Tina Dupuy

Presumptive nominee Mitt Romney is seemingly fixated on apologies. He’s obsessed with apologies like Bristol Palin is obsessed with teen abstinence—like BP is obsessed with clean energy—Marcus Bachmann with curing homosexual men …

Mitt’s book is titled No Apology. He’s convinced the problem with Obama is that he apologizes for America. Because Mitt is so engrossed by apologies—he sees apologies that aren’t there.

Mitt, he’ll tell you, doesn’t apologize for America. But he’s had to apologize for himself plenty. Aside from all the recent gaffes and gauche statements that managed to incense America’s closest allies in Europe, earning him the nickname “Mitt the Twit,” Mitt’s ever-changing policy positions are, for all intents and purposes, apologies. It’s saying his previous stance on, say, women’s health, was wrong. For example: when Mitt said abortion should be legal because a close family friend had died from an illegal abortion. He’s now saying he’s righting (ahem) his stance on the issue and declaring his vigil for his family friend to be over. He’s saying his crowning achievement as governor of a state, Obamacare, nee Romneycare, is now a plague on humanity and must be repealed.

A man who “retroactively retired” as CEO of Bain Capital can effortlessly adjust his positions. For a candidate who’s disgusted by apologies in his opponents—who hurls the accusation of apology as if it were a disqualifying offense to all that is wholesome—he sure walks back from, amends and revises the stuff he says a lot.

So since apologies are so important to Mr. Romney, I’d like to offer mine. I’ve said on numerous occasions, (some of them broadcasted) that Mitt has been running for president for 20 years. I figured somewhere around 1992, Mitt, having witnessed his father’s failed run for president and his mother’s failed run for Senate, was watching the first Baby Boomer president (Bill Clinton) being sent to the White House. It was then he resolved that he, too, was going to run for president.

Now if that were true and his planning began the year Pope John Paul issued an apology for the Inquisition’s banning Galileo, Mitt would have made some different choices. His business practices would have been, candidly, more patriotic.

He wouldn’t have laid-off American workers outsourcing jobs overseas and then expect those same American workers to vote for him. He would have built something instead of destroying corporations and getting rich off the charcoal. If Mitt Romney had been planning to run for president for 20 years, he would have anticipated releasing his tax returns (his father pioneered the practice) and made sure everything on there was something he could be proud of; returns he would happily release to the public.

So I was wrong. Mitt hasn’t been running for president for 20 years. He made money in a way that’s legal but now is embarrassed (think apologetic) about how little he’s paid in taxes, or what he’s made off his investments to show his tax returns to voters. He’s taken advantage of tons of loopholes, parking his money in foreign bank accounts. With his business record, he’d be a controversial presidential appointee, let alone a presidential candidate himself. Sure it’s legal. But it’s not ethical. Not for public service. Especially not for the most powerful position in the country.

So, Mitt, I’m sorry. I had been saying something about you that just wasn’t true. You haven’t been running for president for two decades. You haven’t been paying attention to what would play best to get yourself sworn into office.

You’ve been paying attention to your money.

If Barack Obama had been the Democratic president who said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” Republicans would call it capitulation. “Obama surrenders to America’s enemies!” Commentators on Fox News would opine it’s actually an Islamic saying he picked up in a madrassa in Indonesia. “The prophet Mohammed talked about fear, it speaks to his Muslim leanings.” Fox and Friends would lead the next morning with the question, “Did Obama include a part of the Koran in his speech last night?”

“Karl Marx’s whole campaign was to eliminate—completely obliterate fear! Now we have a president following in his footsteps!” Rush Limbaugh would bellow. All his doppelgangers and dittoheads would repeat it on every corner of the Internet and talk radio: “Fearless is Marxist!”

Those more moderate would just call him out of touch. “Obama doesn’t understand how Americans feel: they’re fearful of Obamacare!”

Mitt Romney would go on five networks to announce he’s always been a big fan of fear. “In America, the fear is the right height,” he’d declare. “Saying we have nothing to fear is foreign-sounding to a lot of Americans.” Days later, video of Romney telling a crowd not to be afraid would come to light. His campaign would counter with another weather balloon about his VP pick. “Paul Ryan? How about Ginny Thomas?” would be the entire body of an email to Romney supporters.

Internet message boards would speculate there’s an Obama plot to criminalize negative emotions … tied to fluoride in the water, of course. “Mr. President, what are you trying to hide?”

Congressman Darrell Issa would launch an investigation into this alleged plot outlined on these said message boards. Sideshow Michele Bachmann would mutter about how fear is profoundly Christian and Obama with his contempt of fear has shown his contempt for Jesus … and of course Israel. “Obama wants to destroy Israel!” Allen West would say it’s a form of slavery. John Boehner, wiping back tears, would proclaim, “Fear is a job creator—Mr. President why do you want to punish success?”

