American culture thinks that murder is OK
I have been following the gun debate for a long while. (I had a Letter to the Editor published on the issue in Time Magazine a long time ago.)
I noticed a line in a current NY Times editorial on the issue (and the NYT is passionately pro-gun-control.) It said:
The same story points out that gun manufacturers have legal immunity against being sued for damages their weapons cause. It is one of the many screamingly obvious anomalies about US gun laws (and there are many.)
So I have come to the conclusion that really American society thinks that murder and suicide are OK. They are an acceptable, if regrettable, feature of the modern world. They're 'the price we pay for freedom'. Whenever there's a mass shooting, politicians put their hands on their heart and speak of 'prayers and thoughts'. But at the end of the day, they won't act, because American culture actually glorifies murder. After all it's a staple of television and movie entertainment, and also central to the computer games industry, which often feature a 'first-person shooter' perspective. So whether you like it or not, it has been made part of the standard behavioural repertoire. And, as many commentators (and even the President of the USA) have pointed out, the actual numbers of people killed by guns in America far exceeds combat deaths in overseas conflicts (and even rivals the number of deaths in those conflicts.) When it happens 'over there', of course, it's terrorism; but when it happens in 'The Homeland', then for some reason it isn't terrorism any more. So politicans might give 'thoughts and prayers', but that's about all they'll give.
So I think the debate needs to acknowledge the fact that, as far as Americans are concerned, high rates of murder and other kinds of death by gunshot, is simply a consequence of 'lviing in a free society'. 'Being free' means having plentiful access to the means to kill, and any attempt to curtail access to those means constitutes an 'infringement on freedom'. So face up to it. Freedom means, many people will continue to die - mothers, fathers, brothers, someone's dad, someone's son. Maybe they should all be given special recognition as having laid down their life for the rights of Americans to bear arms - because I think they are far more likely to get that, than any real protection from the possibiility of being shot.
I noticed a line in a current NY Times editorial on the issue (and the NYT is passionately pro-gun-control.) It said:
Could there be anything less controversial than denying gun purchases to people on the terrorist watch list? Yet Republicans prefer to express concern about “due process” for gun purchasers even as they propose blanket bans on Islamic refugees.
The same story points out that gun manufacturers have legal immunity against being sued for damages their weapons cause. It is one of the many screamingly obvious anomalies about US gun laws (and there are many.)
So I have come to the conclusion that really American society thinks that murder and suicide are OK. They are an acceptable, if regrettable, feature of the modern world. They're 'the price we pay for freedom'. Whenever there's a mass shooting, politicians put their hands on their heart and speak of 'prayers and thoughts'. But at the end of the day, they won't act, because American culture actually glorifies murder. After all it's a staple of television and movie entertainment, and also central to the computer games industry, which often feature a 'first-person shooter' perspective. So whether you like it or not, it has been made part of the standard behavioural repertoire. And, as many commentators (and even the President of the USA) have pointed out, the actual numbers of people killed by guns in America far exceeds combat deaths in overseas conflicts (and even rivals the number of deaths in those conflicts.) When it happens 'over there', of course, it's terrorism; but when it happens in 'The Homeland', then for some reason it isn't terrorism any more. So politicans might give 'thoughts and prayers', but that's about all they'll give.
So I think the debate needs to acknowledge the fact that, as far as Americans are concerned, high rates of murder and other kinds of death by gunshot, is simply a consequence of 'lviing in a free society'. 'Being free' means having plentiful access to the means to kill, and any attempt to curtail access to those means constitutes an 'infringement on freedom'. So face up to it. Freedom means, many people will continue to die - mothers, fathers, brothers, someone's dad, someone's son. Maybe they should all be given special recognition as having laid down their life for the rights of Americans to bear arms - because I think they are far more likely to get that, than any real protection from the possibiility of being shot.
Comments (76)
It is NOT the case that "really American society thinks that murders ... are OK". It doesn't. The vast majority of Americans just don't have to worry about being murdered, and are not inclined to murder someone themselves.
Of the 5700+ Americans who were murdered in 2013, the majority of the 3005 whites murdered were killed in the South by other white southerners. White male southerner on white male southerner killings, mostly. Proportionate to population, this is not a terribly high rate. 224 million Americans are white, 3000 is a low rate, over all. It's a much higher rate for southern whites, of course.
