REPUBLISCUM - HOW LOW CAN YOU GO EDITION

 

Just when I think that the Republiscum Party can't sink any lower they appall by sinking so low we're wondering if their politics rather than nuclear core meltdowns is the true "China Syndrome". 

After each appalling descent into deeper and deeper fascism hopeful newscasters opine that the Republiscum in Congress have reached a line of madness that they will not cross. The hope is that reason and decency will prevail over fascist ideology and power madness leading many Republiscum to decide that they will go no further down the anti-democratic road of insanity and blind ambition. Barely are the words out of the mouths of some otherwise sane and decent commentors than the Republiscum en masse demonstrate that there is no depth to which they will not descend.

The latest proof of Republiscum commitment to a fascist take-over of the United States is the farrago that an impeachment trial of The Orange Führer is unconstitutional. Twice now a majority of the Republiscum Senators has gone on record claiming that The Orange Führer's treason can't result in a trial for that treason. They claim this despite the fact that President Grant's Secretary of War, William Belknap, was impeached and tried by the Senate in 1876 after he had resigned his office. To be honest, Belknap's case is not a total refutation of the unconstitutionality argument because some Republiscum of the day disputed the constitutionality of the impeachment and trial at the time even after the Senate voted that Belknap could be tried and that his impeachment and trial did not violate the Constitution. Ultimately Belknap was acquitted because the Senate failed to meet the required two-thirds majority for conviction. Of the sixty-six Senators conviction required forty-four votes. Only thirty-seven, a majority but not two-thirds voted to convict him for bribery and corruption, a less than ringing endorsement of Mr. Belknap.

A group of Republiscum forty-five strong (since shrunk by just 1 to 44) voted that an office holder no longer in that office cannot be tried by the Senate for high crimes and misdemeanors simply because those crimes and misdemeanors committed while in office aren't being committed any longer. By that reasoning, Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who murdered 9 people at the Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina should never have been convicted and imprisoned because he's stopped killing people after those 9.

 I suppose it would be rude to note that these same Republiscum who feel that The Orange Führer must evade all responsibility are members of the party of "personal responsibility". That means that people who have neither boots nor the money to buy boots should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps while a criminal president who tried to end American democracy shouldn't be held responsible for his actions in inciting a riot. That's pretty much the same as deciding that $1,400 more to individuals in fear of losing their homes and not being able to feed their children are ballooning the deficit while tossing a few superfluous millions to millionaires so that they can redecorate the ski lodge in Aspen is an investment in growing the economy.

Of course, some of these Republiscum are the same scum who acquitted the traitorous Orange Führer of obvious treason in 2020 and supported a challenge to the accurate and correct votes of the Electoral College, encouraged The Orange Führer's attempted coup on January 6th and who supported Supreme Court nominees who just decided that, "Meh! Emoluments, smoluments! So what if it's a crime specifically designated in our Constitution. Just fogeddabout it!"

I have long said that the only good Republiscum is a dead Republiscum. I mean no personal or physical harm to the current Republiscum. What I did mean is that there were plenty of good Republicans in the past - Abraham Lincoln, Robert M. LaFollette, Margaret Chase Smith, Millicent Fenwick, Elliott Richardson and William Ruckleshaus are names that immediately spring to mind. Of course, I was wrong. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and several other office holders turn out to have moral compasses that can't be bought or threatened out of existence. Still we have examples aplenty at the national level of Senators and Congresspersons who are unworthy of their offices and the public trust. Specifically the 7 who supported the invasion of the Capitol and the attempt to undermine certification of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris' win by the Electoral College.

For example, there's Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri the first senator to endorse throwing out the certified votes of the Electoral College who saluted the insurrectionist thugs on January 6th and supported the lie that there were election irregularities that should overturn the vote of the people to give The Orange Führer at least another 4 years in the White House and possibly make him and his vile kin America's hereditary monarchy. 

