Republicans Are Committed To Insanity, Listen To This

Even Hillary Clinton made mention of a seminal sociological work, “Amusing Ourselves To Death,” which was written in the 80’s by Neil Postman. Postman’s premise was that television was rotting all of our brains. Television took hold of the culture by the throat in the 1950’s. The educational system was strong then, and remained so until the 80’s, when the dumbing down of America began to escalate with a vengeance. We literally have people in this country who are 18 years or older and old enough to vote, but too stupid to vote. They’re not educated enough to have critical thinking skills and be able to parse through problems of even moderate complexity. If you don’t believe me, listen to this Republican official attempt to have a civil conversation with his constituents about gun control and mental health.

**CONSTITUENT 1:** More money in mental healthcare? That’s your answer?

**ALFORD:** Well, I don’t think we need more gun control. We need more *self-control*!

**CONSTITUENTS:** *BOOOOO!!!!*

**CONSTITUENT 2:** So it’s our fault when someone with an AR-15 walks into a…

— Last Day With You (@Last_DayWithYou) February 24, 2025

If you look at the group there are people of various ages there but the mentality of the dialogue you’re hearing is more suited to a middle school cafeteria than a town hall.

Now granted, this is in Missouri, which is a deep red state and went for Trump. So you expect things to be this way to a large extent. But even here, one would expect that a normal person can make the causal connection between mental illness and grabbing a gun and blowing innocent strangers away. But that’s not what you’re hearing. You’re hearing a paeon to loads of guns on the streets and no, let’s not find the fringe lunatic who might go off his rocker at any time. Let’s just live with the status quo, which is dead children.

Guns are the primary cause of death to children in this country — for now. Let RFK, Jr. get rolling a bit, and we may be back to polio, measles, maybe even small pox will come back to maim and kill, then guns won’t occupy the top spot. And the NRA would probably welcome that situation.

I am willing to bet that Republicans will stop having town halls. I’m serious. Because this new administration has not exactly gotten off the launch pad in an impressive manner. No, in fact, it’s more like one of Musk’s “unscheduled disassemblies” which is the best euphemism for something blowing up that I’ve ever heard.

People may die from a great many things in this brave new world of Trump and Musk and global realignment. I think Neil Postman’s hypothesis was spot on. Trump has created politics as reality TV. He puts good looking people in positions that they’ve not even remotely qualified for because of the optics. The public buys this because the public is cued into how television presents our culture and our reality.

So we have a clown, a low grade comedian in the White House. And it is going about as well as you could expect such a thing to go — not that we weren’t forewarned because we went through all this with Trump before. The only question is this: How bad do things have to blow up before people like the ones in this town hall and all across America realize the mistake they’ve made in voting for Trump?

Do we need Trumpvilles, the modern Hoovervilles? Or will government workers losing their jobs right and left be enough? Or will MAGAs get cut off of Medicaid and food stamps, to their detriment be the tilting point. Do we need airplane crashes to happen as often as mass shootings? Do eggs need to be $4 apiece? What will it take?

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