2,491 blacks were killed by 2,245 black assailants that year. NOTE the population ratio: Blacks make up only 13% of the population. Most blacks are killed in the south or in core urban areas where they are a largely segregated population.
The reason most Americans don't care about the 2500 blacks killed in 2013 is because they assume the dead were involved in criminal activity. That's true sometimes, but even if it is true, murders should still be taken very seriously. If the 3000 whites killed were perceived to be criminals, gang members, or drug users or dealers, then most Americans wouldn't care very much about them getting shot either. This is a critical mistake on the part of "most Americans".
We do have a violent streak in the country, and it is located largely in the south, for both blacks and whites, and where ever blacks have migrated to from the south: LA, Chicago, Detroit, and so on. This isn't recent. For much of the post civil-war era, blacks were subject to more violence at the hands of whites, and they were more violent towards each other, than whites were to each other. (There are numerous explanations for the peculiar cultural poisons of the south.)
If you eliminate killings in the south and in the ghettos, you end up with much much lower rates of murder in the USA.
What single approach would reduce murders in both the south and in the ghetto? Clearly, actual vigorous law enforcement.
The fact is, especially in the ghettoes, the efforts to solve murders by the local police are phlegmatic at best, and more like malignant neglect. Good detectives manage to solve most of their cases in the ghettos. It's very hard work, but it can be done. Most ghetto murders don't get anything like a full-court-press. The police go through the motions of investigation, then let the case go cold. Many of the killings are cold blooded murders of innocent men. The message this neglect sends to violent thugs is, "Hey -- we don't care!" The message it sends to the rest of the community is "Hey, you don't matter!" The message it sends to the outside white community is "Hey, 'they' are a hopeless cause!"
Compare: In Minnesota the Jacob Wetterling kidnapping case has been pursued for 26 years without ceasing. Heaven and earth were moved to solve the Dru Sjodin murder case in Grand Forks, ND. When a killing occurs in North Minneapolis, it gets some attention, then disappears. Nothing like a no-holds-barred investigation is carried out.
This neglect is the result of police and civilian policy -- it isn't that the ghetto murders can't be solved, it's that they are not subjected to intense investigation. This fuels further violence, because shooters are getting away with murder -- literally. Black Lives Matter should focus on the lack of police effort along with gratuitous police violence.
'It' is represented by the Houses of Congress. And the Houses of Congress have voted against every meaningful attempt to reduce availability of weapons for the last several decades. There are numerous state governments that are po-actively pushing 'open carry' laws, and basically encouraging the citzenry to carry guns whereever they go. After each mass-shooting event, at least one Republican representative will express the view that the shooting could have been prevented had more people had guns.
The number of deaths by gunshot in the USA per head of population is entirely disproportionate compared to comparable OECD countries such as UK, Australia, Germany, France, Japan, and so on. It is true that Mexico, Honduras, and other countries have worse numbers. But in developed nations, America is disproportionately represented. That is a fact that it is impossible to either deny or rationalise in my opinion.
It's also totally disengenous for the Republicans to pin the blame on 'mental health issues', as if they're willing to spend public funds on mental health. Aside from pandering to the gun lobby, the Republicans major pastime is launching vexacious litigation against public health, which they describe as 'communism'.
This is your problematic assumption right here.
American society is not represented by the Houses of Congress. A very small, elite portion of American society is represented by the Houses of Congress. So it follows that a very small, elite portion of American society thinks that murder is okay, not because of 'freedom' but for the sake of the almighty dollar.
And I am not trying to deny or rationalize the rate of murder per 100,000, which as you correctly note is the highest (by far) in the OECD countries. What I have been trying to point out is that gun deaths are by no means uniformly distributed, but are geographically and demographically concentrated (which, obviously, is no sort of excuse).
Passing "Concealed carry" and "open carry" laws is, IMHO, a sign of certifiable and serious mental illness, which like gun deaths, seems to be concentrated in certain geographic and demographic categories. Lunatic legislators who pass such laws should be confined in long-term treatment facilities until they can be cured of their anti-social tendencies.
