The horrible shooting in Nashville has dominated my thoughts the past few days. It feels as if the Republican response has been more shameless than before, and while I will never get used to news reports of children gunned down in schools, they certainly seem to be getting used to it. One jackass legislator said there’s nothing we can do about it, another wore an ar-15 pin on his suit, and I watched a Representative blame it on… Biden and the border “crisis.”
It’s insane.
I will never get used to this, and I will never understand how 35-40% of the country, when given a choice, choose guns over people every fucking time and have the power to block the majority who choose otherwise.
Chetan Murthy
I think a lot about it, too. And it’s not just that it’s a death cult, based in madness and not at all in reality. Economically, the choice to carry guns, to stockpile guns, requires that everybody else do the same thing (for self-protection). And that’s a deadweight loss to society. The training time, the money, the resources devoted to guns and ammo, all take away from investments in things that could productively increase the output of society, the goods and services that could improve the lives of every member. It’s madness.
It just doesn’t make sense as a way to organize a society. Sure, you want weapons, for *external* defense. But *internally*, you want for conditions to be sufficiently peaceful, sufficiently *trust-ful*, that people can engage with each other without distrust, without fear, and hence, can focus on productive interactions. That these gun-humpers simply can’t see the obvious truth of this, tells me that they don’t really understand how to run anything. How to run a society.
TerryTime
jackmac
It’s not just choosing guns over people, it’s choosing guns over CHILDREN.
bbleh
Well, I’d start with individual and institutional anxiety about sex in the US, part of which — both as cause and as symptom — is widespread immaturity concerning masculinity, add panics about Others that periodically grip big chunks of the country, and … voila! Gun as (lethal) security-blanket.
When they talk about prying it from their cold, dead hands, they mean it. They’re fkin terrified.
Sister Golden Bear
I’ll never get used to it either. I just hope that when there’s sufficient numbers of kids who’ve been traumatized by both actual shootings and active shooter drills, who can vote, they’ll vote in politicians who will put an end to this death cult madness.
Ksmiami
Everything about the GOP today is an oxymoron- emphasis on moron. We can’t move forward as a society with this revanchist party in power. Or even in existence.
TerryTime
@Sister Golden Bear: I’m hopeful Gen Z can make change.
Chetan Murthy
@Sister Golden Bear: I remember that was the hope, right after the Stoneman Douglas massacre: that it’d been about long enough after Columbine, that an entire generation of parents who were raised with “active shooter drills” were sending their kids to school … to do the same. But somehow it didn’t work out.
And maybe partially that’s because there’s this “authoritarian personality” that is formed under pressure and abuse as a child, and transmits it. Maybe part of what’s going on, is that all this stress and trauma upon children is creating young adults who are more conservative, more authoritarian? Idunno. Just speculatin’ on a hypothesis, in the darkness.
bbleh
@Chetan Murthy: I have a long-standing hypothesis that underneath a lot of authoritarian tendencies is fear, and that the fear has its roots in infancy or childhood, and then it’s compounded as they are confronted with an increasingly complex world with which they have not been trained to cope.
I don’t think most people who want to impose their views on others coercively do so because they’re psychopathic Bond villains. I think they do it because they’re scared.
(Which is not to say that some of them aren’t psychopathic Bond villains. And they keep showing up in places like state legislatures and Congress.)
Mike in NC
The odious Newt Gingrich is still considered an “elder statesman” of the corrupt GOP, and was a close confidant of the Orange Apeman of Mar-A-Lago.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Children are dying in schools because Republicans not only refuse to do anything about it, they are loosening gun laws in the states that they control to make it even worse. Same with shopping, the workplace, theaters… you name it and Republicans have stepped up to make sure that it’s more likely every day that you and your loved ones will die from gun violence. All in service to secure their place at the public teat of an elected position in government.
Republicans have made it clear that our children will die to secure the rights of the American gun owner and there is nothing that they will do to stop it. That asshole who said that was asked how kids could be protected and he said that his wife and himself are homeschooling their child to protect it from free thought… I mean gun violence.
Republicans are burning down civil order and domestic tranquility to secure control over everyone.
cain
@jackmac: When you’re ready to rip children away from their parents at the border – children have become nothing more than a political prop.