There's also Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas (where else!, except Alabama or Mississippi). Ted is such a vile waste of oxygen that most of his Republiscum colleagues hate him. Imagine that! A pretense of a human being so awful that even the scum of the earth think he's scum! As if that weren't enough, some of the seditionists who assaulted the Capitol on January 6th were rifling through senators' desks and planning to bring their finds to Ted Cruz.

Florida has placed 2 neo-fascist prizes in the Senate. There's Rick Scott who looks and acts like one of the invasive, tropical snakes infesting the Everglades. The difference between Rick Scott and one of those invasive snakes is that the snakes have some principles.

His bookend is Marco Rubio who doesn't know his position on anything until a lobbyist writes it on his hand as a reminder. I include Rubio here though he did not vote against certifying the Electoral College vote. He has since sought to justify the insurrection and absolve The Orange Führer claiming that impeaching a man who tried to end American democracy is "stupid". 

From Alabama we have Tommy Tuberville whose only qualifications for public office are being football coach, a right wing loonie who's played too many football games without a helmet and a football coach. Sen. Tuberville, to be fair, has a disability: bad weather affects his ability to read. Did I mention that he's a football coach? (nota bene: I despise footfall, not Colin Kaepernick and the many players who knelt during the national anthem to show their ire and disappointment at the way African-Americans are treated, just the game itself) 

From Mississippi we have Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, a racist Ms. Hyde without a single iota of mitigating Dr. Jeckyll. 

What's the matter with Kansas? Well one festering, suppuration is Sen. Roger Marshall who still supports the lies and conspiracy idiocy that continue to infect our nation.

From Wisconsin we have Sen. Ron Johnson  who became the 2nd neo-fascist senator to sign on to overthrowing American democracy. Sen. Johnson has also gone on record claiming that Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom the insurrectionists on January 6th were trying to find and hang, was responsible for the attempted putsch by supporters of The Orange Führer.

Beside these traitorous senators 139 members of the U. S. House of Representatives supported overturning the will of the people to keep The Orange Führer in power. Of those, the majority came from the states of the old Confederacy. That is not at all surprising since those are the most racist states where CHRISTIAN evangelicalism is the strongest and, hence, ignorance is most prevalent. Other significant numbers of traitors came from the old border states of Kentucky, Missouri and Kansas, the deep Bible belt state of Oklahoma and the neo-Nazi dominated state of Idaho. We also must not forget Indiana, the home state of Mike Pence and the only midwestern state to have surpassed most southern states in Ku Klux Klan membership. Then there is also Pennsylvania which was the scene of the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. President George Washington personally led troops in putting down that insurrection. More recently James Carville's accurately assessed the state as "Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and Alabama in between." I have some familiarity with Pennsylvania and consider Carville's characterization more apt than not.

I am being somewhat unfair in painting whole states with the neo-fascist tar brush but only somewhat. We have some scum who truly stand out as lower than a rattlesnake's belly and many times as poisonous to our democracy. The stand outs at the moment some of whom I need to list because they are so richly deserving of our disdain.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, (R-Ga-14) Ms. Greene is the QAnonsense nutcase who thinks that pretending that the mass shootings in Newtown, Connecticut and Parkland, Florida either didn't happen or were the work of pro-gun control advocates trying to make the NRA look bad. Of course, like most lunatics, Taylor Greene doesn't understand that the NRA does a perfectly adequate job of making itself look bad without any help from outside. Ms. Taylor Greene, thanks to her entirely imaginary knowledge of physics, believes that space lasers rather than climate change are responsible for wildfires in California and is a vocal proponent of killing many of her House colleagues as well as a supporter of the traitors who invaded the Capitol on January 6th. She may be the most perfect representation of the Republiscum Party on the national scene.

Lauren Boebert, (R-Co-3) Rep. Boebert's initial act on becoming a Congressperson was to publish a video of her touring Washington, D. C. illegally carrying a pistol. Of course, once it was noted that her lunatic expression of a 2nd Amendment "right" she didn't have was to say that she actually didn't carry the firearm she was shown carrying in her video. I'm sure that she's a great proponent of "personal responsibility"...for others.

