Going to repost this without the obscure Kim Du Toit reference. Because I don’t think you can understand Attorney General Winebox’s announcement to not prosecute people for felony gun possession–which is D.C. colonial law–if they have rifles or shotguns is less about enabling another January 6 (though it could) and more to with a subset of conservative men who are terrified of being in places where they are the minority, either in terms of race/ethnicity or ideology. TEH LIBRULS are scary!
Since Trump’s usurpation of the few self-governance mechanisms the citizens of the mainland colony (aka ‘D.C.’) still possess, we have witnessed the spectacle of conservative Republican men pissing themselves about how dangerous it is to walk around D.C. Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin hilariously claimed he was afraid to drive around D.C. because he was afraid he would be carjacked (aside: Mullin has huge “I torture kidnap victims in my basement dungeon” energy). Another Republican and Paragon of Manliness, Rep. Tim Burchett told an interviewer that he sleeps in his office because he’s afraid to walk to an apartment (actually, he’s just cheap).
I was going to ignore this ninnyness because it’s just a dog-bites-man story: Republicans lie about crime in D.C. so often it’s just par for the course. But then Republican propagandist and plagiarist Ben Domenech excreted this onto Twitter:
As a D.C. native, I swear to you I walked around the National Mall as a kid in the 1970s and it was safe. I walked around the National Mall in the 1980s and it was safe. I walked around the National Mall in the 1990s and it was safe. I walked around the National Mall in the 2000s and it was safe. I walked around the National Mall in the 2010s and it was safe. I walked around the National Mall throughout the last five years, and it was safe.
If you are frightened to walk around the National Mall, you are not experiencing a crime problem, you are experiencing a psychological problem–and you really need help.
Look, I get it. Some people are afraid of heights. Some people are afraid of spiders. You’re afraid of the National Mall.
Fucking cowards.
mikethemadbiologist
Maybe he just wants white kids to be able to explore the Smithsonian without being made to feel bad when they see exhibits about slavery? Didn’t Santa say that the best way to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past is to pretend they didn’t happen? 😉
On a personal note, my only visit to DC was during the Carter administration and the only time I felt any fear was when I got off an elevator in the Capitol building in what appeared to be a sub-basement filled with filing cabinets. I expected I had set off an alarm and would be tackled by security, but no one noticed and I pressed the up button and continued my self-directed tour. Do they still have huge timbers, painted granite gray, shoring up the walls on the outside of the building, or did they fix it properly?
No one is treading on you. You need psychiatric help.