In fact, the right is using anything and everything as a prop. Your protecting children from so called groomers AKA drag queens. You’ll pass laws and laws, on something that has absolutely zero documented evidence on – but will not spend any time on something that regularly kills children and adults.
Elizabelle
The WaPost has been running a long series on AR-15 America this week.
Of course, it got bumped off the top of their website by headlines of this latest AR-15 mass murder.
And: the congressman in whose district this latest shooting took place is the dreadful Andy Ogles. (1) His family posed with guns and their Christmas tree in 2021 and (2) Ogles has been unmasked as a serial liar about his past. Yeah, that guy.
Nashville News Channel 5:
Businessman, economist, cop, international sex crimes expert? The stories of Congressman Andy Ogles
Congressman places block on confirmation of educational credentials, but NewsChannel 5 digs up an old résumé
Red state America is electing psychopaths to Congress and Senate.
It is maddening. I am sick of these lying fuckers.
cain
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Until every voters shows up and votes – it’s not going to change. Even that is difficult because of the tricks that they are trying to do like defund elections, reduce man power, make sure there are long lines.
I’m hoping eventually the demographic change is going to make it harder because even with all the roadblocks there are still more of us than there are of them.
That’s when they are going to full fascist and anti-Democracy.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@cain:
They are already leaning full fascist and anti-Democracy so I see it as a sidestep for them from where we are now. They are desperate because they know that the long term demographic changes are not in their favor, thus their incessant squalling. The Senate and gerrymandered districts are the only thing that is keeping them in power now.
I hope they burn every bridge to their future but at the same time, it’s going to fuck us up as a country for some time.
BruceFromOhio
Burning it all down takes time, this is just a stop along the way.
We’ve been sleeping. Sure its fiction, but swap a few nouns and its Gaia-damned close enough.
Fight these bastards!
different-church-lady
All I can tell you is The DSM needs some heavy-duty revision in a way that includes a lot more of the population.
Gvg
I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist but it seems awfully convenient for these anti trans baiters that there should finally be a shooter that supposedly is one just when the conservative hysteric cheerleaders have worked so hard to get a lot of people worked up about it.
I don’t think they could pre arrange it, but leak the story or encourage it, they could do that. I am feeling very cynical about it. And yes I am worried about an attack on trans people soon in retaliation.
Somehow we need to disrupt their propaganda echo chambers that rot so many brains. Track the money too. Going after Alex Jones was a good move for instance, we need to do that again and again. Hope the dominion lawsuit works. We need some stronger finance tracking laws.
Ohio Mom
There’s more to the Republican obsession with guns than this but I can’t help but think they are particularly unmoved by school shootings because they hate public schools. Yes, this last shooting was at a private Christian school but it was the exception.
Anything that makes parents less comfortable with sending their kids to public school — not just shootings but also books about non cis-gendered people, as well as litter boxes and similarly made up nonsense — contributes toward the privatizing of the public school.
bbleh
@Gvg: Jeez, I don’t think it’s conspiracy-theorist at all. Of course they’re gonna tie a massacre to their latest scare tactic if there’s any way they can, both to distract from the facts and to promote their propaganda. Hell, they’ll even manufacture stuff if they need to. Why would they do any differently?
I have to say, though, that the MSM don’t seem to be buying it. I see little or no mention of anything “trans” in their reporting. I do see mention of an “emotional disorder,” and what I think is entirely appropriate questioning as to how someone under treatment for that could obtain weapons so easily, but little or nothing outside the fever swamps about “trans,” their strenuous efforts notwithstanding.
They’re gonna tell each other what they want to hear. That’s what they do. That’s what they need to do. But outside their little bubble, this particular lie doesn’t seem to be getting much traction.
Aussie Sheila
A society that cedes the right to lawful violence to private actors like the US is more than half way to decomposition. It is simply incomprehensible to anyone that understands the necessity of domestic peace and tranquility to civilisation, that an advanced democracy could cede so much latitude to the rule of people with deadly weapons designed for the battlefield.
I don’t believe the 2A is the whole explanation either. Switzerland permits weapons (under certain circumstances) to be in peoples home and possession, but doesn’t have the level of gun violence of the US.
