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"Even after the attempted assassination of their presidential candidate, the GOP remains focused on being shitty: During a House Oversight Committee hearing Monday, several GOP representatives blamed Donald Trump’s assassination attempt on the Secret Service hiring women.”
Huh… Did women cause the shooter to pull the trigger?
Don’t blame the Secret Service for Republicans wanting guns everywhere.
2/
Did women force states to allow guns everywhere, INCLUDING POLITICAL EVENTS? Did women force men to make pass laws to assure men can carry guns, and let’s be perfectly clear on this, anywhere and anytime?
Was it women who argued that the reason schools are a source of violence is that laws to prevent guns actually are the root cause of gun violence at schools?
3/
Was it women who wanted a divorce because of domestic violence, calling up their partner and saying, “Hey, come shoot the fuck out of me”?
This is all the direct result of Republicans believing, erroneously and without a SHRED of evidence, that an “armed society is a polite society”—a phrase originated by Robert Heinlein’s SCIENCE FICTION piece, Beyond This Horizon.
IT’S FICTION!
4/
Rep Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.): “Some Republicans have used this moment to attack progress towards racial justice and gender equity in America. Disappointing, but not surprising… In the wake of gun violence and tragic loss of life, Republicans are ignoring solutions like gun safety reform and are instead trotting out sexist tropes.”
6/
Then there is always the trope of “The good guy with the gun”—the problem being that you are a good guy until you take out a school full of children.
Logic is not the forte of the Republican party.
“You are a DEI horror story,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.).
And that is what it boils down to—men make reasonable choices, women are DEI hires.
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“Sexist sentiments were not contained to today’s hearing. Conservative media outlets and far-right influencers were quick to blame female Secret Service agents for the attempt on the president’s life.”
And this is where the rubber meets the road: it is not about fixing problems, it's about finding someone to blame.
9/
It’s funny, who was blamed for JFK or Reagan? Secret Service? If you go through the news stories you will NOT find news stories blaming Director of the Secret Service. Funny, huh?
Because they were all white guys.
Can’t blame a white guy.
10/
Matt Walsh wrote: “There should not be any women in the Secret Service. These are supposed to be the very best, and none of the very best at this job are women.”
The problem with statement is obvious: women didn’t pull the trigger. Choices were made that put Trump in danger, but they were not made by Kimberly Cheatle. Trump campaign does outdoor venues because they are cheap but security nightmares.
She didn’t make the choices.
Yet she was the one who paid for it.
I do think that's just one of the risks of leadership ~ massive publicly visible failure demands resignations and firings, top to bottom reviews if what went wrong and what needs to change. In any era, no matter who the chief of the organization or department is.
#TheBuckStopsHere and all that. It's a quaint notion, for sure, but....
7/
#politics
Also Rep. Tim Burchett: “"It's a horrible, horrible situation, and we're not going to fix it. Criminals are gonna be criminals”—he also said Congress can’t do anything about it. It would just “mess things up.”
Burchett is just one of hundreds of Republican politicians that when gun violence is brought up their response is, “Nothing can be done”.