Madison Cawthorn, (R-NC-11) Mr. Cawthorn is paralyzed from the waist down and gets about in a wheelchair. He has claimed that big, macho Madison would have been fine during the Capitol putsch on January 6th because he was armed on the floor of the House, a place where firearms are prohibited thanks to several nasty incidents in the 19th Century. Mr. Cawthorn lately has taken great umbrage at having to pass through metal detectors before entering the floor of the House that were placed at the entrance specifically to keep lunatics like Mr. Cawthorn, Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene from shooting some fellow Congressperson that they dislike. Mr. Cawthorn also likes to pad his resume by claiming that he's trained for the Special Olympics when he's done no such thing.

Matt Gaetz, (R-Fl-1) has publicly asserted that he is so totally committed to The Orange Führer that he could be mistaken for a pimple on The Orange Führer's ample ass. Don't we elect representatives to represent the people of their district, not suck up to one, failed dictator?

Mo Brooks, (R-Al-5) I think that the only thing we need to say about Rep. Brooks is to note that fellow neo-fascist, Ali Alexander, has claimed that Brooks, along with Paul Gosar (see below)  and Andy Biggs (see also below) helped organize the attempted putsch on January 6, 2021

Paul Gosar, (R-Az-4) Mr. Gosar was the first to object to certifying the votes of the Electoral College but even more than that his 6 siblings recorded advertisements during his election campaign urging voters to reject Mr. Gosar because he is such a vile human being. If your brothers and sister consider you unfit for public office maybe you really are unfit for public office. Mr. Gosar's behavior since the election has only underlined how correct his siblings were.

Devin Nunes, (R-Ca-22) Mr. Nunes' claim to fame is his investigation of the non-scandal at Benghazi, Libya. Mr. Nunes kept his "investigation" going long enough to help insure Hillary Clinton's electoral loss in 2016, then forgot all about it. Of course legitimate investigations had already found that Secretary Clinton could not have saved the American killed in Benghazi, but facts have never interfered with Mr. Nunes' sucking up to The Orange Führer. Oh! I almost forgot, Rep. Nunes, after a confidential briefing hopped out of a moving car to bring confidential information to The Orange Führer in the White House.

Kevin McCarthy, (R-Ca-23) Mr. McCarthy is the House minority leader. As such he has authority over the committee assignments of his fellow members. If there were no other reason to find Mr. McCarthy a walking, talking obscenity he assigned Marjorie Taylor Greene to the House Education and Labor Committee despite the fact that she has claimed that the mass murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut and Marjory Stonemen Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida were perpetrated not by the actual perpetrators but by some mythical group that is simply trying to make the NRA look bad. She has also stalked and harassed David Hogg, a student who survived the shooting and became a gun control advocate.

Steve Scalise, (R-La-1) Mr. Scalise survived serious injury from a Leftist shooter in June, 2017. Let me state clearly that I oppose the death penalty in legal proceedings and even more strongly oppose anyone shooting people with whose politics he disagrees. Removal from office, banning from office for the rest of the person's life and imprisonment for crimes are the remedies I prefer. That said, Rep. Scalise hasn't done anything to make me feel that he's simply a Republican rather than Republiscum. He supported The Orange Führer's claims of election fraud and the attempted decertification of the Electoral College ballots. Scum is still scum.

Jim Jordan, (R-Oh-4) Mr. Jordan was an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University from 1987 to 1995 during which time Dr. Richard Strauss, the team and student body doctor, serially sexually abused many of the 177 students whom he treated  during those years. The University was aware of Dr. Strauss' abuse and allowed it to continue. Despite credible testimony by several of the abused students that Mr. Jordan was also aware of the abuse and did nothing to stop it, Mr. Jordan claimed that he knew nothing of the abuse. Then Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, squelched an investigation of Rep. Jordan by the House Ethics Committee on the grounds that (this may sound a little familiar) that the criminal behavior happened before he was elected to the U. S. House. So Republiscum believe that criminal behavior (suborning sexual abuse of young men) before being elected to public office and criminal behavior while in office (suborning insurrection against the Federal government and attempting to overthrow American democracy) once one has left public office simply can't be investigated and punished. (poor, "innocent" Dylann Roof!)