Suddenly fear would be a constitutional right. “Barack Hussein Obama is trying to take away our god-given right to be afraid!” “We have nothing to fear? I fear our right to fear will be stripped away if Obama gets a second term.”

Yes, the party that bravely came out against empathy (a trait lacking in all sociopaths) when Obama admired it in Sonia Sotomayor, would come out in favor of fear. It would become their signature issue. AstroTurf busses would drop grassroots activists on the capitol lawn for the Million Phobics March. It would mainly consist of security personnel (pro-fear remember) and Sarah Palin proclaiming, “Unlike Barack Obama—we’re god-fearing Americans!”

SuperPAC funded T-shirts handed out at the rally would read, “I’m god-fearing not Mohammed-quoting!”

Inevitably there would be Democrats being forced to defend denouncing fear. “Look, I think we can all agree fear is not helpful to Americans. No no, the president doesn’t want to see it criminalized. He just said, however inartfully, we don’t need it.” That would be dubbed a gaffe by the 24-hour news cycle. Right-wing commentators would gasp, “The administration all but admitted to their ambition of outlawing fear. ‘We don’t need it!?’ This is about freedom and governmental overreach!”

Nancy Pelosi would be asked to weigh in on the controversy. She’d say, “This is not a debate about who’s for fear and who’s against fear—this is about a struggling middle-class.” The video clip would end up actually setting up several debate segments on cable news shows about who’s for fear and who’s against.

To sum up: You have the right to be afraid! The Democrats want to take away that right! That is the choice this November!

It’s hard to get excited about the Winter Olympics. Watching elite athletes do elite sports is not on the same level of human drama that plays out at the Summer Games. Face it, you have to be pretty well off to even discover an aptitude for skiing. The winter games are mostly watching privileged people be better at something you can’t afford to try. Plus if you qualify for the Winter Olympics you are more than likely from an industrialized nation with a history of human rights (something about snow ensures basic government functioning).

In short: Curling isn’t the only reason the Winter Olympics are lame.

While only 82 countries participated in the 2010 games in Vancouver, every nation save three (South Sudan, Kosovo and Vatican City) will be competing in the 2012 games in London. It’s truly a global event. It’s also the first time every nation will have sent a female athlete. Saudi Arabia, where women can barely vote let alone drive, is sending two female athletes to the games for the first time. Qatar and Brunei (also with spotty women’s suffrage) have women representing them as well this year.

The Summer Olympics are not just about seeing who throws farther than other people who can throw far. The Summer Olympics are a metaphor for what we idealize as the American Dream. Our impenetrable Puritan values: Hard work has a pay off. It’s the pageantry of the best of the best and how they got there. It’s sportsmanship sure, but for Americans the summer games is an opportunity for us to romanticize individualism.

Americans, after all, see ourselves as pioneers—as homesteaders—people who in our mythology can handle a hurdle race or two.

For us, Olympian rags-to-riches tales are what America is based on: Pulling on your bootstraps until you find yourself on the center rostrum.

Last week, President Obama botched paraphrasing an Elizabeth Warren line, “No one in this country got rich on his own,” and ending up saying (if you scrub all context) no one built their own business. The right-wing has been quick to refute this gaffe with a collective “did too!” The theme (at least) was clear: Success is a group effort.

Every Olympian represents an army of people supporting, nurturing and encouraging ability. No one gets to the Olympics on their own. No matter how naturally gifted—they’re on their way to London because people helped them get there. “People” meaning communities, parents and yes, governments.

I was raised in foster care. The alleged nanny state was my actual nanny. People will argue with me that I was raised by “people” and not the government. Which is like saying you don’t need electricity to light your home because you have a lamp. I know there was a mass of people (many employed by the state) investing their time and energy into my wellbeing. I showed up and did the work but I could not have done it all by myself. I had help. Tons.

That’s what the president was talking about: infrastructure. Our collective investment in our country.

When I watch the Olympics I see how the world treats its young people. I see their hope for the future on a balance beam. I see politics. I see progress. I see individuals representing the best of us—and all we can accomplish. I see the opposite of isolationism and selfishness. But mostly I see that truly American story of coming from behind and going for the gold.

Go team!

Freedom is under attack! In the largest city of our giant country—the liberty to drink over 16 ounces of sugar syrup is in the crosshairs of the gubmint. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has proposed (and will most likely implement) the nation’s first prohibition on over-sized soda at public venues.

Now the AstroTurf outrage over this alleged ban (in reality, a size reduction) is bubbling up! This week a rally brimming with dozens of soda jerks calling themselves the Million Big Gulp March, shook their high-fructose fists at the mayor. The polling reveals a polarizing 50/50 split in support/opposition to the ordinance. Throw in a couple of commercials by the beverage industry saying they’re offering more fewer-calorie choices—and you have pandemonium!

