the politically-motivated person's best friend - Teddy Roosevelt and pistols, Robespierre and guillotines, Truman and atomic bombs, Mao and well, really, any murderous device, surely in a land of criminals bringing an assault weapon to a public space is in breech of some local bylaw. Especially when said public space is hosting the leader of the so-called free world. Replace the characters with TI and George Bush and somebody would have left all Ichabod Crane-like - headless, drawn, and quartered. I wonder what would have occurred if Mr. Henry Louis Gates brandished an AK while attempting to force the door of his own home or if Ice T packed a gat while singing 'Cop Killer' in public or if SNCC sat in at a lunch counter with a few hot rifles. I know Lee was probably armed at Appamattox while surrendering to Grant but I would imagine it was well concealed or at the very least sheathed.

If the words Lacan and Real mean nothing to you, then at the very least this is a personification of the very menace and intimidation that sustains the 'freedom' of American life. (Zizek,Violence) Behind every defence of the Bill of Rights, behind every pledge of allegiance, every detention centre, there is a middle-class white man with an MP5. Of course, any real displays of threat or violence will be met with the full force of the law. It is only those that embody the entire structural history of domination and force that will be left unpunished. And not just unpunished, but legitimized with the full force of the US Media. (Witness below the serene image of the zealot, compared to the crazed, cursing figure of the 'liberal' mediaman)

If there was ever a time for the Democratic party to abandon its history as the weakest opposition party since the advent of the One-Party State, it is now. I’m talking full armaments, tanks, bombers - rolling through town blaring By the Time I Get to Arizona.

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