By Nathan Barton

I realize I keep harping on our growing epidemic of insanity.  Call it nuttiness, bad headspace timing, craziness, weirdness, or whatever.  I realize that we do get a lot more news about anything everywhere these days. Electrons are a lot cheaper than ink and column-inches on paper. There was lots of craziness in the “old days.” But it seems to be more prevalent in 2019 – even than four or five years ago.

Here are a few examples, just from one day this week:

• Port St. Lucie Florida WalMart – anti-gun liberal activist walked in and asked if he could buy a gun that could kill 200 people.  They called the cops.  It was a publicity stunt to show how anti-gun he was.
• Hannity’s bizarre interview with Dem Mayor/Candidate De Blasio in which insults were exchanged freely but the candidate to be massa wouldn’t (or couldn’t) answer some honest questions that need to be answered.  Apparently he is depending on emotions, not facts, to get him elected.
• Colorado Springs liberal advocate for illegal immigrants was killed by an illegal immigrant.  The dead guy had gotten a lot of border jumpers sanctuary. The border jumper who killed him was driving illegally too, on a suspended license for DUI and after being sent home several times before sneaking back in.
• Gonzaga law professor loses it over a student wearing a MAGA hat: freaks out over free speech in a college campus.
• State Department employee turns out to be leader of a “white supremacy” group in DC. Or so it is claimed.
• Springfield Missouri WalMart panics over guy who walked into the store with a rifle and “body armor” – armed firefighter is “hero” for stopping the guy after he LEFT the store and let the police take him into custody.  He didn’t threaten anyone, didn’t brandish his weapons (he also had a pistol), but he (GASP!) had a hundred rounds on him. Meanwhile, people screaming “active shooter” (even though no shots were fired, fled into the parking lot in fear.
• People in El Paso panic over others in El Paso arming themselves after mass murder at WalMart, because all the sudden there are a lot more visible guns on the streets.  (And not in the hands or on the belts of cops).
• Mass murders in Mexico ignored despite 19 dead in the city of Uruapan. There was a single article.  Maybe it is because they were kidnapped and hanged, not part of a “mass shooting.” So it doesn’t fit the Mexican government’s agenda (or that of the media).
• Murder of four by stabbing in Orange County California, plus others wounded seriously has barely been mentioned in the media.  Maybe it is because it wasn’t a “mass shooting?”  Again, whose agenda?
• Southern use of “assault rifle” (semiauto rifle) to kill threatening feral hogs is pooh-poohed by “government scientists” because guns can’t kill all of a sounder (the word for a group of mature swine).  You are supposed to trap and poison them.  Even when they go after small children and livestock and pets.
• In Florida, a man was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon for hitting people with a golf-cart in a WalMart. No guns or knives, fortunately – so not as MUCH panic. (Am I being insensitive by remembering some of those movies where they put blades on the wheels of chariots and such?)
• Fox & Friends hosts agree with (Gasp!) Oprah Winfrey about gun violence (that we are missing “core moral center” – a moral compass. (This is truly bizarre.)
• In an Ohio school, a sixth-grade boy who called another sixth-grade boy a “boy” was punished by the school because the other boy wants to be called a “girl.”  Even though he’d known the “ex-boy” for several years. Apparently the school had to be ordered to stop telling the ex-boy to express his inner feminine self?
• The entire Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has become the first “sanctuary church body” – ramming the idea down all their congregation’s throats. Apparently we see another reason denominational hierarchies are a really bad idea.  Wonder when they will also pass religious ordinances excommunicating people who own guns?  Or don’t clap in approval at “gay marriage” announcements?
• WalMart tells stores to remove “violent images” like displays for video games and – get this – hunting videos.  They still sell some guns, but that has to go, too, according to the panicked mob.
• A Huffington Post editorial claims that the reason that so many people are “pro-gun” (or pro-Second Amendment/pro-right to self-defense) is because they are trying to turn the United States into a theocracy. “It’s hard for gun-control activists to find common ground with folks who believe the Second Amendment is a God-given right.”  The WaPo agrees that most people who support the Second Amendment are “Christian naitonalists” who believe God handed down the Second Amendment.
• A Montana man who attacked and seriously injured a teen over disrespect for the National Anthem claims he was following Trump’s orders.  That’s different: usually they claim “the devil made me do it.” Of course, maybe to him (and many others) Trump IS the devil.

How long, how long will this continue like this?  I don’t mind nutty neighbors, as long as they leave me and mine alone.

Notice how many of these are incidents involving WalMart?  Maybe we need to go to Family Dollar or Krogers or Albertsons more – or would that just spread the craziness?

Americans once believed it was good to “Mind Your Own Business.”  Will that ever again be true?

–