In 1908, New York City was also the first in the country to have an ordinance against public smoking. Sure it only applied to women and was quickly thrown out, but still, a hundred years later eliminating smoking tobacco just about everywhere has cut down American smokers to only 20 percent of adults (most of whom live in West Virginia). When compared to the 45 percent who smoked cigarettes in the 1950s—it’s a success. Was it a knock to the liberties of smokers? Yes. Do we care? Nope.

Because we are not islands and we live in what is referred to as civilization, therefore laws for the greater good while inconveniencing a couple of people are part of the deal. We do this with traffic: Just because stopping for 90 seconds will make some individuals late doesn’t mean we should ditch all stop lights. So unless you’re cutting your own firewood and living off the grid in a Ted Kaczynski-style cabin somewhere—what you do more than likely affects the rest of us. And in the case of smoking cigarettes—fumigates the rest of us. (Full disclosure: I’m an ex-smoker and now I’m unapologetically militant. A cliché I know. Cough. Gag.)

“It’s not the role of government to save us from ourselves,” soda pop libertarians will say. That’s just not true. The government prohibits all kinds of things to “save us from ourselves”: lead paint, toxic children’s toys, asbestos, open sewers, terrorists, Occupy protesters, and swear words without a subscription.

In 1890s New York City, carbolic acid, a nasty neurotoxin with the ability to melt the skin off your face was—inexplicably—the go-to means of suicide in Lower Manhattan. It was easily available over-the-counter at drugstores, “a dime’s worth could kill several people” and it was the most gruesome death imaginable. The city’s coroner at the time, a George P. LeBrun, reported 238 suicides in 1899 from carbolic acid. The following year the city’s health department (the same department that will more than likely ban giant sodas at New York movie theaters) made the organic compound frequently used as paint stripper require a doctor’s certificate for purchase. According to LeBrun’s autobiography, the following year the deaths by drinking carbolic acid plummeted to only a “handful of suicides.”

Did it eradicate suicide? Of course not. But was it sensible policy that arguably eased some suffering? Yes. Did it make us “less free?” Hardly.

And when it comes to obesity—we are the fattest generation of one of the fattest countries in the world. If obesity were a virus we’d have fundraisers and celebrity spokespeople drumming up panic. We’d have marches and vigils and Dateline specials. “Will you or your loved ones be next?!” We’d have a death toll counter on CNN. “Fifteen more victims claimed today!” But since it’s just our consuming too much (way too much) and economic forces encourage consuming too much (way too much) we waddle along not half as alarmed as we should be.

Here’s the thing with the obesity epidemic: Doing nothing is not fixing the problem.

Is a soda size ban a cure-all? No. Is it the best policy ever introduced? No. Will it make us all thinner? No. But it is a good start. Or really, a start.

We can all stop pretending continued Republican anger about the Affordable Care Act is news. Some figured a Supreme Court ruling would settle things. And since the GOP said it was unconstitutional with the same fervor as people who’ve read the Constitution—it was easy to assume a decision from the nine justices in the highest court in the land—regardless of the outcome—would chill them out.

They would say things like “We are a nation of laws.” Things they say when they agree with the law—however unjust it may be (i.e. immigration).

No instead there are calls for revolt. The perennially reasonable Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) said in a written statement: “Just because a couple people on the Supreme Court declare something to be ‘constitutional’ does not make it so.” And then added, “The whole thing remains unconstitutional.” Which is akin to saying just because something is a law doesn’t make it legal. Or just because they have hair on their face doesn’t make them mammals. The court, not some junior senator from a small state, ultimately decides what is or what is not constitutional. But unconstitutional is the word conservatives use for illegitimate. In chess this move is called flipping the board over and stomping away.

But it also feeds into the right-wing narrative that they are history’s most frequent victims. To them, the more egalitarian the country becomes the more persecuted conservatives are. The sentiment can be traced back to 1845 and the founding of the Know Nothings, a nativist group concerned the country was being overrun with German and Irish immigrants. The current tea party finds its sympathies much more inline with the Know Nothings than anyone who ever threw tea in the Boston Harbor. They’re each backlash movements sparked by “change.”

The Know Nothings became split on the issue of slavery and in the southern states morphed into what we identify as the Confederacy. Here you have a region of the country that quite literally fired the first shots of what was to be the bloodiest war in American history and to hear them tell it, it was the “war of Northern aggression.”

The Civil War for many didn’t settle things so why would we assume a 5-4 decision could?