The one and only good thing our conservatives have ever done here, is the relentless shut down of easy ownership of guns in Australia. It took a massacre at a tourist resort in Tasmania in the late 1990s, and the political class here across the political spectrum came down like a hammer on both the guns and easy ownership, as well as nipping in the bud any burgeoning growth in US gun culture here.
My heart goes out to the parents of these children. The physical and psychic pain of the grief is just terrible to contemplate.
Ohio Mom
@Gvg: The nuts are one step ahead of you. In bouncing around the internet, I happened upon a tweet which retroactively describes half a dozen school shooters as trans, with doctored photos of them dressed accordingly.
Anyway
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
And the fuckers in the SC(R)OTUS have the gall to overrule sensible laws in states they don’t control! ^%$*@
ZenCloud
Every time there is another mass shooting involving children I get so distressed and anxious. I feel so powerless to do anything but I can’t be right? I mean we have to do something? I NEED to do something, does anyone here know of any organizations that are working on talking to legislators ? That are applying pressure? I will send letters/emails every week, every day if I have to…
dww44
I can no longer tolerate listening to elected Republicans use the most contorted and twisted logic to avoid admitting that it is the guns. That Tenn. politician interviewed on the steps of the capital who said that nothing could be done about this tragedy and that for Congress to do something about it was itself “the” problem and was then asked by a reporter about his own children. His response….We homeschool her… . He showed no empathy whatsoever for the families that just lost their children. And, who does he think he serves? It’s not the people.
At the same time, here in the South all our Republican legislatures are voting to remove money in huge numbers from our public schools and giving it to private ones. Also voting to give themselves the authority to removed elected judicial DA’s and other from offices if they don’t like them. That’s what Netanyahu is trying to do and mass demonstrations forced him to postpone. Who’s writing the Republican playbook now? Maybe someone ought to be outing that think tank…that billionaire… Just like Ginni Thimas got outed today in the Post.
I have to agree that it is unfathomable that people continue to vote these folks into office. Do those voters actually support these extreme policies? I’ve concluded that a sizeable minority actually do. Woe is us. We need to get angry from the other side and co-opt their culture wars and turn it back onto them. We need to become righteously angry and vote them out of office. It will be long and hard but it must be done.
laura
Maybe it’s fear, maybe it’s the crisis in masculinity, maybe it’s the easy credit, but I cant help but feel that a whole lot of the 2A fans want to kill people so much that they are more than willing to capitalize on the deaths of children as reinforcing their fervent wish to kill people and a plausible reason why their killing is the right thing to do and exercising their Rights to do so with little to no consequence.
Ruckus
@bbleh:
I think this is a good take but I don’t think you go far enough. I think that a lot of this is that life changes and evolves. It used to happen at a much slower pace but world wide communications and that small portable computer in your pocket or purse that we call a phone and all of a sudden that book that is well over a thousand years old, with stories of olden times that many people read and get parts read to them on a weekly basis and which forms concepts of how life should be, is only a small if any part of many lives. Add in all the differing concepts of interpreting said book or other books with similar concepts and that life goes around much faster and can be far, far more deadly than even when I was a kid being dragged to those readings and you can see that maybe, just maybe the conservative people, while they live in the current world would really like it to be how they are told it was, which often downplays the ferocity and shortness of life that was.
What I’m trying to say is that I think you have a very valid point but part of the problem is that for some it’s difficult to tell the difference in life as it was and as it is today. The changes didn’t happen over night, it took centuries. But today it takes less than decades and it is a far more crowded world with more of the same horrible people and far more opportunities for them to screw up every damn thing.
And think how hard it must be for someone who does not have the tools to cope with a faster, different life that actually demands more attention and shouldn’t need the same level of fear.
So yes, they are scared. We all have a subset of that because how do you know that the tire of the car next to you won’t come off on the freeway and catapult you and your car into the air or any of the numerous ways things can go wrong. We can be healthier, we have the means. We can be safer, we have the means. And guns is not actually a way to make us all safer as most of us likely know, it is a way for more of us to die for no fucking rational reason.
YY_Sima Qian
In the meantime, some members of Congress on laser focused on banning TikTok to “protect the children”.
Shalimar
A matter of time before they start sending Christmas cards with guns held to their smallest children’s heads, just to troll liberals.
