I think there is certainly an important sense in which all US politics as well as all interaction in public spaces, including both civic and casual interaction, is all done under the implicit but very well understood and terrorising threat of gun violence. Most recent political developments and the struggle over Covid measures have amplified that phenomenon many times, it seems to me as an otherwise uninvested outsider.
This terrorising implicit threat must have considerable effect in all these areas, including political effect but Americans, and in particular the Democrats, won't really admit that the terror influences their politics even though it surely must. I hypothesize, for example, that substantial consequences for Jan 6th will never be forthcoming because, well, the government quite literally dares not to. For about half the country appears to have been arming itself for a catastrophic civil war for decades.
In daily casual and civic interaction too, the fact that any conflict could most easily result in a bullet lodged in your head must deform these interactions to a substantial degree, surely, but again little is said of any of that.
I'm not sure if this is an accurate observation or not. I watch these videos of school board and city council meetings, testing sites, white women boldly confronting black people in public spaces and on their own property or while doing their job in a white neighborhood. Republicans and everyone who falls under that umbrella (white evangelicals, conspiracists, QAnon followers, anti-vaxxers) have such a disproportionate balance of firepower. I wonder if the boldness of their anger, untethered racism, fear of us "socialists" is creating a situation that we cannot turn back from. 'Reasonable' people who represent the majority (healthcare workers, teachers, election officials, small business owners, etc) generally don't own a gun and if they do, they're hesitant to be in a situation to use it. I watch these videos (one at a vaccine site from yesterday where it appeared that dozens, if not hundreds of ppl) where the ppl are screaming pure hatred and 'bile' at the healthcare providers. This is happening everywhere. Teachers are forcing students to take off their masks, doctors have patients mocking them as they take their last breath ...OMG. We've all seen it. But, the boldness is coming from those with firepower. I don't have a gun and don't intend to buy one. I keep my mouth shut in public. Recently, at an outdoor event that I coordinated for Dems in my community their were about 70 ppl, a couple of whom had immunity issues. I asked everyone to be considerate and bring masks. Hardly no one did. When I went around the group and suggested I would find masks for them, one person in a rage stood up, cursed me and as she and her husband walked away shouted, "I'm not wearing an f'n mask!" It's all intertwined and spilling over....
The so-called Second Amendment “right” of every American to acquire a military-grade arsenal of firearms is a sociopathic fantasy very recently invented by reactionary politicians dressed in the black robes of Supreme Court justices. It is derived from their “originalist” reading of the Constitution. The originalist method of reading texts is an egocentric fantasy that asserts that the mind of the interpreter can be eliminated from the interpretation so that he or she can discern the “original” meaning of the text. This fantasy constitutes an illicit transference of the methodology of the natural sciences into the disciplines that address human affairs. The natural sciences deal with dead things. The disciplines that address human affairs deal with living things. The natural sciences attempt to discern “the-thing-in-itself” that exists in nature, apart from human perception or individual interpretation; the natural sciences can do this because the things they study are dead. The disciplines that address human affairs do not deal with phenomena that are things-in-themselves, existing apart from human perception; they deal with human phenomena. The human observer is unavoidably and inextricably involved in the perception and interpretation of human phenomena. To pretend that there is an “original” meaning, a”thing-in-itself,” to be discerned in a legal text is to adopt the egocentric fantasy that your own individual interpretation is an “objective” interpretation, uncontaminated by the individual biases that contaminate the interpretation of everyone who disagrees with you. This “methodology” gives the originalist, who is intrinsically a highly egocentric individual, an official license to project the rationalized symptomatic expressions of his or her own primitive unconscious drives onto the text. Nevertheless, those of us who repudiate originalist interpretation should not be too quick to conclude that we are free of the malady that produces it. This pseudoscientific approach to human affairs contaminates, without exception, every element of the post-Enlightenment culture celebrated by those who deplore originalism. This self-contradictory predicament is integral to Enlightenment rationalism itself. If you fail to recognize how little science has to do with human affairs, apart from technology, and aspire to deal with the affairs of human beings scientifically, as if human beings were things-in-themselves, i. e., dead things, then you shouldn’t be surprised when you actually end up treating human beings as dead things, whether as victims of Taylorist industrial exploitation; of totalitarian wars directed by the best and brightest individuals from elite institutions of higher learning; of brutal, homicidal racism based on “scientific” eugenics; or of gun violence blessed by the pseudoscientific theologians on the Supreme Court. “Medieval” is a dirty word in modern culture, often employed as a synonym for “barbaric.” Actually the medieval age had a far higher culture than our own post-Enlightenment age in essential respects, while in many obvious and colossally destructive ways we ourselves have “progressed” into a pseudoscientific modern barbarism, which has finally given us at least two means to destroy all life on the planet, means to which we are addicted and which we show no signs of renouncing.
