The NRA is imploding. We have fancy clothes to thank for that
The NRA is imploding. We have fancy clothes to thank for that.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/who-knew-the-nra-was-so-beverly-hills/2019/05/15/9b5ed54e-774d-11e9-bd25-c989555e7766_story.html?utm_term=.c5ae263dcd34&wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1
It’s a long-standing joke among journalists that the go-to political headline in a pinch is: “Democrats in disarray.” Somewhere, somehow, it’s probably true.
So it’s a change of pace that a slew of reports in recent weeks amply justify the headline “NRA in disarray.” Accounts about the organization’s financial crisis and internal dysfunction confirm what many of us have always suspected: The National Rifle Association is a racket that stokes fear, aggravates our country’s divisions and blocks reasoned debate about gun violence to feather the nests of the conservative elite. A self-dealing class exploits the anxieties of Americans far removed from power and turns the Second Amendment into a money machine. No wonder President Trump loves the NRA so much.
The most revelatory detail in the latest of these stories, a helpfully extensive investigation this week by Danny Hakim in the New York Times, concerns the fashion habits of Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s longtime chief executive. Hakim reports that LaPierre billed the organization that claims to speak for the heartland $275,000 “for purchases at the Zegna luxury men’s wear boutique in Beverly Hills.”
Beverly Hills?
Unlike LaPierre, I’m just an unsophisticated real American because I have never even heard of the Zegna luxury menswear boutique. Must be nice to have your lifestyle financed by the people you spend your time scaring to death. The biggest falsehood: shameful claims that high school students and grieving parents who plead for more effective gun laws pose a dire threat to the way of life of our country’s small towns and rural areas.
Yes, it will be delightful in the coming months to watch this pack of hypocritical demagogues gag on their counterfeit anti-elitist rhetoric as their organization faces fiscal and reputational embarrassment. It will also be useful to learn more about why they seemed so eager to seek the favor of Russia and Vladimir Putin, how they funneled income to favored insiders, and why so many conservative politicians and activists have prostrated themselves before this golden calf erected to hallow high-capacity weapons.
<<snip>>
And then there is the U.S. Senate, one of the most unrepresentative bodies in any democratic nation. Fact: The two Dakotas (population 1.6 million) have equal representation with New York and California (population 59.1 million). The House easily passed two bills in February strengthening background checks for gun purchasers, but they face a blockade in a GOP-led Senate where rural states have outsize power.
= new reply since forum marked as read
