John Chuckman

COMMENT TO A RE-PUBLISHED ARTICLE BY THE LATE ROBERT PARRY IN CONSORTIUM NEWS

 

“More Second Amendment Madness”

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/08/10/more-second-amendment-madness/

 

“… false notion that the Framers of the U.S. Constitution incorporated the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights so an armed population could fight the government that the Framers had just created.”

 

The historical truth in a nutshell.

However, when you are dealing with fanatics and ideologues – literally, adherents of a secular religious cult such as American Patriotism – truth has about the same impact as pointing out the absurdity of Lot’s wife or Noah’s Ark or Jonah and the whale or the loaves and the fishes.

There is a fundamental divide in human beings when it comes to matters of belief, and especially intensely-held and fear-forged beliefs. Rational argument, evidence, and logic all get tossed, rejected vehemently because they conflict with what the adherent wants to believe, the adherent perhaps not even fully conscious about why it is he or she so desperately wants to believe.

It is just a fact that an awful lot of Americans want guns. They have paranoid fears, and guns make them feel more secure. They are conditioned by a national history and mythology literally built around the importance of guns, in everything from the frontier and cowboys and cavalry and Rough Riders to Prohibition and threats of communism and terror. And today’s vast American military and empire only provide a constant reinforcing sense of how important guns are in the affairs of state.

This issue is one of those which mark the limits of human rationality.

Considering that we are descendants of animals related to chimpanzees, it perhaps really should not surprise anyone.

Just think of how charming and appealing a chimpanzee can be with its big eyes and smile and stunts and remarkably human child-like intelligence.

And yet we now know from long and careful studies in the wild that part of the chimps’ basic behavior includes clans marching out for surprise attacks on neighboring chimp clans, fracturing skulls and driving the living from their homes and food supply. Sound familiar?

The problem around guns and violence in America is the country’s existing form of government. What the early government, so admirable in high school civics textbooks, began morphing into not many years after its creation.

You have an aristocratic, imperial form of government, itself hostile and belligerent to so many things in the world. It governs an empire built on violence, both inside the continental United States and outside in its possessions abroad.

It is truly incapable of dealing with many domestic matters. It is not really interested or concerned, except for a brief show of mollifying speeches to constituents and meetings after some terrible mass killing. Then it’s back to business as usual.

America’s government responds to money and power, and not to ideas or ideals or human appeals. It pretty much lets “the people” continue in whatever unpleasant social situations they find themselves – violence, injustice, lack of medical care, poor public schools, immense poverty – while it wheels and deals in the lives of still other people living abroad.

Just think about it. What could you actually expect at home from the kind of politicians who created Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and dozens of coups and blockades and interventions, killing and maiming millions? Hurling millions from their homes as desperate refugees? Refugees then often despised and ridiculed by the very same politicians? That, sadly, characterizes the very fabric of American government.

The kind of politicians who tolerate, and even praise as “restrained,” the behavior of Israel at Gaza where it literally ambushes unarmed crowds, week after week after week, demonstrating for rights? And the kind of politicians who continue arming Israel, heavily, even in violation of their own “showcase” laws concerning the use of exported American weapons?

No, you cannot expect much at home from a government displaying that kind of behavior abroad.

And, no, you cannot possibly have rational gun laws in the domestic chaos of jurisdictions that is American society. Where any one local jurisdiction even tries – as in some cities responding to their desperate residents – it is surrounded by a sea of gun-running and legal sales from neighboring jurisdictions. It can achieve nothing, except providing the true Patriot fanatics with yet another example of how gun control fails, something for them to smirk at.

Gun control must be national, but what are the chances of that in America?

_______________________

Response to another comment who used the term ‘snowflake’ to describe the concerns of Consortium News with guns:

 

Truly, for those aware of the realities of history, few expressions are more devoid of meaning than “rights.”

It remains a favorite American refrain, but it is about as meaningful as “privacy” is today with the NSA and intrusive corporate internet monopolies.

Such words resemble those of a child about Santa Claus.

Talk about “snowflake.”

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2019/04/12/john-chuckman-comment-a-few-observations-on-the-idea-of-rights/

 

https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2016/04/22/john-chuckman-essay-the-illusion-of-rights/

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY MICHAEL TOMASKY IN THE GUARDIAN

Michael Tomasky,

I take some exception to your argument. It is true that humans become used to repeated horrors.

How else explain the unbelievable courage of Russians in the face of horrors beyond imagination on the Western Front? How else explain the endurance of Palestinians today after a half century of non-stop abuse?

But the truth is Americans haven’t the least idea what real terror is.

Despite all the hype over 9/11, the deaths represented about 7% of what Americans kill on their highways every year, about 2 months worth of the murders on the streets, Americans killing other Americans, that go on year after year.

Even in WWII, America’s losses were on the order of 1/2 of 1% of the 50,000,000 or so souls lost.

The pictures of 9/11, repeated ad nauseam on television, and the idea that so many victims were privileged middle class helped boost a disproportionate response.

People were driven by foolish paranoid fears into doing truly ridiculous things, much as they did during Orson Welles’ old broadcast adaptation of War of the Worlds.

There is a history of paranoid responses in America – going back to the 1950s witch hunts and to the Alien and Sedition Acts of John Adam’s time and to the immense fears of slave revolts that constantly weighed on the minds of Southerners even before the Revolution – which I believe is in part explained by the gene pool of Puritanism. The Puritans were truly ferocious, unpleasant people, filled with paranoid fears of hell and devils, and they made a heavy contribution to early America.

Mr. Black’s comment reflects on something George Bush said not long after 9/11. He had not been an especially popular president – not even elected of course – but after those events his polls rocketed. Americans seemed to cling to the legs of this pathetic man like frightened puppies. On a trip to Chicago he was quoted as having said he felt as though he had won the trifecta.

We also heard from a major figure in the Pentagon a couple of years ago that another terrorist event of large size might cause the military to take over from civilian authority. Scary stuff, but spoken by a calm general.

So I am sure the possibility for an ugly response remains in America, perhaps indeed a horrible response grounded in the ignorant idea that “we didn’t hit them hard enough the first time.” John McCain would be the obvious beneficiary of this.

Many forget how threatening the American response was. I was writing pieces at the time trying to promote a sensible, legal and diplomatic response, and I received truly ugly e-mails. According to reports out of Britain, the government there was induced to join along in Afghanistan out of genuine fear that America was itching for a nuclear response. Remember Rumsfeld’s Nazi-like call for all prisoners there to be killed or walled away? And shortly after 3,000 of them disappeared, reportedly suffocated in vans out on the desert.