The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump quotes an American woman, “I want my country back!”  Her yearning echoes many middle-age and older citizens and reaches back decades.

On the heels of the Great Depression and WWII, Americans had a bellyful of pain and poverty.  It was time for peace and plenty.  Nineteen forty-five promised a bungalow for every family, a Ford or Chevy in every garage, a good job for Dad, an electric stove and refrigerator for Mom, and “Boomer” kids in lily-white school.  The miracle of television brought “Father Knows Best,” “The Adventures of Ozzy and Harriet,” “Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C.”, and “Leave it to Beaver” into American homes.

Then, the picture went out-of-focus.  It turned out Father didn’t always know best, Ozzy and Harriet weren’t the “Nelsons,” and Gomer was gay.  After six-seasons, “The Beaver,” Gerald “Jerry” Patrick Mathers, graduated high school and abandoned the airwaves for the Air Force.  “The Graduate” introduced younger Americans to “plastic” and hypocrisy. Then the Beatniks—Remember?—Hippies, Viet Nam, and Civil Rights!

As our lady pining for her lost “country” suggests, many Americans trace today’s craziness, mass shootings, burgeoning murder rates, violence in video games and social and mass media, to breakdown of  “traditional,” male and female, two-parent America’s family.  But, like it or not, we can’t roll back the calendar.  “Ay, there’s the rub.”

Nostalgia notwithstanding, the cliché is true: The only constant is change.  A technocratic, solar-powered, speed-of-light Twenty-First Century leaves most Americans over age fifty bewildered and sometimes frightened.  A mechanized, gasoline-powered, speed-of-sound Twentieth Century left our parents bewildered and sometimes frightened.  So it’s been, generation after generation, century after century.   

Does our wistful lady long for laundry on a scrubbing board, travel by wagon or horseback, scurrying to a two-hole outhouse?  Does anyone pine for a clutch and gear shift, hand-push lawn mower, rotary phone, party line, “long distance,” “rabbit ears” on a two-channel, sometimes fuzzy, black-and-white TV?

In our grandparents’ era, the leading causes of death were disease, accidents, and childbirth.  Twenty-first century living conditions, public safety, and medicine have gifted Americans with far less suffering and far more material goods than in any time or culture of world history!

Despite today’s headaches and heartaches, do we really yearn for return to “Mayberry R.F.D.”?  Do we really want our country back?

Which country?

Attorney John Eastman authored a 6-step plan to hijack America’s 2019 presidential election and keep Donald J. Trump in power.

Having learned of this scheme, in a call from Eastman Trump White House Lawyer Erik Herschmann exclaimed, “Are you out of your effing mind?” Herschmann terminated their chat with, “I am going to give you the best free legal advice you’re ever getting in your life.  Get a great effing criminal defense lawyer.  You’re going to need it”    

All who orchestrated and attempted to implemented Eastman’s seditious conspiracy would do well to heed lawyer Herschmann’s counsel.

About 2 years and 10 months ago, on my Stamina stationary bike I departed Oregon City.  Around a years later, I peddled into New York City and turned north into Canada.  May 23, 2022, at 3:55 p.m., nineteen miles short of Dufesne, Manitoba, I logged 4,000 miles!

If I and my trusty Stamina hold out, I will continue across Canada and south to home.   

I would be remiss not to thank my faithful navigator, Karen, for logging and marking the miles on maps. 

For me, the House January 6 Committee’s hearings consolidated what was obvious in the moment and more so since the attempted coup: President Donald Trump and a Right-Wing Cabal orchestrated and implemented a “seditious conspiracy” “to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States.” (18 U.S.C. § 2384) 

What maddens me is the contortions and machinations thousand-dollar-an-hour lawyers will concoct attempting to confound an obviously slam-dunk case! 

NRA members and other Gun Nuts should show the balls to view Robb Elementary, Sandy Hook, and Parkland crime scene photographs showing what an AR-15 round does to the head of a child.

Why, in the names of God and common sense, could Salvador Ramos, a juvenile who could not legally purchase cigarettes or booze, legally buy two AR-15 assault rifles and 30 round clips?

Because, like Big Tobacco and Big Fossil Fuel, Big Gun Makers: Ruger, American Tactical Imports, Bravo Company, Wilson Combat, Daniel Defense, LaRue, Rock River Arms, Sig Sauer, Smith and Wesson, and Springfield Armory really do value financial profit over human life!