Louie Gohmert, (R-Tx-1) Ah! What a piece of work is Rep. Gohmert! There has never been an idiot accusation or conspiracy that Louie Gohmert doesn't accept, hug to his bosom and spout like a backed up sewer. Rep. Gohmert signed onto the Texas v. Pennsylvania law suit that the Supreme Court dismissed once even The Orange Führer's appointees found it inappropriate. Not satisfied, Loopy Louie filed a suit against Mike Pence which was dismissed even faster as just plain stupid.

Andy Biggs (R-Az-5) Rep. Biggs has so much in common with his fellow Arizonan, Paul Gosar. They both tried to overthrow the 2020 election results. They both challenged the Electoral College ballots and, after January 6th, his brother's William and Daniel called for his removal from office. He has also claimed that the attempted putsch on January 6th, which he helped to encourage, was the work of "antifa". There's that "personal responsibility" again!

The Senate Republiscum are currently on track to acquit The Orange Führer in this his second impeachment trial. Please don't mistake their flag lapel pins for patriotism. The senators who vote against convicting The Orange Führer are voting against American democracy, against our Constitution, against their oaths of office and against reason and decency. Acquitting The Orange Führer gives an imprimatur to his attempt to overthrow our government that, we can be sure, another Republiscum candidate for president will use in another putsch attempt which may be successful and result in the end of democratic and Constitutional government in the United States. If 67 senators do not vote to convict The Orange Führer democracy in America will die after 233 years. I wish I could say that the Republiscum cannot sink that low.

THE HIGHEST STAKES EVER

Yes, we have reason to believe that Vladimir Putin's Russia manipulated the American election in 2016 to get Donald Trump into the White House. Yes, we have reason to believe that Donald J. Trump is an agent of the Russian government. However, Robert Mueller and other U. S. Attorneys are investigating those allegations and will have more definitive information for us in the near future. What is far more dangerous both for the long and short term survival of American Democracy is the current government shut-down. Please let me explain.

In the closing days of the 114th Congress in December, 2018 the U. S. Senate passed a funding bill that would have kept all Departments of the U. S. Government operating. The bill did not contain funding for a wall along the border with Mexico though it did significantly increase funding for security along the southern border. At that point the bill was going to receive a positive vote in the U. S. House of Representatives and Donald Trump was set to sign the bill.

However, at that very point the American Volkishe Biobachter, Fox News, and the most strident of the neo-Fascists including Rash Lamebrain and the odious Ann Coulter latched onto the absence of wall funding. They made an issue of it by insinuating that Trump was impotent if he didn't insist on his wall. With his fragile virility on the line Trump stated that he couldn't sign the bill in its current form and the spineless Speaker Paul Ryan never brought the funding bill up for a floor vote.

We are now in the fourth week of a shut-down of most government services with even essential services suffering all because of a border wall that no one believes will be effective in reducing the number of immigrants coming to the United States, reducing drug trafficking across that border or any of the other wholly fictional or largely counterfactual horrors Trump claims a wall will counter.

The argument is simply over whether a U. S. President must always get his way or not regardless of the effectiveness of the thing the President wants. The corollary to that is that the legislative branch of government must always yield to the whims of the executive.

If Congressional Leaders accede to Trumps bullying demands we have destroyed our democracy. We have a three branch government established by a Constitution to balance and check the excesses of each branch. The executive branch executes the laws passed by the legislative branch and spends the money that the legislative branch appropriates for government activities. The judicial branch interprets the laws in the light of our Constitution as amended and determines whether those laws comport with one another and our stated intentions. No president can deign the building of an outhouse let alone a wall lest it be authorized and funded by the Congress.