I understand Sweden has offered to set up large treatment centers for demented American legislators who have demonstrated a reckless and callous disregard for normal human society. Even the oppressed buddhists in Tibet have offered the use of several remote and largely inaccessible monasteries that have been under-utilized of late. American legislators would be accepted there for long-term contemplation of their profound and ineradicable wickedness.
Pandering, indeed.
To pander: gratify or indulge an immoral or distasteful desire, need, or habit or a person with such a desire) ... a pimp.
a person who assists the baser urges or evil designs of others: the lowest panders of a venal gun lobby.
Etymological credit for the term PANDER goes to Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Shakespeare.
hy·per·bo·le
/h??p?rb?l?/
noun
noun: hyperbole; plural noun: hyperboles
exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally.
synonyms: exaggeration, overstatement, magnification, embroidery, embellishment, excess, overkill, rhetoric;
No, Americans don't like murder. Even if increased societal gun ownership could be linked to increased murder rates, a refusal to control gun ownership would not logically suggest that the society must like murder. What it would mean (assuming the issue were being democratically determined) is that the society believes that the positive consequences of gun ownership outweigh the negative.
The prevailing view, though, is not that the issue is one of democratic concern, but it is that gun ownership is an inherent right, constitutionally protected. This is not to say that there is not widespread support for gun ownership in the US, but it is to say that even if there weren't, there would be limitations on the regulations that the government could impose on gun ownership.
Quoting Wayfarer
It's possible that the gun lobby has disproportionate power due to political maneuvering, but I suspect its power really arises from the general sentiment among Republicans that the gun ownership is an inherent right. That is, Republican legislators are not voting in support of gun ownership just to appease the powerful gun lobby, but they are voting that way because that's actually what their constituency is demanding.
Actually Pneumenon's post suggests the heart of the matter: conservatives and their knownothing party, the GOP, are in the grip of gun culture and really don't care if their gun "rights" require that several dozen schoolchildren get massacred every couple years or so, along with thousands of other people. They are fetishistic and beyond rational discourse.
But that's not America. Most Americans don't have strong feelings about guns one way or another. There are more pressing issues for them. The reason gun fetishism isn't a more important topic has a lot of causes, the dominance of the rightwing noise machine and its ability to distract people is one. But for whatever reason, normal Americans don't usually vote based on gun issues - the gun nuts do, and that's why they are able to dominate legislatures, especially in benighted areas of the country like the South.
But if the OP means that anybody who votes for a conservative is complicit in the death culture of America's advanced capitalist danse macabre, I'll agree to that.
Ah well. That's a far more responsible conclusion.
I knew you'd agree with me.
What good does making statements like that do except preach to the choir?
For that matter, what good does it do to state that Americans like murder when there are other possibilities, such as Americans think the 2nd Amendment is important and understand it a certain way? There's lots of things in modern life we accept as necessary despite the negative consequences, such as driving cars. That's because we think cars outweigh the disadvantage of pollution and deaths or injury from accidents. Similarly, enough Americans, or at least those who care about the issue, think that the right to own guns outweighs the terrible tragedies when certain individuals get their hands on guns and shoot up the place.
You might disagree with valuing a right Americans have considered fundamental since our founding, perhaps because your country does not, and that's fine, but to say that we like murder is a complete mischaracterization. At any rate, you're only rallying your own troops, who already agree with you. It has negative impact on the opposition. Not a single gun owner will be persuaded otherwise by being told they like murder.
Excoriating evil in words is good for the soul and the first step in defeating it in practice. How issues are framed determines how they get argued. The gun issue should be framed as the freaks and fetishists against rational normal Americans who want to go about their business without worrying a gun nut will shoot them.
Gun nuts reject the argument that they believe their guns are worth any number of mass murders. I reject it too. Their guns, after all, were not the guns used in the mass murder. (Unless they were, then they should be arrested, immediately.)
Almost certainly, they are not weighing their guns and mass murder on the sale scale. That's appropriate. Just because one has a dick doesn't make one a rapist (some radical feminists to the contrary). The rightness of owning guns is one issue, the wrongness of mass murder (or one murder) is a another issue. Almost everyone will agree that mass murder (or one murder) is a bad thing.
If you, Landru, owned 100 rifles, shotguns, vintage revolvers, and modern Glocks, that in itself wouldn't make you a threat to anyone--especially if you had your guns locked up. The locus of the problem wouldn't be YOU -- the individual, law abiding gun owner -- even the law abiding gun amasser. The problem is elsewhere.
