Don't get me wrong; I'm NOT asking any good,
red-blooded Americans to turn in their guns. With modern governments banking so
many effective tools of tyranny, anything serving as a check on that daily
compounding despotism is a major asset in "We the people's" ever-eroding balance
sheet. In fact, it's quite revealing to hear Obama, a trained Constitutional
lawyer, discuss the Second Amendment in terms of hunting and self-defense while
strangely omitting the ONLY rationale for a right to bear arms--tyranny-fighting
militias--our Founders put there. I'd bet a CEO's golden parachute that Obama's deficient
knowledge of Constitutional law ISN'T the problem here.
(Whoever's wrong on this bet obviously can't afford
to pay. The loser should just pony up for a few "rounds.")
Irresponsibly, I digress. While the thought of
organizing effective militias in an all-pervasive surveillance state armed with
nukes and drones may indeed merit ridicule, the high civilized art of character
assassination is NO laughing matter. In fact, what may be the least forgivable
vice in a small, neighborly community is arguably the highest civic virtue when
facing a gaggle of irresponsible, bought-off elected officials hell-bent on
destroying civilization and trampling underfoot all legitimate dissent while
they do it. We should feel NO moral qualms about assassinating character when
the "character" in question is largely a product of televised propaganda and
when those feigning true character are those in whom our world most requires
"the real deal"--elected officials, in other words, who've been literally
entrusted with the fate of civilization.
See, history DOES repeat itself, but sometimes it
takes a deeply trained instinct for what's perennial (usually fostered by a
solid liberal arts education) to peg the enduring pattern in the ever-changing
weave. Never is this statement truer than in an age of advanced technocracy,
when the latest vision of the technorati--hardly always for the
better--revolutionizes our landscape daily. But modern technology--above all,
communications technology--has created one safeguard that's a potential potent
cure for many of its own vices: its ability to create global community. Not
that such community is an acceptable substitute for face-to-face intimacy human
beings must always find in fleshy "meatspace," but the cyberspace version of
"presence" does have distinct, unprecedented advantages as a POLITICAL force
multiplier. But to deploy these political cyber tools most effectively, one
must combine them with a crude but perennially effective communal weapon forged
long before hunter-gatherers huddled round fires in caves. I refer to the devastating
moral control weapon of gossip.
Gossip more powerful than guns? Where did I ever get
such a half-cocked idea? Among other sources, from psychologist Jonathan Haidt's
The Righteous Mind, a brilliant but
highly accessible political book most Americans--especially rabid partisans--should
deeply take to heart. But here, I'm not concerned with Haidt's piquant diagnosis
of our political ills, but with his illuminating discussion of the role such
"control mechanisms" as gossip, shaming, and shunning have always played in
creating livable human societies. See, despite sharing every organism's innate
disposition to self-preservation and self-seeking--and hence, to moral
"cheating" when not under others' close scrutiny (a bent clearly evident in
politicians)--we humans have also evolved spontaneous feelings of guilt and
shame that suit us to live (and thrive) in communities. So important are these
feelings as part of humans' evolved mental equipment that we regard people who
lack them (even if they compensate by considerable charm and social slickness)
as somehow deficient, diseased, and ill-suited for the best things human life
has to offer. We speak of them as "sociopaths" and "psychopaths."
Unfortunately, a certain number of these, craving power as an ideal outlet for
their unchecked predatory selfishness, gravitate toward politics.
Now, I seriously doubt most of our politicians are
psychopaths or sociopaths, but I do suspect that today's dysfunctional U.S.
government, largely a self-serving tool for the predatory "1%," attracts more
of these conscience-challenged misfits than a healthier political regime ever
would. So, in a majority of cases, even now, some widespread gossip and public
shaming will prove painful enough to the relevant politicians to offer an
effective means of behavioral control. This is precisely why our First
Amendment provides for freedom of speech and assembly, a free press, and a
right to redress of grievances; we get to give our leaders feedback, and to
dress them down when we're seriously peeved. That's exactly why, as our
government grows more tyrannical, outraged protesters are herded more and more
into "free speech zones" where they won't be heard, and where a corporate-owned
mainstream press won't report their outrage. Or will report it, but only in a
snarky, dismissive manner. In this way, politicians who ARE capable of shame hear
only the flattering drivel of 1%ers' lobbyists and ever more rarely the scathing
moral outrage of the sorely abused majority.
Before sighting my main point--the present
superiority of gossip to guns--squarely in my crosshairs, I need to stress the
effectiveness of shaming gossip even against our political psychopaths. Granted,
they may feel no shame or guilt themselves, but they do need the widespread
good opinion of others to function in a world where moral considerations DO
move the vast majority. To win elections, say. And this is precisely where the
power of modern communications technologies (above all, the Internet and
alternative media) to spread unfavorable gossip--to propagate "malicious memes"--can
potentially annihilate the power-serving laudatory blather we hear from the mainstream
press.
So when I declare the Second Amendment "dead," I by
no means question the usefulness of guns as last-resort backup, nor deny the
recent, rather dubious triumphs of the NRA. Rather, I'm adopting the standpoint
of modern-war pacifism--for armed resistance against our admittedly tyrannical
government amounts to civil war--and asking whether the hideous destruction of
modern war should be risked without exhausting ALL other means first.
Relentless character assassination brought down the apparently omnipotent Boss
Tweed, so we, assisted by modern media, should consider making it our weapon of
choice.