Conservatives are still mad about the New Deal, even though it worked to pull the country out of the Great Depression. They’re still miffed about women suffrage, the Civil Rights Act and Roe v. Wade. In fact any movement forward giving more people more rights and greater acceptance is a point of contention with conservatives. Gay rights is framed as Christians losing their rights to vilify whomever they want. Women not being forced to pay for birth control out-of-pocket is the government restricting the freedom of religion institutions to dictate policy to the government.

Conservatives in the current incarnation of the Republican Party think rights are a zero sum game. If one group gains acceptance, it means another falls out of favor. The cornerstone of trickle down economics is that a rising tide raises all boats—but not when it comes to social change in the right-wing mindset. Then there are winners and there are losers. And conservatives on some level have to lose to prove their preexisting condition: They’re not bullies but martyrs—always hanged in the public square for their belief that only they should benefit from the Bill of Rights.

The Affordable Care Act is a law of social change. It insists on greater equality for women in health care. It stands up for the sick over the bottom line. It’s a step forward for human rights (finally) in our medical system. And it mandates personal responsibility (as with most laws). It’s far from perfect, and as with anything it can stand improvement—but does that make it an affront to Republicans?

In a word: Yes.

It’s health care reform policy, Republicans, going all the way back to Nixon, have touted as a way to avoid socialized medicine in America. So naturally its implementation is a major loss for their team.

Now more Americans can get private medical insurance and insurance companies have to spend a higher percentage of premiums on actual health care—but most importantly conservatives get to be the victims of “a communist plot to kill our freedom.”

Nothing says leadership more than bravely standing up against a concern that’s not actually a problem. We’ve had a one-sided battle with Sharia Law in the U.S. No one is fighting for replacing U.S. law with an Islamic moral code, but nonetheless Republicans are heroically fighting against it. Same with aborted fetuses in commercial food stuffs: Not something that’s ever happened but earlier this year Republican freshman Oklahoma state senator Ralph Shortey had the temerity to introduce a bill to outlaw it.

Republicans love what they call “simple solutions” but it’s really just the easiest possible answer to a trumped up crisis. In short: busy work. America needs to streamline for the challenges of the future so we can remain competitive (blah blah blah). Yet Republican offers are akin to organizing all the paperclips in the office by color and size.

Republicans and bureaucracy are, after all, frenemies. Sure they tell the media they despise bureaucracy but secretly love it when it makes them appear to be doing something. Even better if it keeps them from doing anything difficult.

For example: We’re in the middle of an obesity epidemic. It’s the number two leading cause of preventable death in this country. The Center for Disease Control estimates 112,000 American deaths a year due to obesity, this is down from their previous estimate of 365,000 deaths from poor nutrition and physical inactivity. The CDC reports in 2008 Americans forked over $147 billion in medical costs on obesity. We’re dying and going broke from being too fat.

But what are Republicans trying to warn us against? Terrorism. China. Russia. Obamacare. ACORN. The New Black Panthers. The Fed. All of which cumulatively killed no Americans last year.

It’s (ironically) lazy to try to and scare Americans about some elusive menace in order to avoid the reality that we’ve become the proverbial elephants in our own living rooms.

Illegal immigration? Republicans say to secure the border—build a fence—arrest anyone who even looks illegal. Mitt Romney said Arizona’s infamous SB 1070 should be a model for the nation. Which would be something if Mexicans were still coming into the U.S. They’re not. Immigration from Mexico is now net zero. That is actually a way bigger problem than undocumented workers (whom we love in boom times for a way to circumvent the minimum wage and exploit a non-litigious underclass). It’s the fact we are no longer an attractive enough country to motivate Mexicans to come here.

But as we saw last week with the Supreme Court ruling on Arizona’s law, governor Jan Brewer’s just doubled down on a non-problem, “We cannot forget that we are here today because the federal government has failed the American people regarding immigration policy, has failed to protect its citizens, has failed to preserve the rule of law and has failed to secure our borders.”

For a party that likes to peddle free market and common sense they sure get a lot of traction ginning up irrational fears.

Our energy plan is stuck firmly in the last century, but that’s not the point the presumptive Republican nominee decided to make. In March Mitt Romney told Fox News President Obama “has done everything in his power to make it harder for us to get oil and natural gas in this country, driving up the price of those commodities in the case of gasoline.” Gas prices were the thing Republicans were going to fix by paying attention to them! With little fanfare, gas prices are down now by the way. Production has increased overall under the Obama administration. Republicans managed to sound the alarm and assign blame for a symptom while steadfastly avoiding the cause entirely.

Think I’m way off here? Remember this is the party that in the wake of September 11^th—an attack by citizens of Saudi Arabia, organized in Afghanistan by a leader hanging out in Lebanon—decided to invade (wait for it) Iraq.

Because things indirectly involved with real problems hate us for our freedoms.