What we have here is a "supply side" problem. Gun manufacturers (and ammunition makers) are making far more guns and ammunition than are needed for the 33% of the population (or 40%, to be generous) who wish to own guns, and they are making way too many inexpensive models which are (I presume) of very little interest to gun nut gun collectors.
As long as gun manufacturers (or small-drone makers, or bow and arrow makers, or manufacturers of laster pointers or just about anything else) can sell what they make, it isn't of that much interest to them what happens to the product. Pilots have reported incidents of being temporarily blinded by small laser devices directed at them, and close calls with drones have been reported. Having one of the larger small drones sucked into a jet engine could be a disaster. Do the drone manufacturers care? Probably not all that much.
Apparently assholes who point lasers into cockpits or direct picture taking drones into the flight paths of big jets don't care all that much either. But the assholes are the FIRST guilty parties.
What gun manufacturers are guilty of is flooding the market with cheap products, and so are people who use cheap guns to kill themselves and each other at a disturbingly high rate. Police who don't investigate and prosecute murderers aggressively are guilty. Terrorists are guilty, of course. Officials who wittingly aid and abet terrorists are guilty.
But people who own guns (and don't kill people with them) are not guilty.
Look - I'm as anti-gun as one can get, but it seems obviously to me that there is a difference between owning a gun for self defense, owning guns because one has a gun fetish and is a gun nut, AND owning a gun with the intent to use it on other people. I am totally against even law abiding people carrying guns, concealed or otherwise, because in the open, urban market place, the kind of incident where one might use a gun if one had one, and that may lead to a killing (or an injury) are very frequent.
Most of the people using guns to kill each other, or themselves, are not gun fetishists. Why would a gun nut want to kill himself and leave behind the guns he loves? He wouldn't. People who are prepared to commit murder, are probably not very attached to the gun they use. It suddenly becomes a liability and needs to be gotten rid of--by giving it to somebody else, if nothing else. One can always get another gun for the next murder (thanks to a saturated market).
It would be nice if rounding up all the gun nuts, gun fetishists, and crypto-fascists and putting them on a remote island would end the slaughter of what... 30 to 35 thousand people a year? But it wouldn't. Restricting the supply of guns would help guys in the ghetto live longer and if the supply were restricted enough, a lot of people wouldn't kill themselves. Killing someone else, or one's self, is quite often a rash decision. Absent a gun, the decision can't be made so easily.
No, this is not freedom, and it's not even condoned by the constitution. The absolutely astounding interpretation of the second amendment by the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller, which ruled for the first time that individuals possess the right to bear arms in self-defense, is an egregious and laughably absurd decision.
The second amendment guarantees the right to bear arms only in the context of a well regulated militia. It does NOT guarantee the right for any individual to bear any arms they want. This means that five out of four judges on the Supreme Court possess zero reading comprehension and are likely shills for the corporate gun lobby. So before you start damning American culture as if you speak for it and all Americans, you must know that the American constitution and very many Americans do not agree with current gun policy in this country.
Does it? How has the Supreme Court and constitutional scholars traditionally understood the issue? You make it sound like it was well understood to just be in the context of maintaining a well regulated militia, until the most recent court. But individuals have retained the right to own guns long after the US had an official military.
Yes, and wrongly. Read the second amendment and see if you can interpret it in any other way without twisting the meaning of the words beyond recognition. If the framers wanted to bestow the right to bear arms to individual Americans, then I don't see the necessity of including the clause about a well regulated militia at the beginning. Its inclusion is therefore significant. Keep in mind also that the militia spoken about effectively became the National Guard. Those belonging to it most definitely have the right to bear arms, as does the military. But the aforementioned decision is the first time the Supreme Court has ever said that individual Americans have the right to bear arms. That means that prior to it, it has never explicitly confirmed or denied whether the second amendment implies this, despite the fact that individual Americans have owned guns (again, wrongly, I would say).
And it's also good for making the opposition look bad. If we're on the side of righteousness and those evil, selfish, greedy bastards are out to drink our children's blood, well then, we don't need to bother with their side of the matter. We can just dismiss it.
