Yankee Voters Love Trump

The Connecticut State Capitol

Last week, Alisyn Camerota of CNN's morning program New Day talked with a group of clean-cut, all-American Trump voters at the Connecticut statehouse.  This ties directly into my post last Tuesday, attempting to answer Frank's questions about "where did these people come from" - well, here is a nest of them in Frank's native state, and they are just what I said they were in my post: neither gruesome monsters nor raving lunatics, but ordinary, everyday Americans who are tragically, dangerously misguided and misinformed - and determined to stay that way.

More than that -- I want all you Yankee boys out there to listen closely to their remarks and remember these two vids next time you are tempted to bad-mouth all us Southerners as dumb, stupid rednecks.

Ignorance and blind faith, of course, have no fixed address, and are spread throughout North, South, East, and West, and all up and down the social scale.







This willfully blind faith in a political messiah is the exact equivalent of fanatical religious faith, it seems to me. But it gets even worse when the two are melded:  according to this utterly insipid guest on the Jim Bakker Show last week, Trump really, truly is "God's chosen one" and God Himself is going to curse you and your children if you don't support Trump -- no wonder so many "liberal" people hate the very name of Christianity now:




Problem is, as you fellas know if you've ever tried to talk with a Bible-thumper on your doorstep, it's nearly impossible to get someone to see what they don't want to see. The same principle applies to political fanaticism as to the religious kind.  People most often believe what they need to believe - reason and logic have nothing to do with it. That's why the nation is so polarized now, and I don't know how or when that will change.

Isn't It Romantic

USA TODAY reports:

A Navy sailor returning from a six-month deployment emerged from his submarine, dropped to one knee and proposed to his boyfriend during the homecoming celebration in Connecticut for USS New Mexico.

About 200 people were gathered at the dock of the Naval Submarine Base New London where Machinist's Mate Jerrel Revels proposed to Dylan Kirchner. Kirchner said he had thought about getting married but the proposal Monday came as a surprise.

"I didn't really care everybody was around. It felt just like the two of us," Kirchner said.

The couple has not set a wedding date.

Sweet. Of course, your Head Trucker looks forward to the day when this sort of thing will not be at all newsworthy.

The President's Speech at the Sandy Hook Vigil

Last night in Newtown, Connecticut - one of his finest:



Excerpt:

Can we say that we’re truly doing enough to give all the children of this country the chance they deserve to live out their lives in happiness and with purpose?

I’ve been reflecting on this the last few days, and if we’re honest with ourselves, the answer is no. We’re not doing enough. And we will have to change.

Since I’ve been President, this is the fourth time we have come together to comfort a grieving community torn apart by a mass shooting. The fourth time we’ve hugged survivors. The fourth time we’ve consoled the families of victims. And in between, there have been an endless series of deadly shootings across the country, almost daily reports of victims, many of them children, in small towns and big cities all across America -- victims whose -- much of the time, their only fault was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

We can’t tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change. We will be told that the causes of such violence are complex, and that is true. No single law -- no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world, or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society.

But that can’t be an excuse for inaction. Surely, we can do better than this. If there is even one step we can take to save another child, or another parent, or another town, from the grief that has visited Tucson, and Aurora, and Oak Creek, and Newtown, and communities from Columbine to Blacksburg before that -- then surely we have an obligation to try.

In the coming weeks, I will use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens -- from law enforcement to mental health professionals to parents and educators -- in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this. Because what choice do we have? We can’t accept events like this as routine. Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?

Full text here.


Now the great gun-control debate will begin, and before another year is out, your Head Trucker predicts, some kind of new law will be passed, which will please very few people on either side, but not until a great deal of hooting and hollering and carrying on from both sides has been heard - and in the long run, it will be found not to solve the problem, after all.

But in the midst of all that, your Head Trucker wishes his good truckbuddies would please keep close in mind the following stories, none of which have any connection with guns - and see what that does for your thinking. Don't brush them off as being irrelevant - they are directly relevant to the greater topic here, for those who have eyes to see.

A gruesome case from last year:

Trial underway for suspect in Arlington pastor's murder

Another, unrelated case from this year:

Minister's killer had mental illness, wife says

And from China, the same day as the Sandy Hook shootings:

22 kids slashed in China elementary school knife attack

Of course, if you live in a metropolitan area of any size, you don't have to rely on these stories alone: just read your daily paper.

