Trump offers a helping hand:
“You know, in the old days we had mental institutions. We had a lot of them. And you could nab somebody like this,” Trump said at a meeting with governors. “But you used to be able to bring them into a mental institution and hopefully he gets help or whatever. But he’s off the streets. You can’t arrest him, I guess, because he hasn’t done anything, but you know he’s like a boiler ready to explode, right?”
Trump did not explicitly call for the government to fund mental institutions for those who appear poised to commit mass atrocities, but he suggested that lawmakers begin discussing mental institutions.
“We’re going to have to start talking about mental institutions, because a lot of folks in this room closed their mental institutions also. So we have no halfway. We have nothing between a prison and leaving him at his house, which we can’t do anymore. So I think you folks have to start thinking about that,” he told governors.
No charge for the idea! And no help paying for it, either.
Meanwhile, back at the schools:
[Oath Keepers founder Stewart] Rhodes wants the military and police veterans who make up Oath Keepers’ membership to volunteer for unpaid, rotating shifts at schools of all levels, and colleges, throughout the country. He and two other representatives of the fringe militia community will hold a webinar Monday night where they plan to encourage Oath Keepers to station themselves at schools “to protect the children against mass murder, and to help train the teachers and staff.”Yeah, this'll keep us all safe:
...
“What I tell our people is don’t ask for permission,” Rhodes continued. “Let ‘em know what you’re doing and be as friendly as you can. But this is the reality we’re in right now.”
Mark Cowan, an Indiana-based member of the Oath Keepers and an Army veteran, has since Friday posted himself outside North Side High School in Fort Wayne, wearing an Oath Keepers baseball hat and carrying a handgun and an AR-15.Since Friday? Give him another week, he'll get bored and leave.
“If somebody comes to this school or another school where we’re at, that school shooter is going to know, we’re not going to play games,” Cowan told local station WPTA. “You come to kill our kids, you’re dead.”
In other interviews with local media, Cowan has said he is complying with state law by parking his car just off of school grounds, and that he plans to remain there until the school, which already has an armed resource officer, introduces additional safety measures.
Maybe if we bought each of these idiots parked near a school a Batmobile, they'd go away and leave our kids that much safer.
They could just put a decal on the door of Yosemite Sam, it's probably about as likely to do anything.
ReplyDeleteWe are finding out what happens when at least a third of the country lives in minds furnished by TV crap, electing one of their own as president only to have his policy informed by FOX.
That is a crisis of democracy.
Yeah, it is, isn't it? OTOH, early voting in Texas primaries is up substantially in Democratic primaries. Two years ago, it was sup substantially in the GOP primaries. I continue to believe voters in Texas have realized they have to vote, not just be thrilled to vote. I've also noticed many more Democratic candidates campaigning like they could win, rather than like they will be sacrificial lambs in a one-party state.
ReplyDeleteThe crisis of democracy may yet correct itself. I don't know how else it happens, except through an "Eric Killmonger" solution (kill everyone who disagrees with you. No, you aren't advocating that, but I keep reading articles about "Black Panther" which sympathize with the villain. I simply can't fathom it, except as a middle-class fantasy about how power works.)