Okay, so I have always been confused about pride. First off, the last that I checked, it wasn’t a color that accomplished things, it was the individual or group of individuals, but not a color.

I have also never thought that any one group was inherently better than any other. Where did that come from?

Anyway, here we are in the 21st, where racial superiority is rearing its ugly head again. Like the racial purists of the mid-20th Century, our modern day, and self-declared white saviors, hate anyone, who does not reflect their myopic beliefs.

Despite the promise of progressive programs, they have seized upon the promises of the wealthy to lead us all into a glorious age of profit and Christian greatness. Albeit, without a large swath of our population. You can bank of the fact that many of them will leap at the opportunity to stoke the flames of the ovens and pry gold from teeth.

With the recent revelation by the FBI that many police departments have been infiltrated by white supremacists (http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/report-fbi-finds-white-supremacists-infiltrated-law-enforcement-agencies/ar-AAmsNqM), the fact that white supremacists are in our military (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/21/us-army-white-supremacists_n_1815137.html), and that our own government have white supremacists in the halls of power (https://newrepublic.com/article/140377/trump-promised-white-supremacy-now-hes-delivering-it) , the painful truth is that sooner (and not ‘if’) than later, we are going to see a terrific bloodletting. We cannot trust the government, our police, or our military to defend us. WE MUST DEFEND OURSELVES!

I am a subject matter expert in terrorism and insurgency. I have walked in countries, where I saw the government fall and the people oppressed. I saw the deaths that ensued. Those, who had the weapons, made the rules. You can google any of the major crises in history, where people had to grapple with personal ideology, you will find that none of them occurred spontaneously, none of them were without death, and none of them were resolved without violence. You may not personally believe in violence, but violence does not require your belief. It will kill you despite your most ardent refutations.

The questions that you must answer yourself goes as follows:

Do I believe that all life is sacred and should not be infringed? Am I willing to remain silent while others suffer? What am I willing to sacrifice for my beliefs?

No one can answer those questions for you. YOU have to wake up and look at yourself in the mirror each morning. Take it from me, doing something unpalatable to one’s personal ethical standards, is not something to undertake lightly. YOU will not sleep well. YOU will not like yourself. YOU WILL suffer each day.

So, as I have preached, better to arm yourself and not need than to not arm yourself at all. The worst thing that can happen is that you have a gun. You don’t have to buy new. You don’t have to buy the most expensive. Get one from a parent, a grandparent, from pawn, or long-term borrow.

I suspect that with all the fear mongering and saber rattling, the next terror attack –regardless of religion or ethnicity– will push trump to issue some form of martial law, which will have a lot of support from his base (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/06/some-of-trumps-advisers-want-a-new-civil-war-we-must-not-let-them-have-it). I don’t know about you, but I cannot again stand by while people are murdered. I will fight and most likely die, but as the novel goes, “it is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.” We all die. I just want to die better than I have lived.

What about you? What is your tipping point?