Eolirin
@YY_Sima Qian: Meh, most of the impetus to ban TikTok comes from the NatSec concerns (and possibly the economic ones from all that ad money going to Chinese instead of US companies), not any desire to legitimately protect children. That’s just dressing and it’s transparently bullshit.
Though if there are legislators who’re being consistent about Facebook/Instagram/Twitter being just as bad, I’ll take them as genuine on on issue.
We’d be living in a better world if they all went away honestly. Whatever good they do is massively outweighed by the damage.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
I m old enough to remember when the would blame massacres on the lack of forced school prayer
cain
@Odie Hugh Manatee: I look forward to their demise. They have built no bridges to the younger generation – it’s all Gen Xers and Boomers at this point and religious millennials around in the rural areas.
Eventually all they have is rural areas and there is just no money there for grifting and there are no prospects – people will continue to move to the cities. It’ll just be illegal labor and industry farming areas but not a lot of votes.
Groucho48
I think a lot of the impetus to ban Tik Toc, for Republicans, anyway, is that a lot of trans, gays and other out groups use it as a place to support each other and to post videos of them just doing ordinary, friendly people stuff, which is counter to the message the right wants people to believe. Not sure why so many Dems want to go along. As far as I can tell, the worry is that someday Tik Tok might someday pass on to China the same stuff that all social media sites pass on to corporate America.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Groucho48: I’m all for banning tic tacs
YY_Sima Qian
@Eolirin: Most of the impetus is coming from the lobbying dollars of Alphabets (Google) & Meta (Facebook). However, in the recent House hearing for the TikTok CEO, more than a few Reps. (all Rs I think) were emphasizing the “protect the children” angle (yes, transparent BS).
IMHO the NatSec concerns are vastly overblown & theoretical, the actual data security & data privacy concerns are not being addressed (that would run counter to the interests of Alphabets & Meta).
I don’t use Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Douyin (TikTok is actually the “rest of the world” version of Douyin), or Weibo (Chinese equivalent of Twitter). I only follow people whose views I find informative in Twitter. I am told Douyin is quite addictive, as well.
Back to topic, I find myself becoming numb to news of mass shootings, even at elementary schools, which is pretty disturbing. Every time another massacre makes it into news in China (which they always do), I get challenged by my wife & M-i-L on why I want to take my daughter to the US for education from junior high on.
sab
@Ruckus: Like you, I am so old that I remember when there were gun control laws and guns weren’t everywhere. Guns were rare. Hunters knew what they were doing on gun safety, and nobody else had guns
ETA My children and grand-children don’t really believe me but even in the US it didn’t used to be like this. When I was in high school the really tough kids maybe carried switchblades.
TriassicSands
What I AM USED TO is the response of Republicans. They dig deep and all they can come up with are “thoughts and prayers.”
Cole linked to a clip of Ken Buck. He hasn’t gotten as much publicity as some of the soulless, mindless Republicans, but he yields nothing in depravity to his more “famous” Republican peers.
TriassicSands
I’m pretty sure the best way to deal with gun violence in America is to pass new tax cuts for the wealthy and shred the social safety net (which is already in tatters, since that is the way it was designed).
TriassicSands
Be careful what you wish for. The biggest problem we have now is the abysmal quality of the electorate. The people who aren’t voting are probably even worse than those who are. Unless there is vast improvement in the electorate, we’re going to teeter on the brink of disaster.
If all the people who could vote, did vote, and voted in a rational manner, then Republicans would never win the presidency. But many of those who are already voting are focused so narrowly that they hurt their own prospects when they vote. Those who don’t vote now, would likely be even worse. Ignorant, stupid, and disengaged people are easily misled.
Aussie Sheila
@TriassicSands: With respect, I disagree. Where I live it is compulsory to attend your voting booth and be marked off the rolls. In the event 95% of Australians vote in elections, state and federal. I truly believe that the habit and practice of voting actually improves the quality of people’s decisions.
It is the variability and happenstance of the US electorate, together with gerrymandering that produces the idiotic results in the US. That, and the terrible first past the post voting system. Australians are not different human beings than USains. They just have better, more democratic institutions and expect a lot more from their governments, state and federal.
