Ronald Reagan knew when he first started automating data analysis in the 1980 presidential campaign that potential voters like feeling they are in control. Owning a gun feeds this fantasy, a deadly weapon in hand gives a rush of penis-compensating awesomeness, but also purports to soothe our insecurity that Willie Horton, freshly paroled by liberals is lurking in the bushes with his beady black eye on our white women. This was key to Scalia's unusual carve-out.
Reagan knew well how to play the cowboy, portraying many a formulaic wild west hero in a spate of Hollywood flicks. This tapped into our tradition of rugged frontier individualism on the surface, but more subliminally reminds us of a "white is right" and "might is right" history. The USA was built on gun violence and racism as we exploited brown people the world over to spur "growth".
Guns harken back to our Manifest Destiny, now called American exceptionalism, right in the home, helping us puff out our chests as we ignore the stark reality that we are a much more likely to see a family member shot than use a gun in a "citizen intervention" case. These rare self-defense anecdotes are great for sales, allowing purchasers to imagine themselves in the super-suave hero role as they support an industry that made $1.7 trillion dollars in the last year.
But the reality is that the gun remains close at hand as families go through good and bad times - it's there when depression hits and leads to a predictable 19,000 firearm suicides per year. It's there when arguments or fender benders escalate violently, for all of our worst moments.
It's there when spouses are caught cheating, or teenage hormones rage, or when small children explore the house. Just two years ago, a childhood friend of mine going through a separation took his life when he heard he was also losing his job. The gun was there before a friend could be.
Promotion of armed self-defense has increased access to firearms and proven to be a remedy whose side effects are worse than the cure. Looking at the stats year after year, we are willingly hurting the many as we seek a benefit for the few.
If we cling to our Second Amendment right to bear arms, the Constitution demands we train and prepare to revolt when our leaders fail to abide by the law, as part of a well-regulated militia. In a sense, it's happening - it is the truly the people keeping unchecked power from eating itself and everything else, but it's getting increasingly difficult.
President Obama recently blustered that he could not change Washington from the inside, on one level an apparent cry for help, on the other, a warning reminiscent of Eisenhower's 1961 call for "vigilance" of the military-industrial cancer consuming Washington. So who or what drives Obama, Bush and Congress to strip our rights away?
Cherrypicking Tyranny
Concerning "tyranny", the government has already violated the Constitution, many times over. When the founders crafted rules for impeachment, they expected it to be used frequently. But because of all-too-effective PR, government has made us servile, unable to question a War on Terror at odds with our Constitution and driving massive debt.
Reagan saw to it that pro-war propaganda was in place long before he ordered acts of aggression overseas. He even used taxpayer money to seed this, ordering restrictions lifted on political talk radio and manipulating national literature distribution to ensure hawkish ideas thrive on our bookshelves.
But since the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, Bush era propaganda such as multicolored alerts froze all the so-called red state patriots into total "terrorized" compliance.
The typical NRA member and the demographic living in "shotguns and pickups" zipcodes were so afraid of Muslim extremists, they welcomed unprecedented surveillance, rendition, and enhanced interrogation. They continue to defend and argue for these policies, even as they roundly disapprove of Congress and absolutely despise the current occupant of the White House. Ironic is too weak a word.
This has been the biggest abuse of power in our lifetime, the new idea that terrorist acts constitute endless 'war' which suspends our civil liberties, treaties and normal checks and balances. Themselves well-armed, the typical red state voter was so pussifed by the specter of Osama bin Laden he swallowed whole the major changes to our civil liberties on the fast-track, without realizing how it affects their rights.
The Patriot Act, torture, detainment, the Iraq War, the drone program, the warrantless surveillance were all high crimes and misdemeanors sold to gun-toting Republicans as necessary to guard against an unseen enemy, these Islamic terrorists in sleeper cells. The 9/11 response of "shock and awe" stated actual intention to intimidate suicide bombers, a laughably tragic failure of logic. Why a suicidal maniac would fear their enemy, I'm sure I don't know.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
4
3
2
