Children at Play

In 2008 I wrote, probably rather sexily, this:

But one thing that still sticks in my craw is being reminded of Bush as a dress-up cowboy wannabe pretender. What did we expect, after all – this a guy that dresses up to play cheerleader, dresses up to play pretend oil man and dresses up to play cowboy on his “ranch.” His tea party dress-up Lorenzo Charles moment being, of course, putting on his flight suit costume for “Mission Accomplished.” I’m surprised nobody’s walked in on him in the Oval Office in full KISS makeup wailing air guitar to “Detroit Rock City.”

Te right's fascination with being movie tough guys with guns may be sort of the same thing, a dress-up fantasy:

While Trump and Carson may have personalities that are polar opposites in terms of temperament, they do have a couple of important things in common (besides crackpot politics).  They are both outrageously arrogant and they both see themselves as Hollywood-style heroes. This notion they are personally so tough that if anyone threatened them with a gun, they’d either out-draw them or inspire everyone to run straight into a hail of bullets, is ludicrous. Neither of these men are trained military veterans or have any professional experience with firearms — except in their own Walter Mitty fantasies. These comments are embarrassing for both of them... They see themselves as heroes like Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson protecting themselves and society at large from violent predators. In fact, Dirty Harry and Bronson’s vigilante were criminals.

On an aside, this is right on too:

Ben Carson, the Republican presidential candidate, said on Tuesday that victims of mass shootings should not be timid during attacks, imagining that if he were facing a raging gunman, “I would not just stand there and let him shoot me.”

The remarks on Fox News came a week after a gunman entered a community college classroom in Oregon and opened fire on students after asking them about their religion. Mr. Carson said that he would defend his faith at any cost and that if he had been in that classroom he would not have cooperated.

“I would say: ‘Hey, guys, everybody attack him! He may shoot me, but he can’t get us all,’” Mr. Carson, a conservative who has been rising in recent polls, said.

That’s very impressive. I’m sure Carson had a lot to teach the victims about how they should have behaved more bravely in the face of an armed madman bent on killing them.   One of them, a veteran who tried to keep the shooter out of the room, did live, so perhaps Carson can tell him all about what he did wrong when he’s out of the hospital.  As for defending his faith at any cost and committing suicide rather than cooperate, well let’s just say that makes him someone who has more in common with Islamic fundamentalists than he might be comfortable with.

Fucking idiot.