Quoting Landru Guide Us
Yes, indeed it does. As is so often the case with controversial issues. So let's frame it as good guys vs bad guys.
Quoting Landru Guide Us
Not, it should be framed as people have a different understanding of the second amendment, which has to be balanced with what to do about the problem of gun violence.
Conservatism is evil, so to the extent conservatives disagree with me on their odious exploitative politics, they are evil.
Why do you find that hard to accept? Are you arguing that the exploitative, boorish, knownothing positions of conservatism aren't evil, or are you arguing we're not allowed to call it that?
Yeah, that'll work. It's worked so far. Politics isn't about reason; it's about framing issues. The right knows that, which is why we don't have gun control in a nation where the overwhelming majority want it. They just don't vote on it. Why? Because the way you frame the issue fails.
That's exactly how you win political arguments - by delegimizing the other side. Ever hear of Gingrich's GOPAC memo? Of course you haven't. You want to bring a knife to a gun fight, to use an appropriate metaphor. Progressive need to do to the Right, what the Right did to progressives via the GOPAC memo.
This is knownothingism. The best scholarship shows that the South wanted the 2nd Amendment (it's based on the Virginia Constitution written by George Mason - the largest slave owner in the country at the time) to prevent the North from limiting white death squads (militias) used to hunt down and kill fleeing slaves, and put down slave rebellions.
The South -- and Mason in particular - was paranoid about slave rebellions.
The sanitized NRA version of a militias being citizen soldiers is pure historical dreck. The 2nd Amendment was about one thing - southern slave owners killing and exploiting blacks. Your narrative is nonsense.
I thought I made it clear: we shouldn't try to convince the gun nuts. They're hopeless. The point is to convince the majority of Americans who in fact want gun control but don't vote on that issue.
The way to nudge them to vote on the issue is to use the meme that the other side is totally illegitimate and freakish. It happens to be true, but that doesn't matter. Political memes don't work because they're factual, they work because the frame the issue in terms that people resonate with. They tell a story.
The narrative here is that the US is in the thrall of NRA paranoid gun nuts who hate democratic values, not to mention minorities, women, workers, etc. It happens to be true, but that's besides the point. The point is to never mention guns without this frame.
Ah, so a controversial issue and it's entire history can be boiled down to just one thing.
Quoting Landru Guide Us
By best, you mean the scholarship that boils it down to one thing.
No, I'm arguing that you call them that for the same reason conservatives call you evil.
Jesus man, this is not promoting a healthy democracy. I get it that the other side decided to play mean and dirty in their interest of power, but this kind of framing doesn't help. It divides people. It polarizes. The problem with your average conservative is that they hear too much of that crap on their radio and TVs. Then they end up thinking liberals are their enemies, and an evil amongst them that needs to be dealt with somehow. That goes nowhere good.
Thing is, I've read all the traditional stuff you've read. But you haven't read anything else. Indeed this is the first time you've heard about the real scholarship. And still you're so sure of yourself.
So you're projecting.
Read some of this, and then get back to us, a sadder but wiser man.
http://www.carltbogus.com/guns
http://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=432106001013079074025065070001092113002025093035058063121102109120074116091086100066102029123005005035117116006091082103064123013008066061053120103098102004126070059052008009006086111083019070089092029064126076065100119022126003096090029123096111123&EXT=pdf
http://rci.rutgers.edu/~tripmcc/the_amicus_curiae_project/heller-racove_et_al.pdf
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/13890-the-second-amendment-was-ratified-to-preserve-slavery
And that's why although the majority of Americans want gun control, they don't vote that way, because gun control advocates need to be more "reasonable" and provide more facts. Jeez.
I'm sorry I don't think you know how politics works in a democracy. It's more like selling used cars. Vulcans don't vote in our elections.
This is the real world, muchacho, and you're in it.
I don't think this matters. But in any case, I do think there is a difference between killing people and not killing people, exploiting people and not exploiting, enriching the rich and empowering the poor. I call the former evil. But I'm happy just to call it freakish conservatism. Same thing.
Apparently you find it difficult to make that distinction. I kind of feel sorry for you that you are unable to commit to an emancipatory view of the world, and are stuck on some abstract rules of debate as if politics were a game.
