Why We March?

I spent my Saturday marching through downtown Houston with a bunch of teenagers.

As I stood on the hill in Tranquility Park listening to young adults, and some straight up children, plead with the adults that run this country to keep them safe, I thought about the idiocy of arming teachers. At one point, a fifth grader moved me to tears as he stated, without any doubt in his voice, that he would stand in between his classmates and a gun man if it would save them.

"I've already lived a pretty good life..." said Desmond Floyd, all ten years of him.

These kids have PTSD from going to school. They talk about watching doors and windows, about planning for the worst possible scenario every second that they are at school, about being worried about catching a bullet instead of catching a bus. I do that shit because I'm a combat veteran. They do it because they're American children. This is not normal. This is not right.

And as this young boy spoke, with police snipers overhead, a helo circling, and what seemed like the entire Houston police department surrounding us, I imagined a teacher in an urban combat situation surrounded by kids.

Walk through this with me:

- Scenario 1 - Shooter in hallway. Teacher in classroom. 

50 children in a small classroom. Teacher and shooter exchange fire through the doorway? What's that look like? Messy. A 9mm handgun versus an ak-47/ar-15 in a small space while you're trying to take careful shots and the rifle wielder is just fucking spraying? Good luck.

15 rounds, MAYBE, versus 30 rounds AT LEAST. How many magazines are we giving these teachers? Is the teacher wearing a vest? Is the gun in a holster on the teacher's leg or locked in a drawer or closet? Where are the spare mags?

Likely outcome = Gunman gets extra gun, more children killed in crossfire than if they'd just locked down in place. 

- Scenario 2 - Shooter and teacher in hallway.

How long is a school hallway? The maximum effective range of a 9mm pistol is generally about 50 meters, definitely so in a combat situation with a moving target and non-combatants in between and behind, so it's already useless. The maximum effective range of an AR-15 is about 500 meters POINT target. That means that a skilled shooter can hit you in the eye at 300 meters.

Likely outcome =  Gunman gets extra gun, more children killed in crossfire than if they'd just locked down in place. 

- Scenario 3 - Shooter and teacher in classroom.

Ever wanted to kick a teacher's ass? Ever had a teacher than you absolutely hated and you knew that you'd kick his ass in a fight? Imagine if he had a pistol. Any other measures, metal detectors, resource officers, video surveillance, are all made completely moot.

Likely outcome = You've just armed your gunman. You bought him the gun, loaded it, put it in his classroom, and then prodded him (Where's your assignment, Billy?) into grabbing it. Now he's free to go from classroom to classroom grabbing guns like it's team fucking deathmatch.

- Scenario 4 - Shooter(s), teachers, and resource officer.

Cop shoots teacher. Gunman shoots cop. Gunman now has three guns and the cops are confused who he is while they roam hallways full of running students and armed teachers trying to find someone that looks like either of them with a gun. And if you had multiple shooters on top of that?

Likely outcome = Absolute fucking carnage.

The scenarios just get dumber from there.

Arming teachers is a fucking stupid idea. In Iraq, we didn't let people get within 5 meters of us because hand to hand is a toss up... But, sure, a teacher should be fine. All teachers are bigger and stronger than their students, right?

They needed fucking snipers so a child could speak into a microphone in a park in downtown Houston steps away from Ted Cruz's office and across the street from city hall... But throw a school teacher a gun and the whole school is safe?

Nah.

Fuck the NRA.

- Soos

P.S. - If Killer Mike doesn't get his shit together I'm done with Run The Jewels and they're my favorite group. I will not support someone that supports the NRA. Period.

Out.

Are they Nazis yet, America?

Three dead.

Nineteen injured.

This is the damage that white supremacy did to a town to protect white people from minorities. All three dead people are white.

Heather Heyer was run down in the street by an angry young white man that probably felt that her presence, her very existence, was a threat to his own. So he hit her with his car at forty miles per hour for crossing the street.

Pilots Lt. Jay Cullen, 48, of Midlothian, and Berke M.M. Bates, of Quinton, died in a helicopter crash while trying to observe the violence from the air. I'm sure many will argue that they aren't the Alt-Right's fault because they weren't directly killed by Nazis. My argument? You blamed BLM for ANY and ALL violence and ANY and ALL deaths that took place at their protests. This was your protest. By your logic these are your bodies.