1.5 million in 50 years gun deaths v 1.2 war deaths in all U.S. history. Wow! Just Wow.
That is a sorrowful comparison. And it doesn't have to be that way. Not only by a way of a legal regime of gun regulation but also by how we LIVE and what we TEACH our children.
The Mennonite kids I grew up with in Lancaster PA are reared in a family/church environment that is a real life working model which (in Ruth's words), yields a strong civic culture and a public sphere conducive to social trust and altruism. Not to be confused with Amish- who "shun" all those not of their particular faith (aka "the English")- my Mennonite friends live a real out and about public life no different than and ordinary American. It's what they are taught on Sundays that produces the trust and altruism.
But more important of us (ah um, the "English") is not why they got there but how. The Mennonites did not come to a life of compassion and trust by way of some textual argument or divine inspiration, but by concluding enough already AFTER playing conventional Reformation Era power politics and being tortured, dissected with remains hung in cages after the 1536 Münster Rebellion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnster_rebellion). No divine revelation necessary. Just put the foot down, and just say "No". This disposition to peace is so thorough that even on a micro-ish level, parents approving, my friends (many farm bruisers) could absolutely CRUSH- I did say 'farm'- on the high school wrestling mat or soccer pitch not one would be on the football team.
So we can get to a better gun free country without loud and proud smoke and morrows. 1.5 million mangled bodies hanging in a cage is enough. Simply practice "NO to guns.
The word "freedom" is used a lot in this country, but we rarely stop to think what it means. (When you think about it, it is amazing the range of things it can mean!) It seems that these days, to the reactionaries among us, it mean "freedom from responsibility to our fellow humans -- freedom from responsibility to society."
Re: formation of far right militias from WWI veterans, sadly there is a parallel. Now. Afghanistan. I know they are having a harder time dealing with the withdrawal than we are.
Second amendment solutions are a leading cause of (carnage) in America. Authoritarians (Trump) exploit the carnage, the breakdown and chaos in society for an easy way to divide groups against one another and then claim only they can fix it. It is this environment of nihilistic breakdown in society that sets the table for more violence. Due to their belief in Trump's 'big lie' that the election was stolen, 30% of MAGA in trump's base are locked and loaded and think it's they're patriotic duty to use violence. Voltaire said "if you can make them believe in absurdities you can make them commit atrocities".
The ascent of fascism here has brought with it an increase in racial and political bigotry. We have lost societal adhesion. There is no "us", just "us vs them". Social Darwinism is rampant, setting the stage for punishing those deemed as unworthy. Trump's sociopathic callousness has spread to his followers and they are ready to take up arms to defend their hero with violence.
A strong current among social psychologists today, posits that the strongest influences on our individual sense of self are the groups we participate in …. and those groups are necessarily created by defining who is excluded as “them” … evolutionarily, we are hard-wired to justify all kinds of violence on “them” just to survive … but now, some of us are discovering, if “us” is to survive, we must see that everyone is “us”
I lost one of my best friends to gun violence in Nov-2019.
I was with him the night of, and he was gone an hour I left for my house. I gave a eulogy at his funeral, and he would have turned 30 the following week.
The pain, the hurt, the anger, and confusion is something no one should ever go through. I can say this now, but I dealt with depression following his death. So senseless and unnecessary, my dear friend, who read every book in the world, closed down every bar with me, and who LOVED and LIVED life.
I do not know the way forward, but I do not want anyone to go through this pain.