Aussie Sheila
@Aussie Sheila: Oh, and before I forget, blaming the electorate reminds me of Bertold Brecht. Dismiss the people and elect another.
No, it is not the ‘people’ as such. It is crappy institutions and anti democratic impulses that allow malign actors much more lee way than they have in a polity that is jealous of its rights to a free, fair and universal ballot.
sab
OT Totally off topic. I am almost 70 and looking back at my life.
I had a couple of totally amazing teachers that utterly changed my life and my thinking. I also had a number of very good teachers who made a huge impression. I also had some not so good teachers (meant to be good teachers but didn’t have the spark) who were caring people who quietly stepped in to help me against bureaucracy, unbeknownst to me.
All of these people helping students like me just get through the system and be educated. Unthanked by all ( many or most) of us.
One of the things I want to tell my grand-daughters is there are a lot of people out there working hard to help you succeed.
I never thanked any of them. Advice on what my grand-children should do to acknowledge the help and thank those who gave it. Or maybe not, since it was their job?
I have huge regrets, accepting help that I assumed was owed to me but was them going above and beyond
ETA I am going to repost this in more appropriate threads. To teachers out there this has bothered me for years. Grateful but not supposed to acknowledge the gratitude until it is too late.
sab
@Aussie Sheila: Thank you. Electorate are just people being people living their lives.
Torrey
@sab: I’ll probably reply again when you repost this, but I wanted to get a couple of thoughts down now.. A friend of mine pointed out that the best way to write a thank-you note was to make it short and get it done: “here’s what you did for me; here’s what it meant.” “I’m sure you didn’t think anything of it at the time, but you’re helping to solve this administrative problem for me was a great help. I was at a loss to figure out how to manage it. Thanks for being my superhero that time.” “I just wanted to drop you a line and let you know that I still think about X, Y, Z that we talked about in your class. From my current vantage point as a working adult, doing adulting, I find I have a new appreciation of what I learned from my high school classes, especially yours. Thank you for everything you did to help us learn.”For what it’s worth, I find that counting forward from my own time as a student (late paleolithic), kids today are much more likely to express gratitude.
And yes, a thank-you note coming well after the fact about something so routine I’ve forgotten it is still really meaningful.
lowtechcyclist
As an old Jesus freak, the pro-gun people who upset me the most are white evangelicals, who are supposedly Christians. Because how can you say you’re following Christ if you value guns, or at least the freedom to own them, whichever, over the lives of actual people who you say Christ loves? If you put the love of things ahead of your supposed love of your neighbor…hell, I give up.
I obviously disagree with eversor, but I’m not all that hard on him because I can totally understand where he’s coming from. (Also, the notion that he’s attacking my faith…well, you can’t, so attempts to do so just don’t matter to me. But that’s another story.)
sab
@Torrey: Back in the day we didn’t even have addresses. Could have sent to the schools but they might have been lost. Lame excuse but that is all I have.
Baud
@sab:
That’s cool. I’ll try to show more respect to that portion of the electorate that values guns over kids. They have the right to make that choice.
sab
@Baud: Wow you never manage to underwhelm my expectations.
Go forward with your plans for an authoritanian state that meets your own personal expectations.
ETA Last polls I saw not that many want guns. Most don’t. They just need to think their vote matters.Currently nothing suggests that their votes matter.
Baud
@sab:
If that’s what the electorate wants, who am I to oppose their will?
sab
@Baud: You are nothing perhaps.
sab
@sab: I feel like I have stumbled into objecting to Baud when I mostly agree with it.
eversor
Guns are needed so Christians can enforce their traditional values, by Jesus, of patriarchy and gender roles on the rest of us. Unless you are willing to get rid of Christianity completely there is no solution. If you are not willing to get rid of Christianity you are pretty much a school shooter yourself.
Geminid
Among other news sites, Politico reports that “according to two people with direct knowledge of the plan,” Senator Fetterman will return to the Senate April 17, at the end of the upcoming recess.
lowtechcyclist
@eversor:
Man, I rubbed the lamp, spoke your name, and poof! there you are. ;-)
But seriously, in the 18+ years since the assault weapons ban went away, does it seem like their traditional values have been winning, or have been slipping away? If this is their plan to enforce their dominance, it doesn’t seem to be working particularly well.
