I am always interested in data, sometimes data that other people seem to miss. I have always been like that. I guess I will always be interested in odd facts and interesting information, some important, some just simple minutiae and miscellany. Anyway, one fact I heard this past week both caused me great consternation AND seriously scared me!
Knowing that polls are only as good as the people that conduct the interviews, I still was hit by this one fact. A poll was conducted on a variety of things having to do with our current national situation after the January 6th insurrection. You notice I said insurrection because if it had not involved violence in breaking into the Capitol and calling for the deaths of Vice President Mike Pence, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and others, it might have just been a simple peaceful protest which is protected by law and guaranteed by the Constitution…but, then January 6th wasn’t just a simple law-abiding protest!
Anyway, the disturbing fact which jumped out and scared me was that 4% of Americans believed that it was going to take violence to “stop the steal” and “take back America!” Picture that! Ten million Americans (4%), locked and loaded, armed and shooting, creating havoc and rampage just to “make America great again!” Scary, huh!? Blood in the streets! You and I, good law-abiding Americans as targets!
Folks, as Texans, we love our cowboy ways! I consider myself an individualist, but under no circumstances or occurrences could I consider any justification for that kind of violence against Americans. I have shot a couple of snakes, a rabbit or two as a child (still makes me sick to remember) and a sick opossum in my lifetime.
I have a rifle! Am a good shot! Still can hit the eye of a snake thirty feet away. What, or better still, WHO could inspire me to commit violence against another American? No one! I might be inspired to fight back against an invader from Russia, or the Taliban, or perhaps even a Man from Mars, but otherwise I am and will try to be a good citizen and a good American. If you consider violence in support of the Great Prevaricator, are you a good American? I think not! You might consider yourself a “Super Patriot!” I consider you a nut! Hear me, a nut!
A year or so ago, I had a nice quiet-spoken workman at my house doing some small job for me. He is a friend and has been at my home multiple times. He asked me to place a tool or something, don’t remember what, in his car. Always helpful me, I did the simple task only to discover his assault rifle standing ready in his front seat. If you are like me, you respect firearms and keep them locked away. Obviously not so my mild-mannered friend! I wonder what his response to the polling question would be? I pray that he, like me, would not be among the 4% ready to advocate for violence! Hope he doesn’t ever experience road rage!
Let’s hear it for the peacemakers!!! Good Americans have always been in the forefront of peacemaking, feeding the hungry in Berlin after World War II when the Russians had blockaded the captured and starving German Capital, digging out earthquake victims in places all over the globe, rushing into starving African countries in times of small regional wars, and currently, providing vaccines, ventilators, and oxygen to desperate India, peacemaking efforts ad infinitum! That is America! That is TRUE patriotism! That is democracy!