Thank you for sharing the story of your friend Gonzalo Vizcardo …. the obit recounts a life, though ended, that has inspired another, still living. Very glad that you have reached out to others to journey out of the dark pit of depression … if you haven’t accessed the help of a mental health therapist, I encourage you to do so … best thing I ever did for myself (and continue doing) to access their incredible expertise and help to grow out of depression’s darkness
In the spring of 2018, on the weekend of the March for Our Lives, I participated in a facilitated dialogue between advocates for sensible gun regulation and advocates for gun owners. While the gun owners were perfectly nice people and unlikely to use their guns for evil, they were absolute in their position. As far as they are concerned the Second Amendment is an absolute guarantee of the right to keep and bear as many arms of as many types as they want. There should be few, if any, restrictions on who can own guns and on what kind of guns can be owned. No arguments about the intent of the founders in protecting slave hunters or the need for a militia as a replacement for a standing army could get thru. No discussion of the evolution of guns from the flintlock to the AR15 was persuasive. Given that dynamic, I am not sure how we get this menace under control.
And they will listen to no arguments about the efficacy of wearing a mask and getting vaccinated… so odd .. they buy guns to defend themselves from a threat that doesn’t exist, and won’t follow simple public health measures that will actually protect them from a real threat
Sadly that may also be true. Part of the problem is, of course, that guns, like masks, are a tribal thing. They see any criticism of their gun rights stance as an attack on the tribe.
Amen and Amen, the absolute worst are those who sensationalize and profit off of these tragedies such as Alex Jones and his ilk who terrorized those after Sandy Hook with this for profit propaganda at the expense of others and their healing or well being. The NRA itself has become the foot soldier also encouraging these malignant, malign abhorrent behaviors stretching the 2nd beyond any responsibility to an anything goes mentality. The inserection coup also proved where this thinking leads to. What is needed is more with the courage to speak up and stand up against it. Thanks Ruth, the truth, #MDDOS
I think there is certainly an important sense in which all US politics as well as all interaction in public spaces, including both civic and casual interaction, is all done under the implicit but very well understood and terrorising threat of gun violence. Most recent political developments and the struggle over Covid measures have amplified that phenomenon many times, it seems to me as an otherwise uninvested outsider.
This terrorising implicit threat must have considerable effect in all these areas, including political effect but Americans, and in particular the Democrats, won't really admit that the terror influences their politics even though it surely must. I hypothesize, for example, that substantial consequences for Jan 6th will never be forthcoming because, well, the government quite literally dares not to. For about half the country appears to have been arming itself for a catastrophic civil war for decades.
In daily casual and civic interaction too, the fact that any conflict could most easily result in a bullet lodged in your head must deform these interactions to a substantial degree, surely, but again little is said of any of that.
I'm not sure if this is an accurate observation or not. I watch these videos of school board and city council meetings, testing sites, white women boldly confronting black people in public spaces and on their own property or while doing their job in a white neighborhood. Republicans and everyone who falls under that umbrella (white evangelicals, conspiracists, QAnon followers, anti-vaxxers) have such a disproportionate balance of firepower. I wonder if the boldness of their anger, untethered racism, fear of us "socialists" is creating a situation that we cannot turn back from. 'Reasonable' people who represent the majority (healthcare workers, teachers, election officials, small business owners, etc) generally don't own a gun and if they do, they're hesitant to be in a situation to use it. I watch these videos (one at a vaccine site from yesterday where it appeared that dozens, if not hundreds of ppl) where the ppl are screaming pure hatred and 'bile' at the healthcare providers. This is happening everywhere. Teachers are forcing students to take off their masks, doctors have patients mocking them as they take their last breath ...OMG. We've all seen it. But, the boldness is coming from those with firepower. I don't have a gun and don't intend to buy one. I keep my mouth shut in public. Recently, at an outdoor event that I coordinated for Dems in my community their were about 70 ppl, a couple of whom had immunity issues. I asked everyone to be considerate and bring masks. Hardly no one did. When I went around the group and suggested I would find masks for them, one person in a rage stood up, cursed me and as she and her husband walked away shouted, "I'm not wearing an f'n mask!" It's all intertwined and spilling over....