Over the last six decades in the shadow of thermonuclear destruction we have ceded many powers to presidents to act in the event of an emergency that renders the normal operations of government impossible. The powers ceded by Congress chiefly have to do with war and the conduct of war. The irrefutable fact is that we are not at war with Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador or any other Central or South American country. Should Congress cave to the whims of Donald Trump in this case it will set a precedent that cedes all power to an imperial president. Our democracy will effectively be over because there will be no checks on executive power any longer.

The Republiscum Party has relentlessly emerged like some vile, misshapen, eldritch deformity from the Republican Party of old to become America's neo-Fascist Party. They believe in nothing other than plutocrats and autocratic strong men or the straw men for autocratic strong men. If we are to remain a true Constitutional democracy we must never give an inch to this insane border wall and the unnecessary and pointless government shut-down that Donald J. Trump's frail ego has visited upon us. No less than our nation is at stake and that even before we deal with Russian intervention in our elections.

THE MOST SPECIAL OF SPECIAL SNOWFLAKES

Dr. Samuel Johnson (1755) :

Patriotism, n. The last refuge of a scoundrel.

-Dictionary of the English Language

Ambrose Bierce (1911):

Patriotism, n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.

In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last refuge of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.

 -The Devil's Dictionary

Let us now praise famous snowflakes...well, actually just one extra, most special and one and only notable special snowflake. Let us praise him "Bigly".

The American neo-Fascist right wing through its wholly owned mouth organ, Fox News, has peddled the idea that Liberals (in Fox's definition anyone a millimeter or more to the left of Mussolini or Francisco Franco) are "special snowflakes" (i.e. unique and delicate, easily destroyed by a breath of warm air) when violence, racism, bullying or unreasoning attacks evoke a counter-response in the individual or a group.

Now I give you the star in his own mind, Mr. Donald J. Trump who styles himself President of the United States of America and wraps himself around any nearby flag. This Orange Snowflake seems to invoke patriotism with every other breath while avoiding any patriotic actions himself. President Bone Spurs wants the U. S. Military to parade through Washington, D. C. for him solely because he thinks he personally deserves a military parade. What has he done to deserve such a parade? Well, let's see...he's allowed military personnel to keep their pay increase while withholding all pay increases for civilian government employees. He's appointed military personnel to several cabinet positions and so far only one of them had been forced to resign for criminal acts. He also says nice things about the military at every rally he conducts. Oh! I almost forgot; he saw a military parade on Bastille Day, 2017 while visiting Paris and thought that he should have one too.

Vladimir Putin's favorite American asset regularly rails against news outlets - other than Fox, of course - as "the enemy of the people". The Great Patriotic President has a problem with the idea of a free press. Under his view of democracy any organization that opposes him and/or publishes criticism of him is "the enemy of the people". Truth itself is "the enemy of the people" if it isn't the fictional "truth" that he and his Ministry of Truth cobbles up to aggrandize the Republiscum's Fearless Leader. Yet there's a glitch that Mr. Putin's asset forgets(?), ignores(?), edits out(?) of the First Amendment to our Constitution to wit: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Those six injunctions were so important to our founders that they became the first items specified for protection in our Constitution. Nestled in there is freedom of the press. Therefore, The Great Patriotic President is railing against one of the foremost protections for our rights. Not especially patriotic and definitely the act of a scoundrel I think. 

Yet we should ask why he feels that the press is "the enemy of the people"? In every case that raises Mr. Putin's asset's ire, the material to which he objects is criticism of himself personally or of the government and/or political party he heads. The press is not "the enemy of the people". Rather to him it is an enemy of The Great Patriotic President himself. The press isn't criticizing Americans generally or any specific group except by implication those foolish enough to vote for and continuing to support The Great Patriotic President. They are criticizing The Great Patriotic President and his acts either direct or indirect through his government and party. I reject the idea that the press is the enemy of anyone. The press is, if anything, the enemy of lies, corruption, despotism and injury to the people. That is exactly why the first Congress decided to protect the press in that First Amendment. What The Great Patriotic President purposefully confuses is criticism of himself and attacks on the American people. 

