The words above the picture of flowers come from Chris Hedges writing at Salon. He has a sobering piece on how guns and violence are baked into the DNA of America via white males, the history of this country, and all that arises from that history.
...Yes, the gun lobby and weapons manufacturers fuel the violence with easily available assault-style weapons, whose small caliber 5.56 mm cartridges make them largely useless for hunting. Yes, the lax gun laws and risible background checks are partially to blame. But America also fetishizes guns. This fetish has intensified among white working-class men, who have seen everything slip beyond their grasp: economic stability, a sense of place within the society, hope for the future and political empowerment. The fear of losing the gun is the final crushing blow to self-esteem and dignity, a surrender to the economic and political forces that have destroyed their lives. They cling to the gun as an idea, a belief that with it they are strong, unassailable and independent. The shifting sands of demographics, with white people projected to become a minority in the U.S. by 2045, intensifies this primal desire — they would say need — to own a weapon.
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The numbers:
There have been more than 200 mass shootings this year. There are nearly 400 million guns in the U.S., some 120 guns for every 100 Americans. Half of the privately-owned guns are owned by 3 percent of the population, according to a 2016 study. Our neighbor in Maine had 23 guns. Restrictive gun laws, and gun laws that are inequitably enforced, block gun ownership for many Black people, especially in urban neighborhoods. Federal law, for example, prohibits gun ownership for most people with felony convictions, effectively barring legal gun ownership for a third of Black men. The outlawing of guns for Blacks is part of a long continuum. Black people were denied the right to own guns under the antebellum Slave Codes, the post-Civil War Black Codes and the Jim Crow laws.
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This is the history that makes Republicans uncomfortable. It contradicts the myth that America is the greatest country on earth, “the shining city on a hill” — with blood-stained foundation stones. When they cry about the decline of moral values in America, it’s from fear of seeing their sanctimony revealed.
White people built their supremacy in America and globally with violence. They massacred Native Americans and stole their land. They kidnapped Africans, shipped them as cargo to the Americas, and then enslaved, lynched, imprisoned and impoverished Black people for generations. They have always gunned down Black people with impunity, a historical reality only recently discernible to most white people because of cell phone videos of killings.
Note: I differ with Hedges here, if only to bring up a broader focus — this kind of behavior is not an exclusive to White American Males. It’s what happens wherever wealth and power is not constrained from engaging in violence to get what it wants or to protect its privilege. It’s what happens when tribes collide. But America does seem to have made guns a central part of it.
READ THE WHOLE THING.
Hedges has a stark look at what the obsession with guns is all about in America.
..."Most American violence — and this also illuminates its relationship to state power — has been initiated with a 'conservative' bias," the historian Richard Hofstadter writes. "It has been unleashed against abolitionists, Catholics, radicals, workers and labor organizers, Negroes, Orientals, and other ethnic or racial or ideological minorities, and has been used ostensibly to protect the American, the Southern, the white Protestant, or simply the established middle-class way of life and morals. A high proportion of our violent actions has thus come from the top dogs or the middle dogs. Such has been the character of most mob and vigilante movements. This may help to explain why so little of it has been used against state authority, and why in turn it has been so easily and indulgently forgotten."
If you have been freaking out over the way Fascism is coming to America (Thom Hartmann’s piece on it is truly frightening), you should be. Fascism has an allure for those who feel disenfranchised and disempowered, whether they actually are or not. David Neiwert has several posts at his Orcinus web site delving into the irrational, emotional basis of Fascism.
The Rise of Pseudo Fascism was written in 2005; it’s alarming to see how what was discussed way back then has unfolded in the subsequent years. (It’s also worth noting that back then, Conservatives were all about how Liberals were the real Fascists. The projection has only gotten worse since then.)
Fascism is an amorphous phenomenon. It embraces myths and celebrates a glorious past that never was. Beliefs over facts; myths over history. It is racist, eliminationist — there are those who have a great destiny and those who stand in the way of it. It is paranoid — there are always enemies who are responsible for what’s wrong in the world. (See Bob Altemeyer on right wing authoritarianism.)
This section from Hedges seems apropos here:
...Historian Richard Slotkin calls our national lust for blood sacrifice the "structuring metaphor of the American experience," a belief in "regeneration through violence." Blood sacrifice, he writes in his trilogy "Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier," "The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization" and "Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America," is celebrated as the highest form of good. Sometimes it requires the blood of heroes, but most often it requires the blood of enemies.
...Those who cling to the mythology of white supremacy cannot be reached through rational discussion. Mythology is all they have left. When this mythology appears under threat it triggers a ferocious backlash, for without the myth there is an emptiness, an emotional void, a crushing despair.
The reason why things are deteriorating in America is simple. The Republican Party and conservatives in general have jumped on board with this because it’s the only way they have to hang onto power and privilege. Kevin Drum spelled it out back in 2018:
...So this is where we are. The Republican Party can’t win using ordinary methods. On the process side, they can win only by inflating the white vote via gerrymandering, cracked-and-packed districts, and ruthless black voter suppression. On the policy side, they can win only with heavy dollops of strident and outright bigotry against Mexicans, Muslims, blacks, Hispanics, Chinese, and anyone else who comes along. Even Canadians will do in a pinch.
Today, the Republican Party exists for one and only one purpose: to pass tax cuts for the rich and regulatory rollbacks for corporations. They accomplish this using one and only method: unapologetically racist and bigoted appeals to win the votes of the heartland riff-raff they otherwise treat as mere money machines for their endless mail-order cons.
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If you are still wondering why, when a majority of Americans support some kind of action on gun safety, that it seems unlikely to happen, Hedges frames the dilemma as a choice between two alternatives:
America has two choices. It can reintegrate the dispossessed back into the society through radical New Deal types of reforms, or it can leave its underclass to wallow in the toxins of poverty, hate and resentment, fueling the blood sacrifices that afflict us. This choice, I fear, has already been made. The ruling oligarchy doesn't take the subway or fly on commercial jets. It is protected by the FBI, Homeland Security, police escorts and bodyguards. Its children attend private schools. It lives in gated communities with elaborate surveillance systems. We don't matter.
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Or to put it more simply:
Be seeing you.