So right on, timely and important. #democracydying
Thank you
Thank you. Love you. Keep up the great work!
The so-called Second Amendment “right” of every American to acquire a military-grade arsenal of firearms is a sociopathic fantasy very recently invented by reactionary politicians dressed in the black robes of Supreme Court justices. It is derived from their “originalist” reading of the Constitution. The originalist method of reading texts is an egocentric fantasy that asserts that the mind of the interpreter can be eliminated from the interpretation so that he or she can discern the “original” meaning of the text. This fantasy constitutes an illicit transference of the methodology of the natural sciences into the disciplines that address human affairs. The natural sciences deal with dead things. The disciplines that address human affairs deal with living things. The natural sciences attempt to discern “the-thing-in-itself” that exists in nature, apart from human perception or individual interpretation; the natural sciences can do this because the things they study are dead. The disciplines that address human affairs do not deal with phenomena that are things-in-themselves, existing apart from human perception; they deal with human phenomena. The human observer is unavoidably and inextricably involved in the perception and interpretation of human phenomena. To pretend that there is an “original” meaning, a”thing-in-itself,” to be discerned in a legal text is to adopt the egocentric fantasy that your own individual interpretation is an “objective” interpretation, uncontaminated by the individual biases that contaminate the interpretation of everyone who disagrees with you. This “methodology” gives the originalist, who is intrinsically a highly egocentric individual, an official license to project the rationalized symptomatic expressions of his or her own primitive unconscious drives onto the text. Nevertheless, those of us who repudiate originalist interpretation should not be too quick to conclude that we are free of the malady that produces it. This pseudoscientific approach to human affairs contaminates, without exception, every element of the post-Enlightenment culture celebrated by those who deplore originalism. This self-contradictory predicament is integral to Enlightenment rationalism itself. If you fail to recognize how little science has to do with human affairs, apart from technology, and aspire to deal with the affairs of human beings scientifically, as if human beings were things-in-themselves, i. e., dead things, then you shouldn’t be surprised when you actually end up treating human beings as dead things, whether as victims of Taylorist industrial exploitation; of totalitarian wars directed by the best and brightest individuals from elite institutions of higher learning; of brutal, homicidal racism based on “scientific” eugenics; or of gun violence blessed by the pseudoscientific theologians on the Supreme Court. “Medieval” is a dirty word in modern culture, often employed as a synonym for “barbaric.” Actually the medieval age had a far higher culture than our own post-Enlightenment age in essential respects, while in many obvious and colossally destructive ways we ourselves have “progressed” into a pseudoscientific modern barbarism, which has finally given us at least two means to destroy all life on the planet, means to which we are addicted and which we show no signs of renouncing.
1.5 million in 50 years gun deaths v 1.2 war deaths in all U.S. history. Wow! Just Wow.
That is a sorrowful comparison. And it doesn't have to be that way. Not only by a way of a legal regime of gun regulation but also by how we LIVE and what we TEACH our children.
The Mennonite kids I grew up with in Lancaster PA are reared in a family/church environment that is a real life working model which (in Ruth's words), yields a strong civic culture and a public sphere conducive to social trust and altruism. Not to be confused with Amish- who "shun" all those not of their particular faith (aka "the English")- my Mennonite friends live a real out and about public life no different than and ordinary American. It's what they are taught on Sundays that produces the trust and altruism.
But more important of us (ah um, the "English") is not why they got there but how. The Mennonites did not come to a life of compassion and trust by way of some textual argument or divine inspiration, but by concluding enough already AFTER playing conventional Reformation Era power politics and being tortured, dissected with remains hung in cages after the 1536 Münster Rebellion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnster_rebellion). No divine revelation necessary. Just put the foot down, and just say "No". This disposition to peace is so thorough that even on a micro-ish level, parents approving, my friends (many farm bruisers) could absolutely CRUSH- I did say 'farm'- on the high school wrestling mat or soccer pitch not one would be on the football team.
So we can get to a better gun free country without loud and proud smoke and morrows. 1.5 million mangled bodies hanging in a cage is enough. Simply practice "NO to guns.