Between 1933 and 1945 no German pledged support to the German state. The salute was not "Heil Deutschland!" The salute was "Heil Hitler!". Our democracy from the outset was one of laws and not of individuals. We had just, after all, fought an eight year war against a government of individuals, in that case a king. We are a representative government meaning that we elect people from among the ranks of the people to represent our interests in the government. Our Constitution begins with the words, "We, the People...." Notably it does not begin I, George Washington... or James Madison... or Alexander Hamilton... or Benjamin Franklin.... The Constitution does not begin with the name of any individual person because government of, by and for an individual person was one of the primary ideas we were against when trying to bring into the world a nation new to a world rife with kings, emperors and other dictatorial individuals. Herr Drumpf seems unaware that he is not the nation. If there are anythings antithetical to a government "of the people, by the people and for the people" they are an autocrat (one who governs for himself alone) or an aristocrat (one whose social rank makes him superior to all others). Those terms, derived from the French, are the diametrical opposite of a democrat. I would suggest that The Great Patriotic President has raised himself to the aristocratic status of the most special of special snowflakes.

In the few days preceding this writing this Orange Snowflake has suggested that a book criticizing his government and an op-ed piece in the New York Times are acts of "Treason?". The only way in which those publications could be "Treason?" is if President Putin's Puppet is the government and the nation. So far we have managed to retain the concept that the only treason we recognize is betrayal of our Constitution and laws. The Great Patriotic President now claims that he must know who penned the anonymous op-ed piece as a matter of national security. I have many reservations about that anonymous author but the only security endangered by the op-ed piece is the security of the Orange Snowflake himself. The only threat to the nation is The Great Patriotic President himself.

In a campaign rally in Montana The Great Patriotic President opined that the op-ed piece was a cowardly act. I would tend to agree with the charge of cowardice. At times I have said and written things that I would rather not have done on further reflection but regardless of my second thoughts I have always owned up to my mistakes as well as my successes. I think that the anonymous writer should own up to his article. Be that as it may, the Orange Snowflake pronounced that the article was "very unfair". Unfair? To whom? Unfair to poor widdle Donnie, The Great Patriotic President? The Orange Snowflake that cannot endure the faintest breath of criticism? Poor widdle Donnie! How sad he must be to be triggered by such a mean, vile blizzard of truth. 

I long for the day when he is no longer protected by the craven Republiscum in Congress, when the faintest breath of truth will dissolve this Orange Snowflake and send him to the oblivion of a prison that he has so richly deserved. Until that day I would amend a venerable warning and urge my fellow countrymen, "Don't eat the yellow or the Orange snow!"

LITTLE BOYS AND THEIR HEROIC FANTASIES

[Note: This is an effort to both replace a lost post and bring that up to date with new information. I hope that it pleases you, my reader.]

Following the October 1, 2017 Las Vegas Mass Shooting (note that we have to have multiple modifiers just to focus on the particular mass shooting given the number of mass shootings before and since) Trump buddy and Michael Cohen client, Fox News' Sean Hannity opined that he had firearms permits in a number of states and had instruction in firearms safety then from those facts went on to the illogical next step saying of the Las Vegas shooter, "This guy had a machine gun. How they gonna take him on without a weapon? Or if it's happening within a crowd...if they were in San Bernardino, do you want Sean Hannity who's trained in the safety and use of a firearm in that room so when they drop the clip and they start to reload you've got a shot; you've got a chance?"

In a similar vein the similarly brave, tactical protector of Americans, Mr. Donald J. Trump opined following the February 14, 2018 shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, "You don't know until you test it but I really believe I'd run in there even if I didn't have a weapon."