Mitt Romney’s off-the-cuff comments are starting to seem like Barack Obama’s bowling: Not good. Kind of spectacularly bad. Kitsch on a kind day.

Romney keeps on rolling gutter balls in front of the cameras: “The trees are the right height.” “I like being able to fire people.” “I’m not concerned about the very poor.” “I’m Mitt Romney—and yes Wolf, that’s also my first name.”

Normally the adage “a gaffe is when a politician accidentally tells the truth” applies. On the Jay Leno show, Obama famously compared his bowling skills to those in the Special Olympics. Many, including myself, were offended by the remark (mainly because the Special Olympics athletes are far better bowlers than Mr. Obama). The President apologized profusely for the statement.

But Romney’s greatest gaffes are less accidental nuggets of candor (like, “I have some great friends who are NASCAR team owners.”) and more what you’d call disquieting sound bites of misfired pandering. Moments that can be summed up by the phrase “cheesy grits.”

Yes, he told a crowd in Mississippi during the primary, he had “cheesy grits” (as opposed to cheese grits) for breakfast and he was learning how to say, “ya’ll.” He would have been better off saying sweet tea (a diabetic coma-inducing regional syrup served over ice) is best with Splenda and he was learning how to talk … real … slow.

(Rick Santorum won Mississippi, by the way.)

Yes, when Romney attempts to show how in touch he is with Americans…he ends up displaying exactly how in touch he is with Americans. Meaning: Not at all.

This week, minutes after marveling at the 10-year-old touch screen technology at a Wawa in Quakertown, Romney was still stuck on regional sandwiches when he got to Cornwall, Pennsylvania. “By the way, where do you get your hoagies here?” he asked the crowd of supporters. “Do you get them at Wawas? Is that where you get them? No? Do you get them at Sheetz? Where do you get them?” According to reports the crowd booed until Governor Tom Corbett offered that the locals got their sandwiches at “delis.”

Here’s the thing: For a man whose book is titled “No Apology,” Mitt’s awkward Rand McNally riffing looks like he’s apologizing for not being from there. And in the case of Michigan (where he actually is from) not being enough like those who are from there. “Ann drives a couple of Cadillacs, actually.” He’s telling us who he is by making it clear what he’s not: A man of the people … unless those “people” are corporations, my friends.

According to Moody’s Analytics, the unemployment rate would actually be a percentage point lower if the government employed as many people as we did in 2009. It’s a time when government IS shrinking—teachers and cops are being laid off and Mitt’s hoagie haven Pennsylvania lost 5,400 government jobs just this year. Mitt also does his best to seem obtuse. “[Obama] says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers. Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It’s time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.”

Who could have guessed a rich man running for a government job would have the chutzpah (pronounced choots-paw if your last name is Bachmann) to stand up against more firefighters and teachers?

One minute Romney is touting his business experience and wealth as a qualification to be president—the next minute he’s trying to appear like he’s not (as Jon Stewart observed) the guy who just fired your dad.

President Obama should not bowl. Ever. And Romney, well, he should stop trying to relate to blue-collar living and just be the stuffy, privileged, Ivy League, over-educated, French-speaking, affluent Republican he is.

Mitt, if that is your real name (it isn’t), just be yourself.

You can’t run government like a business anymore than you can run business like a government. GOP presumptive nominee, Mitt Romney, burned corporations to the ground then made millions selling off the charcoal. This private sector experience is being touted as his qualification to be president. This expertise of bankaneering—corporate raiding—is so sexy to Republicans they now parrot the line, “President Obama doesn’t understand the economy,” implying Romney does because he’s been in the trenches breathing the fumes of leveraged buyouts.

It’s like a fox claiming he has the insider knowledge to properly guard the hen house. “The farmer just doesn’t understand poultry.”

As billionaire Julian Robertson who after giving $1.25 million Restore Our Future—a pro-Romney superPAC—told NPR last week, “I think Barack Obama is a smart man that the electorate put into power without any qualifications to run the biggest business in the world, which is the United States of America.”

The thing is the U.S. isn’t a business. Government isn’t a business just as an apple isn’t an orange. Running government like a business would be like running Yosemite National Park like a 7-Eleven—every inch is monetized to maximize profit–half off all 5-Hour Energy Shots on Half Dome! “A mountain of savings!” It’s a stunningly bad idea. It sounds clever in sound bites. They hope it sounds like Republicans are business friendly and quick with the flippant solutions: Government bad, business good—treat one like the other and both will be good! To me it sounds like the WIC (Women, Infants and Children) with a profit motive: another stunningly bad idea.

Vulture capitalism (to borrow a phrase from the leftist pinko Texas Governor Rick Perry) is hardly a good model for public service. Capitalizing on demolishing jobs doesn’t give you any insight into the common good, unless you take “common good” to mean just your wealthy friends.

