How I Joined An Anti-American Organization As A Teenager.

When I was in college and still unaware – actually astonishing unaware – about the doings of America and the rest of the world having spent all my life among folk from similar ethnic backgrounds almost all believing the same religion I found myself during the summer after my freshman year (or may have been my junior although I lean heavily toward the former) in  the PLC program at a firing range in Quantico, Virginia. While there during a short break I and others were  approach and given an application to join an organization which if we did we would get some kind of trinket the person was offering in exchange for our signatures. Whatever was offered slipped my mind years ago but back then I thought that the minute or so it would take to complete the application would be well worth it in order to get it into my hands. That I did. I do not recall hearing from my organization again. I would of course hear much about its sinister work against the American people over the years. I sometimes wondered if I was still listed in its membership roles.

I figured perhaps I had been purged from it because it did require its members to pay dues which I never did. Maybe it did solicit dues from me shortly after I joined and that is the reason I do not recall any follow up from it. I never paid any money to it. Back then and for a few years after I did not have two spare nickels to wipe together so even if I knew what its cause was and agreed with it I still would have opted out of sending it money.

I remember some years later after getting my commission and attending school at Camp Lejeune  I just received my pay. I had some one dollar bills  along with a ten dollar bill in my pocket. I happened to go to a movie in Jacksonville one night. When I arrived home the ten dollar bill was gone. How I lamented. For a long time after I spent that missing money over and over on things I wanted to buy which were now forbidden to me.

So it very well might have been my unanswered response to its request for dues that removed me from their mailing list. But at times I wondered did the group still include me and others like me as part of its membership to inflate its numbers? It did become quite powerful in America over the years.

The organization I joined during my teens was the National Rifle Association (NRA).  The similarity of their seals with the gold outside, the white lettering on the blue background, and the American eagle inside must have helped seal the deal. I had no idea it was so much an anti-American people organization.

Membership in it was once similar to the litmus test that is applied in our present day to supporting Trump. Few, especially in the Republican Party, dared to dissent from even its most radical points of view. It improved the chances for election if one could point to his or her record of voting to show the much desired 100% rating from the NRA. These elected official repeated its most outrageous lies talking about the slippery slope and having their guns taken from them. We see a repetition of that now with Trump among the elected Republicans officials in Congress who cringe in fear of his wrath by not endorsing his most outrageous claims.

I wonder at the cowardice of these officials. I wonder at how a country can survive and prosper when it is controlled in such a manner by one organization or one other person. I wonder that even when it is obvious the person or organization does not have the interest of the American people at heart but only himself or itself. I wonder how such a sinister organization involved in the lunacy we now see in America was ever believed, supported, and followed.