Black dress shoes shined to perfection, beams of overhanging light reflecting off them at almost all times. So smooth and so polished, the quality of the craft can substitute for a half decent mirror.

Attire worn by only the most dignified in this system: dress pants, put on one leg a time, held in place by a belt complimenting the ensemble; dress shirts meticulously buttoned up one at a time; ties cinched so tight the patriotic red is practically screaming off of them; all with the cherry on top that is the American flag pin clipped onto the lapel of the suit jacket. If they really want to go the extra mile, slap on some cuff links with a similar motif as the pin. Show off the American pride flare!

The fashion of one's image goes great with the at most $30 to $40 haircut- which is what everyone that knows they paid more says- said to only be cut by local barbershops. The asking prices of such establishments, in reality, usually waver right above the $10 margin.

Teeth artificially whitened, if necessary, to make them as ivory white as George Washington's false dentures. Focus-groups testing target demographics approve the smile. Blemishes, scars, tiny imperfections masked by cosmetics make up the perfect on-camera aversion to natural aesthetics.

This is the image many contemporary politics deliberate in their appeals to voters. Professional appearance achieves the look that they are suited for the job. Their suitability for positions in turn deem them authentic. Yet, in an age where anything can be "focus-group approved", appearing genuine has become a variable in a formula easily solved by what type of pants a candidate wears.

The matter is not on the vogue trends politicians swing to these days. Rather, it pertains to what is said by the people in these supposed areas of expertise, safe zones erected where opinions can explode into facts. The meanings behind these words can be just as sharp- think of a knife - as the suits that articulate them, just ask the wolves in sheeps' clothing. The image is a foil to what they say.

Carelessly. individuals captivating the attentions of millions rile up the masses, stirring something dangerous up with their words. Caustics released directly to the mind via spoken word erode the very moral foundations our society stands on. Worst of all, it is these words, the one and the same possessing great influence over thought, evoking inconceivable sides of people never thought imaginable from their portrayal of character.

The subjects in question: presidential candidates of the modern Republican Party.

Let's start out with the more comical examples. Senator Ted Cruz (TX) led a one man show hosting a filibuster to gain support for shutting down the government on September 24, 2013, over Obamacare being passed. A staple in his more memorable career in gaffes, Cruz managed to stay on his feet and talking for nearly 21 hours.

His mind never once wandered during that period and stayed on track, especially when Senator Cruz: mentioned White Castle hamburgers, praised an inspirational tweet from Ashton Kutcher, and confused the orchestra soundtracks of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining and Alfred Hitchocock's Psycho (follow the hyperlinks directly above and directly below for proof!). Making up for not being home to read his daughters a bedtime story, Cruz even read Dr. Seuss' Green Eggs and Ham during his rant televised live on C-Span.

More recently, such careless banter became offensive with ignorance. On December 3, the Republican presidential candidates still in the race met with members of the Republican Jewish Coalition. As MSNBC put it, the speaking opportunity to branch out and appeal to more demographics within the party "flirted with stereotypes about Jews...at times." Former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore- who many are just learning of right now-felt the need to proclaim,"Last night I was watching Schindler’s List. Everybody here has seen Schindler’s List.”

Dr. Ben Carson repeatedly pronounced the Palestinian extremist group Hamas as "hummus", an extremely tasty food dip common in some Middle Eastern countries. But that is more of a pronunciation error than an ignorant mistake.

Moving onto Donald Trump, the man who never ceases to baffle the rational world, stated:

"I'm a negotiator, like you folks... Is there anybody that doesn't renegotiate deals in this room? This room negotiates them perhaps more than any other room I've ever spoken in."

Maybe a half-hearted effort at a joke in a scenario that did not fit, only one other thing could be insinuated from this statement: prejudicial intent. Maybe that is too far of an assumption, but let the record show Trump was booed at this forum and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly condemned Trump's extreme anti-Muslim attitudes.

Even more strange, current Republican candidates have a penchant for drawing comparison's between America, President Obama's leadership, and/or Obamacare to Nazi Germany. Characteristically, Cruz is guilty of it, as is Carson, whose habit of calling things equivalent to slavery suddenly vanished. The United States' imperfections lie distant from the totalitarian government of Germany under Hitler's Nazi Party, a type of genocidal oppression alien to modern Americans. Slavery tainted America's soul, leaving a dark mark; it is not something to bring up lightly. The insensitivity for such monumentally tragic institutions shows.

Turn the dial up, where violence begins to show its face.

Between the time it took for Trump to utterthe words "rapists", "murderers", and "drug dealers" and reach the ears of all who would notice, something happened. A miracle, a disaster. A classified anomaly for sure. Trump's support skyrocketed along with the tension Mexican-Americans already feel within the United States, immigrated or not.

Call it an isolated incident, but following Trump's remarks, two brothers from Boston found it necessary to assault a homeless Hispanic man. Trump's rebuttal when revealed the men to be supporters: "I will say that people who are following me are very passionate." If his words could inspire men to commit crimes of intolerance, what else does their weight carry? Some of Trump's biggest supporters are white-supremacy groups, coincidentally.

