In the wake of the latest wave of politically-driven, mostly white, male supremacist terrorism that left at least 31 dead in El Paso and Dayton, Trump and the Republicans are scrambling to create a narrative that acquits them and their leadership of culpability and collusion in the bloody affair.
In the past few days, the GOP line has shifted blame away from Trump's demagogic violent appeals to his racist supporters, on to the mentally ill, video games, and "fake news".
That was exactly the imagery laid out in the El Paso shooter's "manifesto".
Their narrative portrays America as a holy battlefield in a war in defense of white, christian values and a future of Republican political power.
It now includes a dystopian vision of schools as armed camps with gun-toting teachers, cops and militia surrounding school buildings and waiting for the invading enemy of infidels to make their next move.
This represents a giant-step past their previous neoliberal vision of school "choice".
Their current line was best articulated by Trump adviser Sean Hannity yesterday. The Fox News host is calling for a volunteer army of armed ex-cops and soldiers that would be “everywhere.”
"I'd like to see the perimeter of every school in America surrounded, secured by retired police ... have one armed guard on every floor of every school, all over every mall, the perimeter and inside every hall of every mall."
“Every school,” Hannity said. “Secure the perimeter of those schools. Equip them with retired police and military, they should be on every floor of every school.”There are close to 100,000 public and 35,000 private K-12 schools in the United States so a force large enough to “surround the perimeter” and be on each floor would require several hundred thousand people, if not more. -- Huffington Post
Aside from the fascist, police state implications, school safety and curricular issues involved in all this, Hannity's plan leaves me wondering how it matches up with veteran cops' view of their own retirement.
I may be wrong, but I can't imagine that hundreds of thousands of veteran 1st-responders are dreaming about spending their golden years guarding the perimeters of schools and shopping malls for no pay, instead of fishing or hanging out with the grand kids.
Deplorables are jumping for joy at the reports that the Dayton shooter wasn't a Trump-supporting white supremacist. But I don't see why they're so happy. Here's an early report on what motivated this 2nd-Amendment gun freak.
High school classmates of the gunman who killed nine people early Sunday in Dayton, Ohio, say he was suspended for compiling a "hit list" of those he wanted to kill and a "rape list" of girls he wanted to sexually assault. https://t.co/lEAGcCTOwW— KTLA (@KTLA) August 5, 2019
Arm this guy with a military-style assault weapon? Great say Republicans.
