R. A. Heinlein

I have no link. It happened to a friend of my brother’s. in Columbia, SC.

And when the judgement was rendered – carefully calculated to equal the equity in the home he had been defending – he informed the judge that he had disposed of the .22 and had purchased a 30′Ought 6. The judge replied “I understand perfectly.”

Simply: I don’t have any children. My sister’s grandchildren will be whatever they want to be – that’s the way we do things, here where the agents of Satan don’t rule.

Your grandchildren will be dead. Not buried, just dead.

He said something remarkable, “9/11 really killed me.” That’s where you will find the the collective head of the American electorate.

I wouldn’t be so dismissive of American’s significant economic concerns – or the absolute connection between a healthy economy and a good military.

9/11 inflicted far more damage that the small number of casualties and few acres affected (few, as military attacks generally go). 9/11 “killed” the portfolios of millions and wrecked businesses, not just in the area of the plane’s impact – but in air services, etc., etc. Don’t diminish their losses just because they weren’t part of America’s Greatest Victims…Ever.

Today’s economic catastrophie is another reminder, as if the Soviet economic collapse wasn’t enough – that when the economy hurts badly – security and the military will suffer and the weakened nation’s ability to project force and influence others is badly impacted.

Consider a moderate American, reasonably patriotic – who has just lost half his families life savings, his wife who had the family’s health care coverage just got hit in the mass layoffs now starting, and most good jobs within a 100 mile radius have been wiped out by Ruling Elites in the Republican and Democratic Parties resetting them up in Asia. In vast swaths of the country, unlike in the past – there are no other potential employers..

Oh, and he found out he cannot sell his house…and move to some state like a jobless Dustbowl refugee to where people still have a shot at a good job. And even then, if he does sell his house at a huge loss and moves to be freer job-hunting – he competes against foreigners pouring across the Open Border Bush, McCain, the Democrats, and Republican Corporatists want wide open…

Now try to impress on that moderate, reasonable American that his loss of life savings, economic security, health care, and possibly his home is not as important – as “fighting Islamofascists, bringing democracy at a cost of a trillion a nation to “noble freedom-lovers who hate us and kill us as we save them for democracy and freedom!” Tell that person, who may have been supportive of the military and buying F-22s at 350 million a copy back in 2002 – that nothing has changed. And we still need to neglect the economy and his shattered dreams so we ” can protect Israel, have a military where cost is no object, launch new wars of liberation, and buy more exorbitantly expensive gear to replace or improve upon the stuff lost or burned out in the two endless wars Bush is now fighting.

When you come down to it, 200 million deeply fearful of their family’s economic future and access to health care politically trumps the 30 million or so that focus on “Islamofascism”, “liberating” ungrateful 3rd Worlders, or think that the loss of a few dozen to a few thousand in an enemy attack is all we should really care about…

The collective head of the American electorate is in the right place. More concerned with “how can I protect my family and regain all we have lost” than in the Ukraine or Israel’s fate – or a another attack hitting us..

Terrorism has lost it’s place as the most important threat. It is now well down the list of threats Americans collectively think are dire and urgent. The risk of an “Islamofascist” killing them or members of their immediate friends and family seem low, very unlikely to happen to them. The threat of job loss, bankruptcy from one major health event, a sharply diminished future and standard of living for their offspring, a resurgence in violent crime as others lose their economic future? – That seems a much higher threat.

Serves him right for using a .22.