Matt McIrvin
@Odie Hugh Manatee: At some point, they’re going to try to figure out a way to keep everyone currently under 20 or 30 years old from voting in perpetuity. Or, at least, as many of them as possible.
Some kind of obstacle that makes, say, voter registration so difficult to do that almost nobody can manage it, but grandfathers in currently registered voters. Strict voter ID laws are obviously a step in that direction. And they can justify it with conservative arglebargle about how voting shouldn’t be too easy, cheapens the sacrifices of our troops and the Founding Fathers, etc., etc.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: What I’ve seen in Virginia is the political evangelicals and the more secular “Tea Party” radicals making common cause to take over the Republican Party. They may have had disparate and contradictory beliefs at one time, but the lure of power is so great they’ve adopted each other’s political ideology to form an amalgam.
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
Which reminds me, my FIL in Florida, who’s in his 80s, just got a card saying he’s got to register to vote again, even though he’s a regular voter. Maybe the current plan is they’re making everyone register anew, and expecting that their voters will be more willing to go through the hassle than ours will.
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid: Oh, no question about it. Compared to white evangelicals’ having buried the hatchet with Pentecostals, conservative Catholics, and even Mormons, that’s nothing by comparison.
I remember when speaking in tongues was of the devil and the Pope was the Antichrist, in the eyes of these people. But white evangelicals and nonreligious rednecks have always been part of the same cultural Borg. I see that all the time among my in-laws and other people we know in central Florida.
Kay
Unfortunately I think “guns” mean much, much more than “guns” now on the Right. They’re a symbol, maybe THE symbol of being on the Right and are proxy for an entire set of Right wing beliefs. This happened over the last twenty years and I think it’s impossible to change at this point without some cultural shift where Right wingers themselves start to reject how central weapons are to their ideology.
Have any of you watched “Yellowstone“? It’s incredibly popular among Right wingers where I live – and I live in a 75% Trump county so it’s incredibly popular. My husband and I watched 4 episodes. It is almost comically violent. The entire show consists of improbable plot lines that end in gun battles. It’s as if there’s a central character “Gun”, playing a lead role and the writers have to showcase Gun in every episode. That’s all of Right wing culture now. A silly, improbable romanticized version of a shoot em up Western.
kalakal
One of my biggest problems with the moar guns! mind set is the underlying logic that results in the syllogism:
” I need a gun(s) to protect my family & myself from scary other people out there”
” Everybody should have a gun(s) with no restriction”
therefore
” Now that all the I and all other (scary) people have guns I am safer”
Guns exacerbate the problems of anger management & impulse control. In the UK if I got really angry with someone and lose my temper I could hit them (and probably get beaten up).
In the US I can pull out a gun and start blazing away.
In both cases I might feel sorry when I calm down but the harm done is very different
If that psycho in Vegas that shot up a concert had access to guns he could have stood on his 32nd floor balcony screaming insults and waving a bread knife all night long with no harm done*, as it was he killed 58 people.
* It may have led to some awkward moments with room service
Kay
The other way I guess that guns could not be so strongly identified with the Right would be for the gun culture (the adoration and lovingly curated collections, the clothing that celebrates guns and violence, the marketing, etc) to be adopted by the Left. That might break the hold somewhat.
But maybe not because gun culture is also hugely celebrated and central to CRIMINAL culture and that didn’t stop Right wingers from putting it on their Christmas cards. There’s two groups who worship guns in this country- Right wingers and career criminals. When you see the prosecutions case in criminal cases there are often gun fetish photos and videos like those of Right wingers- weapons displayed on a bed (criminals add money to these photos) people waving around weapons to music, like that.
schrodingers_cat
@kalakal: That is their cover story. I really think that RWNJs want guns to intimidate and bully people they don’t like. Especially the AR-15 aficionados.
Its not hunting or fighting government tyranny or whatever other BS they spout.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: The intersection set of RWNJs and criminals is substantial. They worship criminality, violence and being able to do whatever they want.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: Possibly. It’s well-known that propensity to vote increases with age, and one of the reasons is that retirees don’t have something more pressing to do with their time. Young adults, of course, are most likely to not even be allowed to take time off from work to vote regardless of what the law says.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
The similiarity between the photos and videos and glorification of gun collections among far Right gun nuts and ordinary criminals in this county is really amazing. Both groups always, always display them on a bed, which probably means something.