And this is not a happening isolated to immigration or Trump. Abortion rights for American women have long been disputed for pro-life and pro-choice advocacy groups. Planned Parenthood, a government funded healthcare service provider for women, is the vehicle through which legal abortions are operated and at which hate is projected onto.

The Republican party starter pack now includes a swift opposition to everything Planned Parenthood. Carly Fiorina continuously brought up the scandalous video demonizing Planned Parenthood for what they "really are." The video showed Planned Parenthood workers dissecting a still alive fetus to profit off of the selling of its organs. The workers were actually actors from the Center for Medical Progress, an anti-abortion extremist group, who created the videos to slander Planned Parenthood. Fiorina still stands by her admission over the videos' legitimacy, even after they are well known to be fake.

The politically Right has fought so hard against Planned Parenthood, it has rallied to defund it entirely from their vote on the Affordable Care Act. Republicans have turned a subject of moral reprehensibility- from their perspective- into a case of absolute justice. Differences of opinion shift into dialogues invoking heinous imagery with words like "murder" and "kill" to describe the medical procedures. Word choices carefully placed to gain the vote of pro-life voters. The same words are cognitively considered by some pro-life activists that take it too far.

Rape, incest, or risk of death to the mother are the only reasons Republicans justify a woman terminating her pregnancy. Several conservatives reject the idea of rape or incest being exceptions, health complications the only extreme case where it is allowed. Former Missouri Senator Todd Akin even believed "legitimate rape" to be incredibly rare, as he thought the female anatomy had preventative measures stopping a rape from happening.

The Right's synecdoche- summarizing a whole with a single part- of their argument against Planned Parenthood fails in that abortions are only 3 percent of the services provided by the organization. The majority of Planned Parenthood's activity is to educate women—pregnant or not—on healthy lifestyles, prepare them for motherhood, and test and care for sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV. Disbanding Planned Parenthood may do more harm than good.

Abortion rights actually has a very violent past. Maybe that talk of "murder" was misinterpreted and aimed at innocent people. Pro-life protests quickly escalate into plots of kidnapping, murdering clinic doctors who perform the procedures, arson, and even bombing the health centers. Planned Parenthood recently became the target of a shooting at a Colorado Springs clinic on November 27 where three people including a police officer were killed, nine left injured. The gunman was an anti-abortion activist and even admitted to the police that his crime was "definitely politically motivated." Sadly counter-intuitive that with the motive to save lives, people are driven to take more of them.

Slightly unrelated, Senator Marco Rubio (FL) announced his plans to undo all the accomplishments accrued for LGBT rights under the Obama administration. The most prevalent one being this year's legalization of same-sex marriage. When inquired about his stance on same-sex marriage during the first Republican presidential debate, Fox News correspondent Mike Huckabee questioned the Supreme Court's indefinite ruling on the issue. He questioned who the public should identify as the supreme being when making these rulings.

Same-sex marriage, a product of love that is beyond anyone's control especially the politicians', and Planned Parenthood, an institution giving medical aid to women and the right over their own bodies if need be, do not involve men like Mike Huckabee or Marco Rubio, heterosexual, Christian men who have no stake in either issue. Their intensive purpose behind their conservative agendas should be to limit the power of government to expand the freedoms of the people. Both matters do not affect them, they only offend them. Yet why do they name themselves the supreme beings on matters that plainly do not pertain to them and control the lives of those with differing lifestyles?

Barely a week goes by before another tragedy befell headlines. America was not even done comprehending the Planned Parenthood shooting. 14 people attending a holiday function at the Inland Regional Center, a non-profit corporation providing aid to people with developmental disabilities, were killed in San Bernardino, California, on December 2. 21 others were seriously injured. The perpetrators behind the attack were a married couple of Pakistani descent later killed in a shootout with the police.

The New York Daily News' front page story criticized the Republican candidates inaction following the shootings. "Thoughts and prayers" was a common phrasing found in statements and social media posts made by various politicians. Immediately after the San Bernardino shooting, Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton, Senator Bernie Sanders (VT), and former Governor Martin O'Malley (MD) all took stances and proposed action against current gun legislation. Actions speak louder than words, thoughts, or prayers.

After the identities of the San Bernardino shooters were revealed, the mass of Republican competitors jumped on the opportunity to label the mass shooting as a terroristic attack. Obama receives enough flak for his "inability" to recognize ISIS by calling them "radical Islamic terrorists." In fact, he was very quick to name San Bernardino an act of terrorism. Obama gets nailed to the cross every time he wants to start a conversation about gun violence by the Right, yet it is the Right who deny the phenomenon's existence and fail to register any homegrown mass shooter as a terrorist.

Clinton is campaigning her gun legislation under the title of "common sense" laws designed to alleviate the nation's state of constant fear, acclimating to policies of safety instead. Cruz combated restrictive gun laws with his own eloquent reasoning: "You don’t stop bad guys by taking away our guns; you stop bad guys by using our guns.” This was at a pro-gun rally a day after the mass shooting. Hint: they always are.

