Donnie Gets Your Guns

By Calvin Hill

It seems strange that the election of a black president in the United States would get the same reaction from the American citizenry as the outbreak of a serious, global pandemic. However, it is rather confusing that the paranoia of a few white supremacists and white nationalists railing about “a coming race war” after the election of Barack Obama sent Americans racing to their gun dealers, en masse, and that the outbreak of COVID-19 would enable the same response. It has to make you wonder what people are so afraid of, considering their lives are more at risk in the past three years, under Donald Trump, than they ever were under the eight years of President Obama – regardless of how much of The Donald’s damage he tries to place on Obama. If you live in Mississippi, or any other state where the minimum wage is the federal minimum of $7.25/hour, and you still have not been rudely awakened to your plight, it can get worse. More than likely, it will get worse.  For decades, Mississippi has been the poorest state in the union and is consistently at or near the worst states when using the metrics that determine quality of life. Yet Mississippi voters continue to send Republicans to the capitol in Jackson, and to Washington DC. They can stop! For all of you Mississippi voters working one, two, or three low skilled, or non-skilled jobs at $7.25/hour, you can stop believing the Republican lie that raising the minimum wage will cost your jobs. Since the Republicans continued to block Democratic efforts to raise the federal minimum wage during the Obama administration, almost 2 dozen states have effectively begun to increment rises in their minimum wage and the unemployment rate in the country has gone down – and continued to stay down. Until now. And the upcoming explosion in the unemployment rate has nothing to do with the minimum wage. What does not stay down is the cost of living in the global technological age. In the age of terrorism, mass shootings and hate crimes in heretofore unspeakable venues, the need to coordinate the movements and safety of family members requires the need for them to have cell phones – an expense most families deemed unnecessary just 20 years ago. But even for the poorest of families, September 11, 2001 has made cell phones an expense no household feels safe without. The financial burden of having cell phones can be emotionally draining for the working poor when it comes time to pay the bill(s). However, when the news blares about your town or city’s latest school shooting, mall, church, movie or concert shooting, or, an as yet unexplained explosion, devastating natural disaster, or deadly highway pileup along the route of your loved one, your cell phone becomes the most important possession in your life. And if you have ever personally experienced the angst involved with these occurrences, or the fear they engender, you may have to decide between selling your gun, and keeping your phone. If you live in Mississippi, or any other state where the minimum wage remains $7.25/hour, and where your state declined Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, and your House and Senate representatives are content to allow insurance and drug companies to run roughshod over your inability to afford either, eventually you are going to sell your guns to get some healthcare. The Trump administration is preparing to slash Medicaid and Medicare funding and cut Social Security benefits. If you or your children become ill or require medication and monitoring regularly, or you are a senior who counts on regular medications to sustain your quality of life, you may need more money than you currently earn and may be faced with restoring your health, your child’s health, or selling your guns. As climate change, and the Trump administration’s denial and lack of response to it makes food pricing and delivery precarious, if your last raise to $7.25/hour in 2009 is what you still earn, a healthy diet may become beyond your grasp. Add to that, Donald Trump’s budget cuts food stamps and school food programs. With the prospect of your children not getting that meal at school, your food budget will take a hit you did not count on. Faced with watching your child starve or selling your guns, what choice do you have? Drastic cuts are also in store for low cost housing, and housing subsidies. If your choice becomes keeping your guns or keeping a roof over your family, you will sell your guns. There is nothing about the policies of the Trump administration, or your Republican legislator’s support for him that will lift Mississippi from being the poorest state in the United States. However, they repeatedly tell you that the Democrats will repeal the 2nd Amendment, a constitutional impossibility, and that raising the minimum wage will cost jobs, a proven lie. How could voting for Democrats for the House, Senate, statehouse and White House for one presidential cycle possibly make your prospects any worse than they have been over the last half-century? I have a brief, but memorable history of Mississippi having spent nine months in Air Force tech school at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi. Seeing confederate flags and decals each time I stepped off base was a normal view of the Gulf’s scenery. For a black teenager from the Lower East Side of New York, that was not at all as disturbing as having to leave a bar that my white classmates frequented because their money was suddenly not a motivating factor if they had to serve me – something they were not willing to do. I still recall the Saturday, April 6, 1968 when John, (his real name), stopped by my room for a long chat. As it turned out, the brass had instructed the white Airmen to avoid the black Airmen after Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated two days earlier. It then dawned on me why the white guys had been altering their path instead of passing black guys on the same walkway. I always appreciated that JB from Pennsylvania knew me well enough to want to talk with me about how the unofficial edict bothered him. More than 50 years later, it seems that climate change is doing things along the Gulf in Mississippi, and its neighboring states, that were unimaginable in 1968. What remains is the old Dixiecrat fear mongering that has transitioned from Democrats to Republicans over the years, thanks to LBJ’s support for the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. What also remain are the poverty and the fear to try something different at the voting booth when there’s not much left to lose – except maybe your guns out of desperation. And the global pandemic, along with the deficits that we incur to save us, might bring about many of these possibilities much sooner than anyone ever expected. ReplyForward