It is argued that, under or adjunct to an until-now nonexistent “well regulated militia,” the Second Amendment contemplates armed citizens rising up to clean out a corrupt America government.  In addition to the complex command, control, and logistics supporting such a “popular uprising,” its actions and consequences are deeply troubling!

What is the line between righteous uprising and seditious insurrection?  Envision 30 or 40 million AR-15 armed Rambos patrolling America’s streets.  Who would lead?  Who would follow?  Who would they shoot?  Lay siege on our Capitol?  Firing squads for suspect members of Congress?  Good Guys and Gals rounding up undesirables, Liberals, neighbors?  Someone takes exception, unlimber the trusty ol’ Assault Rifle and blow ‘em away! 

It is impossible and terrifying to imagine the consequences of a mindless, chaotic assault on America’s democracy.  Anarchy or dictatorship seem logical outcomes, certainly not freedom and democracy.

Choosing not to air the House January 6 committee’s June 9^th hearing, Fox “News” remains true to its motto, adopted from mushroom growers, “Feed ‘em horse shit and keep ‘em in the dark.” 

If I were Master Spy Vladimir Putin, I would take down America from inside.  Flying in the face of the majority vote, leading my High-Tech Guerrilla War I would reinstall my amoral, crooked, big-mouthed, Sixth Grade Bully in the Oval Office.  Attempting again to take over our government, on my Puppet Dictator’s command, his Mindless Minions could again challenge the validity of America’s Congress, Executive, Judiciary, and Constitution itself!

My spooks would infiltrate the Worldwide Web.  On Social Media and “Dark Web,” in clever irony we would implementing our concocted scheme with concocted claims that a nameless, faceless, Left Wing Cabal plots to take away Americans’ “freedoms.”

The massacre of nineteen children and two teachers at Rob Elementary School raises a potpourri of issues around Americans’ “right to bear arms.”  Where to begin?

When the United States’ Bill of Rights was ratified, in 1791, America’s defense force comprised a citizen’s militia.  Therefore, the Second Amendment specified, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

With a blind eye to the Second Ament’s first phrase, today’s gun rights defenders adopt the second as a mantra.  Okay, NRA, Wayne LaPierre, and Gun Lobbyists, is your notion of a “well regulated militia” an eighteen-year-old with two AR-15s and thirty round clips ‽     

Texas Republican legislators say school children would be safe from LaPierre’s “a bad guy with a gun” if teachers became “a good guy with a gun.”  Envision a 53-year-old female English teacher whipping out her trusty 38-Special and taking down a 17-year-old male in body armor totin’ an AR-15 with a 30-round clip! 

At Robb, Elementary Wayne’s “good guy with a gun” faced its acid test.  The school Security Officer was absent.  While ten year old Amerie Joe Garza repeatedly pleaded with 911 to send the police, with firepower to take out a infantry platoon, nineteen cops cowered a school hallway.  One hour and seventeen minutes after the gunman entered Robb Elementary, defying orders to stay out, two Border Patrol officers had the balls to confront and kill the gunman.

To ensure the “common good” and “promote the general welfare,” from food and drugs, commerce and workplace safety, and air and ground transportation, Americans recognize the necessity of laws and regulations. Seven in ten believe firearm ownership should be subjected to commonsense regulations.  Three in ten hold firearms exempt from any restriction whatsoever.

To this aim, it seems the only Congressional lobby with more clout than Big Tobacco is Big Guns.  A boy who barred from purchasing cigarettes freely bought two AR-15 Assault Rifles and 30 round clips!

To emphasize the insanity of America’s public safety policy, “Everytown for Gun Safety” contrasts our regulation of cars and guns.

Cars                                                              Guns
Title and tag at each point of sale             Not title and tag
Training                                                        No training
Written test                                                  No written test
Practical teat                                               No practical test
Health requirement                                     No health requirement
Liability insurance on each car                  No liability insurance on each gun
Renewal and inspection at intervals         No renewal and inspection

We will never know why that boy vented his rage on Robb Elementary children.  Two facts come to mind.  First, researchers tell us the brain’s prefrontal cortex (PFC) does not mature until around age 20.  According to Wikipedia, “The functions of the PFC project future consequences that result from current actions.  PFC functions also include override and suppression of socially unacceptable responses as well a differentiation of tasks.” (My italics.)  Second, in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness Psychiatrist Eric Fromm maintains, rhetorically, as memory serves, “People have to make a dent.  If nowhere else, they make it in someone’s head.” 

Without adult supervision no one under the age of 21 should own or use a firearm.  An assault weapon, never!