This whole selling point of Romney having business experience therefore he’s the best to run the country implies that the economy collapsed because there wasn’t enough of a cozy relationship between government and business.

Yes, the world melted because Washington was too adversarial with Wall Street. It was Godzilla battling Mothra that trampled Main Street … instead of deregulated greed greased by conspiring politicians.

But Republicans, as you recall, came out firmly against empathy (when it comes to President Obama’s judicial appointments). But they feel empathy for corporations is what’s lacking in the Executive Office. They want a president who feels the pain of Big Business. Who understands that just like you and me corporations are people, my friends. And only the former CEO Romney can see eye-to-eye with a contrived paper-based legal entity.

It’s very telling that Republicans say government is a business and should be run like one. For them there’s no conflict—only interest. Government is just an extension of business. Like in 2007 when a reporter asked how many of Romney’s five sons were serving in the military. Romney’s answer: “One of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping me get elected because they think I’d be a great president.” It’s just really all the same thing to Romney.

We don’t want our government to be run like a corporation. With any follow-up questions the analogy fails. Corporations don’t ensure rights. Especially rights which annoy yield like free speech and due process. Slavery was profitable. As was child labor. Pollution is profitable.

If making rich people richer was the sole purpose of government (like it is of corporations) we’d no longer have a country: We’d have Lehman Brothers.

Photo by Donald Lee Pardue

If you ask the typical hyper-political gun owner (and I have … at Thanksgiving dinner), why it’s important to own a gun, they’ll bark about the Constitution. Yes, the Second Amendment: “The Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed!”

This of course is the slogan the National Rifle Association adopted in the 1970’s. It was then that owning a gun became an absolute right endowed by God and the Constitution. A blessing passed down by our forefathers to obliterate game and protect our property. The NRA was founded in 1870 and for its first hundred years it was for gun control and didn’t mention the Second Amendment as their cause.

Adam Winkler points out in his delicious book, “Gun Fight,” what we call the “wild west” had some of the strictest gun control laws we’ve seen as a nation. The shoot out at the OK Corral took place, after all, because Wyatt Earp was trying to disarm the outlaw Cowboys in accordance with a Tombstone ordinance. The KKK was among other things, a gun control organization. They were trying to keep guns out of the hands of newly freed slaves … but still gun control.

The part of the Second Amendment omitted from the NRA’s slogan is: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…” Yes, well regulated—it’s in the Constitution!

Now, to some, guns are as sacred as scripture. If you ask, again, this typical hyper-political gun owner why they need to stockpile assault rifles, you will get an answer much like Pat Flynn’s, a recent candidate for a Senate seat in Nebraska. “Really, we have our guns to protect ourselves against the government, number one,” Flynn said in a debate right before the primary. “Hunting’s number two. But protecting us against our government is number one.” Remember Flynn was trying to land a job in the government (he didn’t win his party’s nomination, by the way).

The idea is that we have to be just as armed as our government in order to be safer or have more liberty (or something). The U.S. government has unmanned drones armed with supersonic laser-guided anti-armor Hellfire missiles, “bunker busters,” and nuclear weapons. Are far-right politicians saying we need civilians to have shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles “for protection?” Of course they’re not. They actually do want limits on ownership.

And if you ask the most vehement gun rights advocate why Everyman Gun Owner shouldn’t have nuclear weapons, I’d bet you’d get the same answer as to why we don’t want every country to have the capability: “Because they could get into the wrong hands.”

So weapons-grade plutonium should be limited. But the ever-handy semi-auto Glock pistol with a 30-round high-capacity magazine is an absolute right?

A recent gun buyback drive in Los Angeles resulted in someone turning in a rocket launcher. Comforting.

So we’re not actually talking about limited vs. unlimited. We are talking about degrees of weapon ownership.

Guns fall into the wrong hands all the time. More guns and fewer requirements for ownership doesn’t curb this. George Zimmerman was the wrong hands. Zimmerman, a Florida man now infamous for shooting an unarmed black teenager at close range after a 911 operator told him not to engage the alleged suspect and wait for police to arrive, is now being defended by said hyper-political gun owners. There’s no reason a Neighborhood Watch captain should be patrolling his block with a criminal record and a pistol. Zimmerman was a catastrophe realized. Even in the wake of new evidence about this case, the fact remains if Zimmerman didn’t have a gun, 16-year-old Trayvon Martin would be alive.

The United States is number one in the world in civilian gun ownership. And since we’re not last in gun violence (we’re the 14^th highest in deaths—way higher in just injuries) it’s safe to assume that increasing the number of guns doesn’t decrease the number of gun deaths. Just like cutting taxes doesn’t increase revenue—making gun ownership unlimited doesn’t make us safer. It’s a lie. A fairy tale of the gun lobby. Completely unsupported by data or logic. A falsehood.