I do know that. I agree my original post was hyperbolic, and I'm not saying every American is complicit, I'm aware many Americans are horrified by it. What I'm saying is the manifest and obvious unwillingness of a democratically-elected government to regulate the distribution of weapons, amounts to a tacit acceptance of high murder rates by guns. Basically, those in high office shrug it off, every time. 'You can't interfere with human rights', they say. The gun lobby equates ownership of weapons with freedom. And that meme is incredibly hard to shake: to challenge it is to be portrayed as anti-American.
And after every major incident, applications for gun ownership spike upwards as more people seek to 'protect themselves'. So it's a vicious cycle.
After the Sandy Hook monstrosity, my son, who lives in the USA, called via Skype, in tears. And he's a tough kid, he doesn't let things worry him. He said, surely this time, something will be done. But the 'great groundswell for change' just broke against the doors of the House and precisely nothing happened. Save for the NRA pushing Open Carry laws and insisting that more people ought to have weapons.
Hence, the OP.
I just think the kind of rhetoric you're using is very divisive. The other side using the same tactic. The result is to polarize people. But hey, if it wins elections, right?
I'm not to the point where I would claim that a vote for "a conservative" makes one complicit in shooting people, as I'm constitutionally [get it?] opposed to excess in rhetoric. But Cicero's cui bono? and this link suggest what may be behind the fear motivating the increase in the purchase of firearms.
A political campaign might (or might not) be an appropriate place to totally delegitimize the opposition, and brand them as 'freakish'. Memes are good for that. The Irresponsible Right Wing in this country is quite practiced at this: "Guns don't kill people, people do." or "Obama Care is destroying the nation."
Inserting memes into even reasonably serious barstool discussions, however, is not appropriate. It's inappropriate because such rhetorical devices retard rather than advance understanding. It is true that freakish gun nuts exist, (Christ, I'm related to some of them), but using such rhetorical devices here isn't helpful or appropriate at all.
And in political campaigns, I want to see zero uses of phrases that merely resonate with the audience and have no truth value whatsoever. We aren't working for the Ministry of Truth, are we?
"Obama Care is destroying the nation." is a patently absurd, non-truthful statement. Obama Care just isn't destroying the nation. It may not work well, it may be too little to late, or it may have other flaws, but causing the nation to crumble, no. "Guns don't kill people, people do." is a very popular meme and has done a great deal of damage by asserting another logical absurdity. On the one hand, guns don't up and kill people on their own volition, true enough. But then, nobody ever suspected guns of doing that. On the other hand, guns are the most effective tools an individual can buy for the purpose of killing other people. The more automatic, the bigger the magazine, the more people one can kill. A gun in the hand can kill a lot of people, and quickly.
Blasting out memes to counter memes might work for a while, but ultimately it delegitimizes the process of reasoned discussion, reasoned persuasion and dissuasion, and reasoned decision making. There's way, way too much of that sort of dishonest crap as it is.
Instead people do and we really don't need more understanding of the gun issue to act on it -- we all know what the facts are. They're just being ignored and debased by conservatives. You don't fight memes with more fact -- memes are not factual. You fight memes with memes. Every important change in our society - from the end of slavery, to women's suffrage, to the New Deal, to Civil Rights to environmental protections - happened not because of reasoned debate, but because of compelling narratives that moved the voters to vote in an emancipatory and humane way.
I think our situation proves my point: most Americans want gun control. But we don't have it. The reason is not that we don't have enough reasoned debate about it. The reason is we have too much. Reasoned debate in politics is bringing a knife to gun fight. Conservatives bring guns to the fight. Progressives must do so also. (Oh the irony of the metaphor).
Yeah, so like the people who think that Obama is a marxist Kenyan Muslim, that lesbian witches caused 9-11, and that scientists are conspiring to impose socialism by faking global warming, need to reasoned with so that they don't get offended and "polarized".
That ship has sailed, my friend. Welcome to tea party America. We either defeat them completely or we'll all be in the Hand Maiden's Tale.
Possible complication: couldn't you damage your side's credibility by talking that way? There is a fine line, after all, between "impassioned" and "raving."
What raving are you talking about? Gun nuts are in fact dangerous freaks. People who think lesbian witches caused 9-11 should be laughed at, not reasoned with. People who propose tax cut for billionaires are morally odious. I could go on.