The age old cops-and-robbers mentality does not suffice. Just because gun laws are fought to be less constricting on the amount of firearm purchases does not necessarily mean a correlative decrease in crime or legal gun possession. "Because they can" or "because its in their right" to have a gun does not mean ordinary law abiding citizens will flock towards owning one. The San Bernardino shooting took place at an office party for the county's health inspectors. Where is a gun's presence- besides the shooters'- relevant to these circumstances?

The assault weapons bought by the husband-and wife shooters were acquired legally, meeting state qualifications easily modified to accommodate larger magazine sizes. Enacting a proportionate response to a terrorist attack on American soil, Obama suggested laws stripping gun ownership rights away if individuals are on no-fly lists, federally suspected terrorists, or any other watch list.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan responded: “I think it’s very important to remember people have due process rights in this country, and we can’t have some government official just arbitrarily put them on a list.” Ryan and his party seem conflicted in ways to handle terrorist threats while maintaining a pro-gun image. Always. Where the people they build their logic off of, terrorists who happen to be Muslim, are taking advantage of the United States' right to bear arms.

Connecticut Governor Daniel Malloy intends to sign an executive order prohibiting people on terrorist watch lists from legally buying firearms within his state.

Without sparing an opportunity to prove his point, Trump called for the ban of all Muslim immigrants from America at a rally following the San Bernardino shooting, committed by two Muslim-Americans confirmed to be influenced by foreign militant groups. But, we all know how this breed of rhetoric is made to divide the people, initiating the slightly unsure to agree with the people that totally agree. Group think is dangerous. Trump is a master of it.

The subject matter is not that which divides, but that which disguises.

The misconstruction of "Obama coming to take our guns away" is no longer a supportable fact. It is now meme worthy, as tired and worn out as "Osama...I mean Obama" jokes. Liberal leaning politicians aim to limit who can purchase guns, reform background and psychological testing proving the owner's competent state of mind, and, overall, ensure safety to the public. The Right brushes escalating gun violence off as just another criteria matching the description of common crime.

The epidemic of gun violence does not become an issue when public officials fail to acknowledge it as one. The silence does not justify why gun violence happens so often, more densely, and more fatally in the United States of America than any other structured society in the world.

Perhaps the most harmful rhetorical disguise is not one created to cover up or avoid a fact. It is not talking about it altogether.

What most people do not realize, because politicians are not talking about it, is that there is a ban on gun violence research in this country, has been for nearly 20 years. In 1996, the National Rifle Association (NRA) became increasingly concerned that the Center for Disease Control's (CDC) research into gun violence would be used as a lobbying tactic promoting gun control. NRA aligned members saw to it that any such research was to be disbanded. Former Arkansas Representative Jay Dickey championed a bill banning funding for advocacy research on gun control. Something Dickey now regrets, after seeing how gun violence has ravaged the United States.

Former Speaker of the House John Boehner declared, "I’m sorry, but a gun is not a disease. Guns don’t kill people — people do." He said this in July of this year, after the House of Representatives denied the CDC's amendment asking for the ability to start researching gun violence again with funds provided. Boehner said this not even a month after the Charleston, South Carolina, shooting. When guns did not kill people. Racism did.

Following the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, Obama demanded the amendment be "interpreted...literally." The CDC cannot be allocated funds for advocacy, only research. Following guidelines, the research can be done non-invasively so as not go affect gun sales. Despite given the go-ahead by the president, the CDC and affiliated researchers are weary to attempt gun violence research. The last researcher to have made any headway was Dr. Fred Rivera in the 1990's when commissioned by the CDC to conduct his own research. With a phone call to friends in Washington, the NRA put a stop to Rivera's research.

The CDC fears the same to happen again, what was known as a career ending pursuit may very well still be one depending on political backlash from Congressmen associated with the NRA. The amendment set in place by Dickey still has not been repealed. The ban is technically still in effect until then. Dickey cites guard rails and traffic dividers common on highways now as results of research done to prevent head-on collisions. Drivers do not take those safety precautions for granted.

It is no secret many political faces are in the pockets of big industries, monopolies promising support as long as their story gets told too. Money may not be the entire agenda, but the truth certainly is not all there either. Disheartening when the people in the ranks of running a country have corporate interests at heart rather than the welfare of the people.

Rising brutality and occurrence of gun violence is now becoming a public health issue. Symptoms include getting caught in the crossfire, bullet dodging, bouncing ricochets, and fatal gunshot wounds. I live in a country where research on the very thing we are killing each other off with is banned. I do not know which is most alarming: the rate at which it is happening or the fact we are refusing a chance to know why it happens.

Our Second Amendment is outdated. The Founding Fathers did not have assault weaponry capable of rattling off 800 rounds per minute in mind when writing "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms." All they had was muskets. Gunmen only had one shot to make their attack count. Murder was likely premeditated; the process of firing, cleaning the barrel, pouring in the gunpowder, and putting a new musket ball in is too time consuming to leave room for error. Large armies of musketeers struck fear into soldiers despite the inaccuracy of their firearms. That was when armies were armies and people were individuals. Now, individuals are granted the right to become armies of one.

Consider this my own rhetoric. Radical or divisive or liberal attentive. Make what you want of it.