So unless you think all Americans should get Daisy Cutters this Christmas—you believe in regulations as to who gets a weapon, what kind and where they can have it.

Gun control laws are not tyranny—as the family of Trayvon Martin can testify to—a de-regulated militia is.

The future is always a dystopia and the past is always better than this mess we live in right now. That’s if literature has any ability to tell us about ourselves. Stories about the future: Forewarning. Stories about the good ol’ days: Heartening. Somewhere in our collective unconscious we believe there was a golden era of innocence and irresistible quaintness. The present is far from that—so the future has to be worse. Most likely involving robots … emoting and plotting their revenge.

The future scares us and we wish it could be more like it used to be. Therefore we freak out about change and demand tradition because it connects us to this proverbial Garden of Eden in our minds.

This logical glitch is a pestilence in American politics. Conservative politicians in particular pander to this notion; we must go back to the past. There it’s better because we were better.

Presumptive presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s punt on same-sex marriage is: “I agree with 3,000 years of history.” To him this means a love-based consensual marriage between one man and one woman; our current interpretation of marriage. Of course plural marriage, like that of Romney’s grandfathers has also been practiced in the last 3,000 years. As were arranged marriages. As were loveless contractual nuptials. Deuteronomy is pretty clear if a woman isn’t a virgin when she gets married she should be killed. It wasn’t until 1993 that North Carolina became the last state to remove the marriage exemption for rape. Regardless Romney, admits to agreeing with 3,000 years of marriage history. His Etch-a-Sketch must be set to history revision.

I personally don’t agree with any history before sewage systems, women’s suffrage or the Loving decision. I also refuse to romanticize any era before the advent of antibiotics.

The GOP’s objection to state-sanctioned monogamous homosexual relationships is, they offer, based on their belief in the Bible. The current crop of Republicans are less into Jesus (who didn’t like rich people or capital punishment) than they are into 1^st Century values like stoning misfits in the public square. They’ve picked gay marriage to condemn as an evil out to kill us all, because for Republicans there actually IS a magic time in the not-so-distant past to be nostalgic for—specifically 2004. Then gay marriage was the perfect catalyst to get people to vote Republican. Hence Dubya’s second term.

And now? Now in the wake of the unremarkable ending to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (which funny enough is no longer talked about), gay rights doesn’t have the same bite. In 2005 the Supreme Court made sodomy legal in all 50 states and since then there have been absolutely no reports of anyone turning into a pillar of salt. But Republicans who pride themselves on being traditional and firmly planted in the past regardless of folly—are going to try and chum the water with something as anemic as spousal privilege.

Last week President Obama said he supported gays being allowed to marry. This was the right thing to do. But it wasn’t the radical thing to do—it’s popular. Most Americans agree that homosexuals should be able to be married. According to a recent Gallup poll 51 percent of Americans agree with President Obama on this issue.

Will gay marriage corrode the foundation of this country? When gay marriage becomes the norm (which it will eventually) we probably won’t even notice. We’ll get the same amount of wedding invites only all of these will be legal. You’ll know the same amount of gays you know now. Our children will have the same likelihood of being homosexual as they do now. Very few American’s lives will change. It’s just a minority—a persecuted, ostracized, demonized minority—of Americans whose lives will improve with the option for full-legal rights as a married couple.

That’s if the past is actually prologue … instead of paradise.

We’re a species that has gotten around; we’ve wandered, pioneered and migrated to every corner of the world. The spear tip of technology is how we can get somewhere else: the wheel, the sailboat, the rocket. In short: we’re movers.

We are now as mobile as we’ve ever been as a culture. Our phones are not tethered to any particular location. Our keepsakes, like photos and letters, are all saved on devices smaller than your average drugstore paperback. The bitter visual of a breakup – the splitting up of a couple’s CD collection – no longer exists since you both have copies of the same MP3s. Your computer fits comfortably in your lap – everything else is in your pocket. We now have the ability to go anywhere and bring with us more things utilizing less space than at any other time in human history.

We have the ability – the freedom – to roam more now than ever before. And yet our upward mobility is standing still.

Jason DeParle in The New York Times wrote in January this year, “Countries with less equality generally have less mobility.” And as Occupy Wall Street successfully pointed out the top one percent “earn” nearly a quarter of the nation’s income. While they have enjoyed an increase in wealth and a decrease in taxes, the rest of the country has seen a flattening of their prospects. The U.S. ranks near the bottom in income inequality and therefore upward mobility.

Time noted, “The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Economic Mobility Project has found that if you were born in 1970 in the bottom one-fifth of the socioeconomic spectrum in the U.S., you had only about a 17 percent chance of making it into the upper two-fifths.”