I wonder if the far Right gun nuts don’t intersect with the criminals online so don’t know that their gun worship culture is identical to that of their local meth/ fentanyl or auto theft specialist. I bet the criminals know it. I bet it intersects the other way.
Torrey
@sab:
You were asking about what to tell the granddaughters going forward. They’ll have an easier time expressing thanks, since they’ll have their teachers’ emails, and a quick thank-you via email is easy to do. And, as I said, I’m hearing the young folks these days saying “thank you” a lot more.
Yeah, I remember the old days. I sent a few notes, and I have regrets about not having sent more. But there’s nothing much I can do about it at this point. (I should add that sometimes the old profs seemed kind of embarrassed at receiving thanks, so maybe don’t beat yourself up about it. They may have felt they were just doing their job, and an extra “thank-you” was not only not expected but something they didn’t quite know how to react to. Expectations about how teachers and students relate have changed over the years. )
BretH
My 18yr old daughter has the same response to the older generation’s failure on climate change: don’t fu(king ask US to fix your mess!!!
She’s right, it’s tempting but cowardly to hope the youth will somehow save us.
kalakal
@Kay: One thing that struck me about the US vs the UK was the wearing of Camo gear. In the US militias and RWNJs generally love to dress up as cosplay commandos in a lot of overpriced ‘tactical’ crap. In the UK, espescially from the mid ’70s onwards a lot of young people wore/wear army surplus gear because it’s cheap and practical, every town had Army Surplus shops, usually pretty down market. It was really common with punks and the genres that followed, wearing the full set would be weird but I wore bits of DPC ( Disruptive Pattern Camoflage) gear for years. The Mods loved Parkas ( based on WW2 based USAF coats) and at one time we all looked liked extras from Ice Station Zebra. The one thing it wasn’t was an attempt to look like soldiers, more of a subversion of military styles. It’s strange to me to see people who claim to be wildly individualistic deliberately regimenting themselves in uniforms the way RWNJs do.
kalakal
@schrodingers_cat: I don’t think it’s any one factor,but you’re right for the vast majority of them at the base of it there is always
They have a very strong gang mentality
Denali5
Wish I were younger. I would leave this broken country. A country who tolerates child murder is not a place where I want to be. Even in the blue state where I live there are many more big black trucks than my hybrid Prius on the road. It is easy to see where this is going. When the criminals are not prosecuted because of death threats, what does that say about our justice system? When Florida and Texas have so much influence on the rest of the country because people move there to take advantage of their low taxes, what is the future for the rest of the country?
bbleh
@Ruckus: Oh I concur. One of the reasons we’re seeing SO much widespread panic, and such a proliferation of truly wack conspiracy theories, is the rapid increase in the pace of technology and in particular of communication. Not only are things happening faster in many ways, but people hear about FAR more of them than they used to. Any disturbance anywhere in the country, or even the world, is the subject of a nightly news story or a viral Facebook post, and the bloodier the better. And people’s interpretations, many of which are uninformed or just damn dumb or both, follow quickly via social media. It’s a FLOOD of information, much of it biased or faulty or both, and our social structures and behaviors simply haven’t caught up fully.
The good news is, younger people — say, under 35 — are used to a world where information arrives in a constant flood. They’ve developed the behaviors (and defensive structures) that allow them to cope without losing their minds and crouching in a corner gripping a weapon. Ergo, this is a passing phenomenon, and in, say, 50 years — assuming we last that long — it won’t be nearly as much of a problem.
President Johnny Gentle (famous crooner)
To them. every gun massacre is an opportunity. “The only way to stop assault rifle violence is to make sure EVERYONE has assault rifles!”
To them, any assault rifle restriction is admitting libs were right and refusing to admit that is well worth its price in dead kids.
To them, any assault rifle restriction is political suicide.
To them, every gun massacre takes the heat off them, because it becomes so common and so normalized that we eventually give up on thinking things can be better.
But most importantly, to them, school massacres happen to OTHER people. It’s sad, of course (thoughts and prayers!) but THEIR kids are homeschooled or attend secured private schools, so gun massacres won’t really touch THEIR walled enclaves. Pieces of shit like Boebert can prance around the Capitol with their AR-15 pins because murdered schoolchildren are all just abstraction to them–or worse, a “false flag”–because it’ll never happen to them.