The President Speaks on the Connecticut School Shooting

In the Briefing Room of the White House, President Obama made an emotional address to the nation about the killing of 27 children and adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, yesterday:




My sympathies also go out to all the victims and their loved ones. Despite the President's moving words, however, I just don't believe anything will change as a result of this latest horror.

It's been nearly 14 years since the Columbine massacre; 5 years since the Virginia Tech slaughter; and still things rock along just as they did then, and nobody has done a single thing to stop these tragedies from happening.

Your Head Trucker is not going to discuss here the whys and wherefores and causes and effects; plenty of people are paid to do that, and you're going to be hearing what they think in the days to come. And most of them will be utterly wrong.

And whether anyone is right or wrong, nothing - absolutely nothing - will change. Except that this kind of thing will happen more and more often. You will just get used to it and accept it with a shrug as a normal, if sad, part of this mad modern world we live in.

Won't you?


Further Reading:

List of rampage killers in the Americas

List of rampage killers: School massacres

List of rampage killers: Workplace killings

List of rampage killers: Familicides


From these lists, please note that you can quite easily maim and massacre bunches of people with knives, machetes, spears, swords, clubs, bombs, molotov cocktails, grenades, etc., as you can with guns.  Which is what happens in countries where civilians aren't allowed to own guns. Like China.

Do keep that fact in mind while you are listening to the forthcoming ya-ya debates over gun control, and see what it does for your thinking.

Wedding Belles

Country singer Chely Wright, who came out on the Today show last year, married her fiancee, Lauren Blitzer, in Connecticut yesterday.  All good wishes to the happy couple, who make their home in New York City.

The Miami Herald reports:

Wright has said being openly gay would likely hurt her career. She told the Los Angeles Times homosexuality is still taboo in the country music industry.

“They would rather you were a drug addict than be gay,” she told the newspaper. “They will forgive you if you beat your wife, lose your kids to the state, get six divorces, make a sex tape, get labeled as a tramp — any and all of it is better than being gay."

Hat Trick in Connecticut

Governor Jodi Rell of Connecticut today signed into law a bill incoporating the ruling of that state's supreme court in the Kerrigan case last October, which made same-sex marriage legal in Connecticut. The bill Rell signed today, which was passed with bipartisan support in the state legislature, abolishes Connecticut civil unions as of October 2010, when all existing civil unions will be automatically converted to marriages.

Senator Andrew McDonald, D-Stamford, said concerning the new law, "Our legislature and our governor now have ratified the Supreme Court's decision, and today all three branches of Connecticut's government speak with one voice: discrimination has no place in our state and will be eradicated wherever it appears."

Meanwhile, Texas Republicans, progressive as ever, continue to yearn for the glory days of 1861 and secession, by a majority of 51 percent.

Ah yes, back to the future with secession, states' rights, slavery, segregation, and sexism. Cut the onions and sodomy, please. What a country.

If only it wasn't so damn cold in Connecticut . . . .

A Day of Joy and Protest

In the midst of anger and outrage, this heartening news: Connecticut gays and lesbians began marrying today as fully equal citizens of that state. At the moment, gay couples can marry in Connecticut and Massachusetts; Rhode Island and New York state recognize those marriages.

Civil unions equivalent to marriage at the state level can be had in Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and yes, California (called domestic partnerships there). Domestic partnerships with fewer rights than marriage are available in Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Oregon, Washington state, and the District of Columbia. No same-sex unions of any kind are recognized by the federal government, thus depriving gay couples of 1,138 rights and benefits under federal law.

But that did not deter the happy couples in Connecticut today. All best wishes to them.

And in New York City, 15,000 marchers protested the passage of Proposition 8, a huge demonstration that apparently came off very peacefully, I'm very happy to say. The LGBT community is galvanized across the country now, in an unprecedented grassroots network organized via the Internet as Rex Wockner reports, and it will be interesting to see how many turn out for the National Day of Protest called for this Saturday, the 15th.

(Pic of NYC marchers at Columbus Circle: Honk to Blabbeando)