The word "freedom" is used a lot in this country, but we rarely stop to think what it means. (When you think about it, it is amazing the range of things it can mean!) It seems that these days, to the reactionaries among us, it mean "freedom from responsibility to our fellow humans -- freedom from responsibility to society."
Re: formation of far right militias from WWI veterans, sadly there is a parallel. Now. Afghanistan. I know they are having a harder time dealing with the withdrawal than we are.
Second amendment solutions are a leading cause of (carnage) in America. Authoritarians (Trump) exploit the carnage, the breakdown and chaos in society for an easy way to divide groups against one another and then claim only they can fix it. It is this environment of nihilistic breakdown in society that sets the table for more violence. Due to their belief in Trump's 'big lie' that the election was stolen, 30% of MAGA in trump's base are locked and loaded and think it's they're patriotic duty to use violence. Voltaire said "if you can make them believe in absurdities you can make them commit atrocities".
An excellent essay, so sad that it has to be written. The Prime Minister of New Zealand certainly had the right answer !
The ascent of fascism here has brought with it an increase in racial and political bigotry. We have lost societal adhesion. There is no "us", just "us vs them". Social Darwinism is rampant, setting the stage for punishing those deemed as unworthy. Trump's sociopathic callousness has spread to his followers and they are ready to take up arms to defend their hero with violence.
A strong current among social psychologists today, posits that the strongest influences on our individual sense of self are the groups we participate in …. and those groups are necessarily created by defining who is excluded as “them” … evolutionarily, we are hard-wired to justify all kinds of violence on “them” just to survive … but now, some of us are discovering, if “us” is to survive, we must see that everyone is “us”
I lost one of my best friends to gun violence in Nov-2019.
I was with him the night of, and he was gone an hour I left for my house. I gave a eulogy at his funeral, and he would have turned 30 the following week.
The pain, the hurt, the anger, and confusion is something no one should ever go through. I can say this now, but I dealt with depression following his death. So senseless and unnecessary, my dear friend, who read every book in the world, closed down every bar with me, and who LOVED and LIVED life.
I do not know the way forward, but I do not want anyone to go through this pain.
Thank you.
Here is the obit in the local paper:
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/obituaries/article237255069.html
Thank you for sharing the story of your friend Gonzalo Vizcardo …. the obit recounts a life, though ended, that has inspired another, still living. Very glad that you have reached out to others to journey out of the dark pit of depression … if you haven’t accessed the help of a mental health therapist, I encourage you to do so … best thing I ever did for myself (and continue doing) to access their incredible expertise and help to grow out of depression’s darkness
In the spring of 2018, on the weekend of the March for Our Lives, I participated in a facilitated dialogue between advocates for sensible gun regulation and advocates for gun owners. While the gun owners were perfectly nice people and unlikely to use their guns for evil, they were absolute in their position. As far as they are concerned the Second Amendment is an absolute guarantee of the right to keep and bear as many arms of as many types as they want. There should be few, if any, restrictions on who can own guns and on what kind of guns can be owned. No arguments about the intent of the founders in protecting slave hunters or the need for a militia as a replacement for a standing army could get thru. No discussion of the evolution of guns from the flintlock to the AR15 was persuasive. Given that dynamic, I am not sure how we get this menace under control.
And they will listen to no arguments about the efficacy of wearing a mask and getting vaccinated… so odd .. they buy guns to defend themselves from a threat that doesn’t exist, and won’t follow simple public health measures that will actually protect them from a real threat
Sadly that may also be true. Part of the problem is, of course, that guns, like masks, are a tribal thing. They see any criticism of their gun rights stance as an attack on the tribe.
Amen and Amen, the absolute worst are those who sensationalize and profit off of these tragedies such as Alex Jones and his ilk who terrorized those after Sandy Hook with this for profit propaganda at the expense of others and their healing or well being. The NRA itself has become the foot soldier also encouraging these malignant, malign abhorrent behaviors stretching the 2nd beyond any responsibility to an anything goes mentality. The inserection coup also proved where this thinking leads to. What is needed is more with the courage to speak up and stand up against it. Thanks Ruth, the truth, #MDDOS