The assassination attempt on former President Trump was wholly wrong. The intentions of the would-be assassin remain, as yet, unknown. What’s known is that he had access to a calibre of gun which shouldn’t be available to the general public.
Trump and his hyena cohort of Republicans have set themselves in stone against stricter gun laws. There’s an inescapable outcome - favour a free for all in gun ownership and it will be measured by thousands of funeral cortèges.
Instead of being sobered by a near-death experience, Trump uses this opportunity for political campaigning and his gullible followers swallow it.
Political platitudes or tea and sympathy at the White House won’t bring victims back. Hard cold gun control legislation will reduce the mind-blowing number of unnecessary deaths. Yet America is tone deaf.
In a 2021 survey into all fatalities involving weapons, America had a staggering 48,830 deaths. To put that in context, it’s nearly one death per annum for every household in Derry city.
Fifty per cent of all US murders involve a firearm. Per capita America has more deaths by firearms than Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Spain and Ireland combined.
The language and tone of US political debates has been toxic. Much of it fuelled by the fear mongering of right wing maniacal politicians, noise-baiting shock jocks and firebrand commentators.
Trump advocates bear much personal responsibility for this descent into political sewer-swimming; Trump is a demagogue run amok in a democratic society.
But America’s democracy is no less fragile than many developing nations. To watch Trump’s British lickspittles and loser sycophants floating about the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin last week was as unedifying as it was stomach turning. They make Waylon Smithers of The Simpsons look positively Herculean.
The PSNI obviously decided to play it low-key but this perennial boil needs lancing. The transition gravy train for loyalist paramilitaries should have long left the station. If not on the side of law and order, then they should face the consequences of their actions
Back home, both Dublin and Belfast experienced the full force of recreational violence, which is what Americans now do under the misnomer of politics.
The Belfast violence is almost inexplicable. This year’s Twelfth demonstrations passed off peacefully, as they should. Not even Co Down’s most ubiquitous serial protestor was able to whip up much more than apathy against that enduring success story of the peace process, the Parades Commission.
So how and why did children find themselves in a pitched battle with the PSNI? It’s clear from media coverage that it was orchestrated by older, more sinister and irrelevant malcontents from the bowels of the loyalist paramilitary organisations.
The PSNI obviously decided to play it low-key but this perennial boil needs lancing. The transition gravy train for loyalist paramilitaries should have long left the station. If not on the side of law and order, then they should face the consequences of their actions.
And down in Dublin, the Gardai were also tackling adolescents on the rampage. Again, the images from Coolock show masked and balaclava-covered males directing the play. These individuals are not patriots, or protestors. They are neo-fascist thugs, hoodlums and menaces.
The right to protest is guaranteed, but only if peaceful. Violence, attacking police, putting lives and property at risk, requires more than societal condemnation. It needs matched with robust policing and law enforcement.
To remember how far so-called fascist patriots will go, one only has to recall January 6 2021 and the Capitol attacks in Washington. Democracy is at stake, whether in Washington, Dublin or even Belfast, when delusional digital marionettes leave their bedrooms and take to the streets.