I think that both Sean Hannity and Donald Trump have unintentionally revealed the origins of the myth of "a good guy with a gun" being the antidote to a bad guy with a gun. These little boys are still playing cops and robbers or cowboys and indians. In their fantasy lives they are heroes who will risk their lives to save others in danger, something that's very easy to say when you're unlikely to be in a position to act as they claim especially for someone surrounded by a multi-man detail of Secret Service Agents.

We all have fantasies of heroism. When I was a boy in the late 1950s I could be Bat Masterson facing down invisible bad guys with only my cap-firing cane. The fact is, however, that I outgrew those fantasies and reached a hard won adulthood in which I was, for a time, a gun owner. Yet even while I was a gun owner I never thought that I would be that mythical "good guy with a gun". I knew I would be afraid but, at best, I felt that I could face down an invader in my home. Even that I feared wouldn't be possible unless circumstances were exceptionally favorable.

The fact is that Sean Hannity with a gun would be standing well behind police lines with his television crew and Donald J. Trump would be hustled off by his various security details to safety in an active shooter situation exactly as happened at one of his rallies when someone called out a gun in the audience. They both know it but they both haven't grown sufficiently to adulthood to admit it.

Let's think about this a little bit. These armchair heroes locked in pre-adolescence whether it's Hannity, Trump or the little boys who open carry if they were really so heroic could apply to their local police force. They then would be certified and vetted officers employed to be the first line of heroes in dangerous situations. Why might these little boys (and there's an occasional girl too) not be part of their police forces?

1.  The police forces aren't hiring. Certainly possible. Still, in most urban areas some police force may well have programs for training and vetting potential officers. I wonder how many of these little boys and girls have even applied? Of those who have applied how many are like "Good guy with a gun" Robert Charles Bates currently serving time for the murder of Eric Harris in Tulsa, Oklahoma?
2. The little boys and girls have "better things to do". Certainly if you're a highly paid television and radio talking blockhead or a real estate developer running the United States on behalf of whoever is paying him handsomely the pay cut for being a police officer might be unattractive. Yet isn't there a certain "put up or shut up"situation here? If you want to open carry isn'r being a police officer the ultimate realization of your position? If joining the police force is the best expression of your "right to keep and bear arms" isn't the claim that you have better things to do or another career simply an excuse for not committing to what you claim to be committed to?
3.  The little boys and girls can't pass the police physical. O.k. So does that mean that this self-styled protector of his or her community instead of running toward danger may be jogging or limping toward danger and being out of breath and energy when he or she gets there? How useful is it if our self-styled hero confronts an active shooter and has to say, "Hold on a minute, man, while I catch my breath." Somehow I think that may not be the optimal protection those little boys and girls claim they would be.
4. The little boys and girls can't qualify psychologically for the police force. Hmmmm! So the "good guy with a gun" is going to be someone psychologically unfit for police service yet this is the person on whom we're going to rely to protect the community? Pardon me for asking but what separates someone who is psychologically unfit for the police force from the mentally deranged person shooting up a school or a night club, a movie theatre or a Christmas party? How many correctly firing brain cells separate the "good guy with a gun" from the "bad guy with a gun"? How eager are we to test for those brain cells in real world situations? I'm personally not very eager at all and I have been a gun owner so maybe that's a test to which we'd best not administer without close supervision and control.
5. What community are the little boys and little girls protecting? We have the tragic example of Philando Castile that a black "good guy with a gun" even who does everything correctly is likely to be seen as a "bad guy with a gun". I'm not even going to go into Trayvon Martin or Tamir Rice. Therefore, we can reasonably say that the "good guy with a gun" doesn't have black or brown skin. If the "good guy with a gun" is exclusively Caucasian are we not simply looking at one more expression of the racism pervasive in our society?

The little boys and little girls who insist on acting out their heroic fantasies are actually more likely to be a danger to their communities than they are to be the heroes they so childishly desire to be. Sadly this and other attempts to shoot down their fantasies are doomed to be ineffective despite so many direct hits.

(P. S. That last sentence full of shooting metaphors is meant to be ironic, just so there's no misunderstanding.)