Give me an example of what isn't true here?
Just as an aside I often hear people say that, yes, conservatives are extremist, but look at all the extreme ideas proposed by "leftist" Democrats. I ask them to name one. They never can.
I can say something true in a manner, or use a conversational tone, that makes me sound hysterical. You can fight memes with memes, sure, and propaganda with propaganda - but if you sound like you're using propaganda, then you're not an effective propagandist.
I really don't think propaganda works that way, and I would invoke George Lakoff in that regard, and the fact that conservatives continue to win elections and policy decision saying absolutely crazy things. Gun policy is a case in point.
As long as progressives do the stupid thing and fight memes with facts (Lakoff analyzes why this fails completely and gives the issues to the Right), they will continue to lose on policy. And policies matter in people's lives. It matters whether we have gun control or not. Since the archaic rational debate method doesn't work, and since we even know why it doesn't work, to continue to engage in it seems almost cowardly to me, or even worse, unimaginative.
There is a question of tone. I can say something batshit insane and, if I say it the right way, it will sound reasonable. Conversely, one can say reasonable things and sound like a lunatic if one uses the wrong wording.
Quoting Landru Guide Us
Do you think that this statement is going to help or hurt your credibility (and, by extension, that of your movement) with people here?
Sorry, Pneu, but credibility is an archaic term in the world of modern politics in the digital age. How much credibility did Bush have? And he won the election. How much credibility does Trump have with his bizarre boorish counterfactual comments? None. Doesn't bother his supporters. I predict he'll win the GOP bid handily. And of course his competitors are equally freakish.
In any case, I'm not running for anything; I'm just doing my little part to delegitimize the conservative freakazoids who have used their usual memes on this thread and elsewhere. If somebody doesn't like it and wants to do position papers backed by empirical studies, no skin off my nose. Experience shows, however, that that technique fails and is a terrible waste of time.
My view is progressives want a powerful uncompromising critique of the Right, attacking it mercilessly and never accepting the frame of its memes. Besides it's fun. If you think that results in a loss of credibility (I don't see why), that's OK. I don't think credibility matters one wit in modern politics. Just look at Berlusconi and Putin and Trump. This is, after all, a political thread.
Quoting Landru Guide Us
This is where the error is. Credibility may be archaic in the world of modern politics, but I'm talking about your audience on this board.
Donald Trump isn't merely babbling nonsense. In his person and in what he has to say he represents something particular to a certain aggrieved strata of white, losing-class Republican. He represents a hope to several million of these people because he is uttering statements which resonate with the aggrieved Republican's frustrations. These aggrieved people have real aspirations, real desires, preferences, and so on, and they feel like they are really getting stepped on left and right. I may not feel like they feel, you may not feel like they feel, but neither of us is one of them.
So, attempting to win MEME VS. MEME, is not very different than trying to win by slinging sticky, stinky, slimy mud at one's opponent. (Naturally, they sling raw manure; we sling pearls of wisdom and shovels full of facts.)
Elections of persons is prone to be about symbolic representations. "Who the man really is" is less important than "What does the man represent to whom?" The electorate seems to behave more rationally when the election is about facts (bond issues, recalls, referenda, that sort of thing). If the citizens of West Cupcake, Nebraska believe their schools are adequate as is, they probably won't buy the school board's memes in favor of a new building. Electing the school board might be all about memes, though, because that's all about persons and symbolic value.
I reckon Trump scores 100% against that description.
Yeah, exactly. That's how you win modern elections, not to mention the broader agenda of the "universe of discourse" about what vision we have of the future. It's not for wussies. There are no Vulcans voting in our elections.
These are a minority, and always will be. The problem is they vote. The logistical problem for progressives is getting the majority of people, who support progressive policy, to the voting booth. The way you do that is to lead, to fight, to bash the other side and show people that you're angry and you're on their side and something is at stake.
I attribute the rise of the rightwing agenda in this country less to the rightwing (they have always used their odious rhetoric and techniques) but to progressives who fail to oppose that agenda with passion and vehemence and even with white-hot hate.
If progressive leaders aren't willing to take on the weirdos of the Right, then why should they expect young people and minorities and women to follow them.
