Ian Millhiser’s Observation — about Georgia’s Eagerness to Arm Criminals — Is a Good Metaphor for America's Accelerating Slide into Sheer Lunacy

© 2014 Peter Free

 

26 August 2014

 

 

Do you ever get the feeling that the United States’ days in the sun might be over — because we let too many idiots take charge?

 

Read this about the state of Georgia giving a convicted rapist back his right to carry a firearm — not to mention displaying similar governmental leniency with 358 other violent felons:

 

 

[Then police officer Dennis] Krauss was convicted of sexual assault against a person in custody, and this one instance of sexual assault is far from the only allegation against him.

 

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “[h]is record was filled with allegations of misconduct: that he beat a prisoner so severely the man’s brain bled; that he threatened to fabricate charges against a suspect so he could sleep with the man’s wife; that he pressured at least 10 women for sex to avoid arrest.”

 

And yet, in July of 2013, the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles restored Krauss’ right to carry a firearm.

 

According to a Journal-Constitution tally, he is one of 358 violent felons who regained these rights over a six year period.

 

That includes 32 violent felons who killed someone, and 44 who committed sex crimes.

 

One man regained his right to own a gun in 2012 after serving a 10 year sentence for child molestation and aggravated child molestation.

 

Some offenders regained their gun rights after being convicted of crimes such as armed robbery, burglary or aggravated assault.

 

The pardon board’s decisions to restore gun rights to these offenders is consistent with a broader culture of permissiveness regarding firearms that pervades Georgia’s government.

 

© 2014 Ian Millhiser, Georgia Restores Gun Rights To Ex-Cop Who Tried To Sexually Assault A Woman With His Gun, Think Progress (25 August 2014) (extracts)

 

 

The moral? — In effect, the United States actively rewards people who display viciously bad intent

 

Look (for example) at the motives of most of the people we elect to government.

 

Consider, too, how we fail to hold influential people accountable for egregious errors that have cost other people their lives and belongings.

 

Ours is a society that has lost a sense of social purpose.

 

Most of what goes on these days seems to be the near random motion of scintillating narcissists and vicious dumbheads. Yet, in light of all this evidence, we continue to wonder aloud why Islamic fundamentalism has such a strong grip on the minds of our adversaries.

 

In truth, the false democracy that the United States increasingly models for the world is not an especially respect-worthy one.

 

As I write this from Germany — and our F-16s roar overhead in a demonstration of imperial power — I cannot but reflect that the Germans do have a strong sense of inescapably displayed social purpose. Although I am uncomfortable with German inflexibility and frequently displayed condescension toward outsiders, I have to admit that Germany is doing a much better job than we are at assessing shared social values and implementing those in an arguably constructive fashion.

 

This acknowledgement of our shortcomings (relative to who and what we once were) is an odd place for an American of my immediately post World War II age to be in — no longer so visibly at the forefront, carrying Liberty’s eagle of hope.

 

It is one thing to tolerate and manage nasty idiots. It is another to give them the power to wreck us and the 1776 Dream of a better society that we presumably embody.