Tuesday, August 6, 2019

What We’re Up Against

Trying to have an intelligent conversation about what to do about guns is kind of hard when you’re up against this kind of rank stupidity and hatred.

In a laundry list of reasons why the United States is grappling with mass killings, an Ohio state lawmaker has settled on immigrants, same-sex marriage, transgender rights, disrespect toward veterans and “drag queen advocates.”

Candice Keller, a Republican state representative from Middletown, near Dayton, Ohio, where nine people were killed early Sunday, offered her diagnosis on her personal Facebook page, the Dayton Daily News reported. On Monday, the state leader of her own party called for her to resign.

“Candice Keller’s Facebook post was shocking and utterly unjustifiable,” Jane Timken, chairman of the Ohio Republican Party, said in a statement to The Washington Post.

Keller’s post came only hours after the Dayton shooting, as the nation still reeled from the Saturday mass killing of 22 people in El Paso and the discovery of an anti-immigrant, white nationalist manifesto believed to have been written by that alleged gunman.

[…]

Her list also included fatherless upbringing, violent video games and two arguments that conservatives have leveled at former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick — that kneeling protests over police brutality are insults to both law enforcement and veterans.

[…]

Keller also blamed President Barack Obama for “disrespect to law enforcement,” along with Democratic lawmakers, public schools and “snowflakes, who can’t accept a duly-elected President.” Her post was later either removed from view or deleted.

To be fair, the reason this rant is making the news is because she’s a duly elected representative to the Ohio legislature, not some urine-soaked tin-foil-hat wearing homeless person living under an overpass.  But that also means that a majority of people in her district knew what she was like — this isn’t her first rodeo — and voted for her anyway, which says a lot more about the people of Middletown than it does about her.

No one said this would be easy, but it’s a lot harder when you’re up against this kind of nonsense.

PS: I would much rather hang out with drag queens, Colin Kaepernick, and Barack Obama than her, and I think the country would be a lot better off if we all did.