The Brady Campaign still wants to paint an image of the NRA being the big bad puppet master of the vast right wing conspiracy, based on this passage from a New York Times article they found to be particularly compelling:
As if the wackos weren’t dangerous enough to begin with, the fuel to further inflame them is available in the over-the-top rhetoric of the National Rifle Association, which has relentlessly pounded the bogus theme that Barack Obama is planning to take away people’s guns.
What kills me is that I know the Brady Campaign reads our blogs. If they pay any attention at all they should understand the dynamic enough to know that the whackos won’t have much of anything to do with the NRA, becasue NRA isn’t extreme enough for them. But I suppose we have to have a monster, don’t we. A good scary bedtime story to get people to donate more money. It’s OK. Everyone in this issue is guilty of it. But like I said before, they’ve shown a real inability to talk to real people, and that is what’s dooming their cause, and will continue to do so in the long term.
Having a bogeyman is important, but having a real argument is more important. I know I’m not the only gun blogger who’s thought he could make the Brady case better than they do.
“But I suppose we have to have a monster, don’t we. A good scary bedtime story to get people to donate more money.”
Eric Hoffer, in “The True Believer,” opined that “A mass-movement can exist without a god, but it will always fail without a devil. All mass movements must have something to hate.”
If whales were dying of natural causes, not many would care. Add “whaler” to the equation and you can have a mass movement.