Americans have mobile phones with immobile socioeconomics. Put that in your made-in-China travel mug and sip it.

Why is this so? There are many factors and usually when there is an issue with many factors it means there’s a partisan divide as to its “true” solution. Former Senator, former presidential candidate, Rick Santorum mentioned the lack of upward mobility but subscribed boilerplate Republican cure-alls like deregulating businesses and cutting taxes for corporations. Arguably if that helped upward mobility – we’d have upward mobility.

President Obama also talked about this fact earlier this month. “It is antithetical to our entire history as a land of opportunity and upward mobility for everyone who’s willing to work for it – a place where prosperity doesn’t trickle down from the top, but grows outward from the heart of the middle class,” said the President to a Florida audience.

He continued, “By gutting the very things we need to grow an economy that’s built to last – education and training; research and development; infrastructure – it’s a prescription for decline.”

The real solution is probably in the middle – which is often ever so slightly to the left of President Obama’s positions.

Conservatives, like the government-helicopter-hopping, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie will say it’s the safety net that has made us lazy waiting for government checks. But countries with a better current mobility rate (most of the industrialized world) will note their social safety net is what makes mobility possible for the lower classes.

One thing which is supposed to ensure you’ll do better than your parents is getting a better education. However, tuitions are rising, grants are shrinking and student loans are becoming a plague of post-collegiate living. College is no longer the class-lift it once was.

This is where we are as a nation: Your Android can go anywhere with you … just probably not into the upper middle-class.

Republicans didn’t set out to have a war on women; they wanted a war on religion. Their intention was to march two Republican-created boogiemen into a battle that would make the War on Christmas cringe: ObamaCare and ObamaIsAMuslim. The Affordable Care Act stipulates birth control be included in insurance coverage instead of forcing women to pay out of pocket for such medications. This was the shot across the bow for the GOP to start their war. Republican sage, Congressman Darrell Issa, called a bunch of men of faith (yes, all men) to testify to Congress how the provision in the health care law regarding birth control would adversely affect them.

Then the right-wing echosphere spent the next week bouncing the sound bite: “This isn’t about contraception, this is about religious freedom.”

America’s right-wing: Afraid of Muslims, suspicious of Mormons, terrified of atheists and martyrs of religious freedom.

Republicans botched their war on religion with the word “slut.” Oh and by proposing laws against women getting equal pay, and a right to privacy or recourse if a doctor lies to them. The Chairman of the RNC, Reince Priebus, said the war on women is imaginary at the same moment Republican legislators around the country were introducing bills eroding women’s rights. So the war over what kind of war this was – religion or women – was lost by Republicans. Their best efforts to get a fruitful campaign about religious liberty backfired into a debate about gender equality.

To quote Rick Perry, “Oops.”

This party used to be better at getting traction with these wedge causes-they-call-wars. This has been their modus operandi to pummel artists, single mothers, monogamous gay couples, pot smokers, public employees and other subversives for decades: They create a fake crisis, say it will kill us all and then repeat it until our ears bleed.

How have they fumbled manufacturing a war on religion?! This is a John Carter level of a stink bomb: It’s totally formulaic – how can it fail?

Perhaps it’s just hard to convince Americans we are a Christian nation founded in religion with a tradition of religion in every facet of our lives from our money to our pledge of allegiance AND that faith is somehow being threatened. It’s like saying you’re the size of Goliath but everyone should view you as David.

Republicans really need a war on religion. Badly. A common foe would not only glaze over the fact their nominee is from a new sect distrusted by other sects – it would unite (they hope) all people of faith into their special brand of ultra-conservative gospel. A gospel that mega-church pastor, tax-free status enjoyer, Rick Warren, summed up nicely: “I don’t believe in wealth redistribution,” he said on the holiest of Easter Sundays on ABC’s This Week. Yes, when Jesus wasn’t hunting quail with his Glock sub-compact semi-auto – he was all over trickle down economics and scapegoating the poor for political gain.

A war on religion would give Republicans back their big tent. It would be a giant diverse group of people who would put faith in the Grand Old Party looking out for their eternal souls instead of just soulless corporations.  All the hacking away at women’s rights, the social safety net and consumer protections would be given a pass under “religious freedom.”

Try it: “This isn’t about toxic drinking water/corporate welfare/millionaire tax breaks – it’s about religious freedom!” It works for nearly everything.

This will all go perfectly if they find an enemy. One good enough, or bad enough as the case may be, to compel all Americans of faith to give up their petty differences and come together as Republicans. Since the GOP needs this war on religion to push through their ironically social Darwinist agenda – they’re not going to give up trying to create one.

What does a preemptive victim searching for a persecutor look like? It looks a lot like the Republicans’ “war on religion.”