TheTruffle
@Sister Golden Bear: Hopefully. Uvalde, however, went overwhelmingly for Greg Abbott, even after…what happened.
The sad thing is that there are majorities in some states that are terrified of drag queens and CRT but couldn’t care less about the NRA buying off their state governments. Basically, the state governments are giving them what they want.
@Denali5: If I had to live my life over, I would have immigrated and given up my US citizenship decades ago. I’m serious.
@bbleh: Given the young people reaching voting age, I’m hoping it is under 50 years. More like 10-15 years. Some of them will be turning 18 soon. The first Gen Z politician elected to Congress is a liberal Democrat from Florida, after all. Maybe they will run for local and state level races to end this insanity.
Not that it will matter. If the fascists aren’t voted out, the union dissolves. Those are the options. And I think we may really see the breakup of the US in our lifetimes.
TheTruffle
I just thought of something. The Democratic Party needs its own Contract with America, complete with some common-sense ideas. I’m old enough to remember the GOP’s Contract with America. Now that the party is a squalid mess, time for a new platform that would reflect the (hopeful) majority of the people and could be used by Democrats running anywhere.
RevRick
@Odie Hugh Manatee: The gun culture is part and parcel with fascism, which thrives in a state of radical individualism, where nobody can count on or trust anybody else, so everyone is at war with everyone else. The gun culture likes to cite the notion that “ a well-armed society is a peaceful society,” but that quote is from a dystopian novel, where everyone lives in fear.
They claim owning their guns is all about their rights and freedom, but what kind of world have we created where you can lose your right to live in the blink of an eye to some guy with a gun, and what kind of sick freedom is it to live under a state of constant threat?
My only answer is that we have to unmask the demonic gun culture for what it is, denouncing the lies about the so-called “good guys” with a gun and exposing the sick fears and warped hero fantasies that undergird it.
If you arm yourself to the teeth with murder machines (and yes, I prefer to use that terminology), you are, by definition, one sick, evil fuck.
Say it to their faces.
And as far as this claim they’re doing so to defend themselves against some tyrannical government, point out that the militia described in the 2nd Amendment and elsewhere in the Constitution was designed to protect us from gun nuts like them, AND they really don’t care about tyranny, but would be it’s willing Brownshirts if they could.
strange visitor (from another planet)
@RevRick: wow. this thread is probably dead but, dude, that is SO not what fascism means, how it thrives or anything of the sort. try this:
“fascism comes from fascio, the Italian word for bundle, which in this case represents bundles of people. Its origins go back to ancient rome, when the fasces was a bundle of wood with an ax head, carried by leaders.”
the individual stick could break under stress, but the group wouldn’t. get it?
strange visitor (from another planet)
duplicate comment?
BellaPea
The asshat who said “nothing can be done” about school shootings is unfortunately my representative, Tim Burchett. He is a total right-wing idiot who keeps getting re-elected to numerous political offices. He recommended that Lauren Boebert be invited to the Knox County Republicans Lincoln Day Dinner, and guess what! They invited that moron to be the special guest speaker. I hate every one of our Tennessee federal elected officials with the exception of Steve Cohen, who keeps soldiering on.
TheTruffle
@BellaPea: How does he keep getting elected? Anyone to run against him? At least I’m glad the idiot’s comiments are going viral.
Paul in KY
@Aussie Sheila: That takeaway after the absolutely horrific mass murder there will not be duplicated here (I think). When you look at the number murdered and Australia’s population, the same level of killing here would be approx 1,400.
JPL
@Paul in KY: This one bummed me out, because nothing will be done.
GA Tech football coach, gave an impassioned plea addressing the shooting. He sobbed halfway through it.Just google his name and it will pop up but have a hankie ready. Brent Key
Paul in KY
@Kay: ‘Howdy pardner, I’m Gun Gunnerson and I’m gonna shoot up all your stuff to make it my own. That’s how we do it in Gunville.’
Paul in KY
@kalakal: Fascists looove uniforms, dontchaknow?
Paul in KY
@JPL: Will have to check that out.