Carville knew how to win an election: you attack, and then you attack and then you attack again. It's what the GOP does. It works. It was pitiful watching hapless Kerry being swiftboated and not having the balls to call Bush an AWOL coward whose Daddy got him out of Vietnam. Honestly, if you want to be a leader, you gotta bash the opposition's head.
The 'progressive movement' does seem to have lost its balls somewhere along the line. Probably a result of straddling the fence so much. A lot of progressives seem to have a relatively weak belief in their own values. No fire in the belly. They have been 'going along to get along' too long. Tepid conviction just doesn't rise to the occasion of squashing their opponent's soft squishy ideas, like one steps on vermin in a damp cellar.
So, guess it's time to send the squealing Republican pigs to market.
How about this for a co-meme-mercial: Silent camera pans over Repubican meetings, featuring their candidates, no sound except for a recording of pigs grunting, snorting, squealing -- what pigs do. Brief video insertions of pigs squabbling in the trough. No captions till the end... "This is the best Reublicans have to offer."
Or, borrowing something from Dorothy Parker and Talulah Bankhead...
Have actors made up to match candidates, have a young Republican and a Bernie Sanders type meet at a doorway. Young Republican (Rubio? Fiornina?) graciously says, "age before beauty"' Sanders (or Clinton) character says, "Pearls before swine." and walks through open door.
VOTE DEMOCRAT. VOTE PEARLS, NOT SWINE.
I prefer being armed.
Something like 2,000,000 criminals in the last year were stopped from carrying out a crime when they were confronted by an armed citizen of the US. Now compare that with gun deaths (or even the far greater amount of deaths caused by drivers on their cell phones).
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/91da/afbf92d021f06426764e800a4e639a1c1116.pdf
Good point. However, I doubt there are less criminals doing crimes in 2018 than in 1995 and I doubt there are less armed citizens in 2018 than in1995.
If the 1995 study holds any water then even if one halves it to 1,000,000 for 2018 the "the point" is still "The" point.
Is that your argument?
Do you think taking all guns away from legal owners will reduce gun deaths?
Maybe you should state your argument to save me guessing.
Are you suggesting we are considerably more evolved in 2018 than in 1995?
I have no doubt that there are definitive inverse correlations between literacy, philosophical-intelligence, and gun ownership/promotion.
We must get used to the fact that some 80% of humanity are functional but of limited intellectual capacity, and hope that evolution will continue/succeed in its work before the idiots destroy global ecology.
M
How might any of these issues be mitigated or addressed via the insanity of 'locked and loaded' public idiocy? I doubt very much that the US government is cautious in respect of foreign or social policy simply because the public have more guns than toasters?
There are deeper issues here
M
What are these deeper issues?
Americans might well be considered as being at war with themselves at present, when one considers the death rate from Obesity, Lifestyle, addictions, RTA's, gun violence, racism etc... once again these are all superficial manifestations of deeper issues.
M
Do you think sharing important ideas might in fact help resolve these deeper issues you have?
People don't have guns for the sole and somewhat idiotic reason of potentially over-throwing a corrupt government, they have them for deeper issues that are in the same realm of ignorance and unhappiness.
M
That's just human life, really. One can be quite philosophical and thinking deeply while walking down the street, maybe even feeling happy, resolved and care free, and then some driver mounts a sidewalk shouting allahu akbar trying to take you out (and not to a restaurant), or any other cultural message they may want to convey.
So there's that possibility.
In terms of tyrannical governments these have always arisen in our human history, and one of the things they first do is take citizen's weapons away to make it less hazardous for them.
Essentially it's planet of the apes, this earth.
It is the same with our military. Plenty of the “pro life” contingent are not pacifists. They accept the loss of innocent life in a military action. There is a term for it, collateral damage.
It is not that the US accepts murder. Its citizens accept killing of innocents to protect their lifestyle. The game is to maximize the chance for survival of the innocent life you are sympathetic to.
This also brings to mind the ideal that states one should not make empathy one's politics.
I would agree in that people's empathy does not result in equal treatment.
We have been having the mindless screaming that NFL players have 1st Amendment rights while on the clock that their employers should not interfere with.
Then Roseanne happens, and the same freedom lovers flip and say, "Wah, wah, wait. Employers SHOULD interfere with their emplyee's free speech rights!!!" She was off the clock.