I've said, and keep saying, that this violent white genocide rhetoric is, and has been, deadly. I take no pleasure in being right about it. To be honest, I do not feel like I'm saying anything particularly shocking. Violent rhetoric begets violence. Chanting for dead cops is wrong. Chanting Nazi slogans, and throwing Nazi salutes, is wrong. Showing up at protests armed, and intending to fight, is wrong.

The president refusing to denounce them will only embolden them. Be prepared for the Alt-Right to turn the Charlottesville TERRORIST into a folk hero, don't be surprised when the memes start showing up ridiculing the victims, and watch closely as his act inspires copycat acts at other protests. They're fanatics. As dangerous as any other terrorist group and moreso to the U.S for one simple, and obvious, reason - THEY ARE HERE. Not only that, they're now all but state sponsored by the Trump administration. Tools for their soft fascist coup. And why not? That's what Trump's boss does, after all.

I hope that today has cleared some things up for those that were still on the fence.

The Alt-Right are Neo Nazis. Trump is a Fascist. Trump is using Neo Nazis, because they're his base, to attack his opposition. This is just the beginning and it's only going to get worse. What are we waiting for?

Kristallnacht?

Not me, baby.

Put your fucking boots on.

HITLER WAS NOT A SOCIALIST.

An oft repeated right wing lie that must be debunked whenever possible.

Firstly, I'm not a Marxist. I'm not especially a socialist, either, although I do believe that healthcare should be socialized. That's another post entirely, though. One, now that I think of it, I may write later. But I digress...

The Nazis outlawed socialism. They were imprisoning, and killing, socialists and communists before they were killing Jews. 

There were socialists in the Nazi party initially. They were represented mainly by the Strasser brothers and Strasserism. Guess what happened to them? Otto Strasser was expelled from the party in 1930 after a disagreement with Hitler over Hitler's disregard for socialist ideals during which Hitler repeatedly called Strasser a "liberal". He later went into exile in Czechoslovakia. The other brother, Gregor Strasser? Murdered during the Night of the Long Knives. 

Hitler didn't even believe in socialist economic principles nor did he institute them.

“Hitler was never a socialist. But although he upheld private property, individual entrepreneurship, and economic competition, and disapproved of trade unions and workers' interference in the freedom of owners and managers to run their concerns, the state, not the market, would determine the shape of economic development. Capitalism was, therefore, left in place. But in operation it was turned into an adjunct of the state."

            - Hitler 1936 – 45: Nemisis, by Ian Kershaw.

“We have to strip the terms ‘Nationalism’ and ‘Socialism’ of their previous meaning. Only that man is a nationalist who stands by his people, and only that man is a socialist who stands up for the rights of his people both internally and externally.”

            - Adolf Hitler, November 16, 1928.

There are so many articles that have been written on why Hitler was not a socialist that I honestly don't understand how anyone could fall for a lie so blatant.

Here is Reddit featuring many, many people debunking this nonsense. 

Here is a youtube video debunking the claim as made by Steven Crowder, a well known lying piece of shit -

Here is Professor David Klein of California State University, Northridge debunking the same myth.

Here's a Guardian opinion piece about this continually repeated lie. 

Here's a piece written by Albert Einstein on socialism.

Here's the definition of socialism itself for the people that are confused. 

When you search google for Hitler's links to left wing socialism you'll find yourself all but drowned in a murky green soup of right wing propaganda sites that try to distance themselves from this obviously right wing fascist dictator. Infowars, CNS, TheRebel, TheNationalReview, etc. The target of this fallacy is obvious, right wingers that don't check sources.  It's intended goal is equally obvious – Fear mongering.

“Look how the left is the enemy!” They scream. 

Ironically, this is exactly why Hitler sometimes claimed to be a socialist. It was a way to win over the workers with words while he acted in whichever way suited him best.

If he was such a left winger and a socialist then why was he supported by the right and by big business? Big business which, by the way, flourished before, during, and even after the war.

This shit is basic as hell and I feel like I shouldn't even have to write it... but I clearly do... So here it is.

Have a great day.