Filmmaker Michael Moore was on Chris Hayes’ MSNBC show on Tuesday, May 24, 2022. It was the day of another senseless mass shooting in the United States. The targets this time were once again school children. Twenty-one people in all killed in the town of Uvalde, Texas.

Moore is clearly for strong gun control legislation, but he didn’t say what so many proponents of gun control frequently say, “I believe in the Second Amendment.”

Instead, Moore pointed out how the Second Amendment has essentially given pro-gun people free license in opposing meaningful gun control. Then Moore raised a fascinating hypothetical question. “What if bullets had not been invented until fifty years after the U.S. constitution was written?”

His point was that gun rights are completely different from any other rights in the constitution. All of the other rights would have been relevant in the times of Greece, or Rome, or really any time. These non-gun rights could easily have stood alone without the Second Amendment.  This doesn’t mean that people could not have had guns once they and bullets were invented. The difference is that there would not have been a constitutional guarantee to be able to purchase and possess guns.

There are many who say that even with the Second Amendment, there is no such guarantee. The wording is thoroughly ambiguous:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

It may seem at first that this amendment guarantees people the right to bear arms, but the context is having a well regulated militia. So does the right to bear arms only apply for those who are in a militia (armed forces) or the United States, or can they own guns regardless of whether or not they are in the U.S. military?

This argument is one which America’s gun owners have won. Much as those who favor gun control want immediate new regulations, it appears that it will be years before Congress passes meaningful legislation or the Supreme Court chooses to value public safety above gun rights.

There are numerous reasons why the gun advocates are currently winning this dispute:

1. They own most of the guns, and that frightens many who want to limit gun rights.
2. The roots of the Second Amendment have a great deal to do with slave owners’ rights and needs to hunt down runaway slaves. Creating the constitution required considerable compromise to get southern states to agree to the document. Protecting their control over slaves who were already in the United States was essential to southern states’ acceptance of the constitution. In contemporary American society, many White Americans feel that they need to have guns to protect themselves against Black Americans.
3. Unlike most other democratic countries, the United States has this peculiar institution called states rights. In many cases, the rights of states supersede those of the federal government. For example, the state of Georgia can make a law stating that it is illegal to bring a glass of water to someone standing in line to vote, and currently there is nothing that the federal government can do about it. In the absence of strong federal gun controls, the states pass more “gun rights.”
4. The U.S. Senate favors small and southern states, and those are the states in which gun rights are most deeply cherished. This makes it very difficult to pass meaningful gun control legislation. It might be possible without a filibuster, but that arcane rule is cherished by senators from small states, rural states and southern states.

The United States did not come close to writing a constitution in a time before guns and bullets were invented. The first guns were invented in China in the 10^th Century. Michael Moore was not trying to point out that we almost avoided having the Second Amendment in our Constitution. What he meant is that it is significantly different than any other part of the constitution, and had guns not existed, we would have found a way to agree on the constitution.

It’s one of those “What ifs ….” that keep us thinking. It’s interesting talk, but regrettably, only academic now. Barring some sort of unforeseen circumstances, we’re going to have to live with lightly regulated guns for some time which means that we’ll have more Uvaldes and other mass shootings. The “thoughts and prayers” come easily; meaningful gun control is stymied by the oddity of having the Second Amendment in our Constitution.

The post What if Guns and Bullets Had Not Been Invented Before the Constitution Was Written? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

School shootings in America have proliferated. In response, individuals and for-profit companies have developed a plethora of products aimed [pun intended] at reducing the carnage. Are they necessary? Do they work? If one of them saves a life, it may turn out to have been a worthwhile purchase, whatever the price. But I can’t help thinking that these defensive approaches, while well intentioned, and perhaps effective in some instances, miss the point. It’s clear that in 2019 America, creative minds, inventive marketers and politicians call themselves ready to address everything about gun violence—everything, that is, but the guns.

Instead of focusing on reducing the number of guns in circulation and enacting stricter laws for owning guns, this is what passes for protecting students from school shootings. Do we really have to live this way?

Stop the bleed

Stop the Bleed is a national awareness campaign intended to encourage bystanders to become trained, equipped and empowered to help in a bleeding emergency before professional help arrives. Through the program, healthcare professionals teach effective blood-stopping techniques to teachers, parents, students and members of the general public. [I’m not saying this is a bad idea; I’m just saying that it’s very sad that there’s a need for it.]

Bulletproof hoodies

A woman whose neighbor was shot and killed in an attempted robbery has started a company that makes bulletproof hoodies to keep people of all ages safe. The California company, Wonder Hoodie, now produces the bulletproof protection in smaller sizes for young children and teens in response to the rash of school shootings.

Bullet-resistant classroom blankets

Vox describes Door Shield is a panel of “soft armor” — used as cover by police SWAT teams when they raid buildings and exchange gunfire. You nail the shield to a classroom door. If a shooter breaks into the school, teachers lock the door, and with one hard tug on a canvas strap, you release the bullet-resistant panel, which rolls down and covers the door. “Even a child can operate it,” claims the manufacturer. The list price per blanket is $1,995—pretty pricey for a school with lots of doors. The manufacturer says, “It’s cost versus value: the cost of [Door Shield] versus the value of a life.”

PepperBall

Billed as a solution for “schools that don’t want teachers to carry guns,” the PepperBall launcher is a flashlight-shaped weapon that shoots bullets filled with pepper spray. Originally, it was marketed to campers and truck drivers, who wanted non-lethal weapons to carry on the road. After the shootings at Parkland, the manufacturer saw teachers as an additional market for the product.

Bullet resistant backpacks

The manufacturer calls its armor-plated backpacks, “the backpack that will save your life.” They retail for between $150 and $500. Originally aimed at law-enforcement personnel, after a recent school shooting, the manufacturer began designing a kid-sized version.

Rocks, bats and hockey pucks

While they’re not high-tech inventions, in the category of “Whose Brilliant Idea Was This,” are the primitive weapons that some school administrators have put in classrooms for kids to use in case a shooter shows up. Oakland University in Michigan gave out 3,500 hockey pucks to faculty members and students in November 2018 to throw at a gunman. Since 2016, a Pennsylvania school district has kept 5-gallon buckets of river rocks in classrooms. “If an armed intruder attempts to gain entrance to any of our classrooms, they will face a classroom full of students armed with rocks. And they will be stoned,” David Helsel, superintendent of the Blue Mountain School District in Schuylkill County, has said. Finally, Millcreek Township School District Superintendent William Hall wanted to show that safety policies had changed from hiding from a shooter to running, fighting, and surviving. So he distributed 600 mini baseball bats, and encouraged staff to keep one in every classroom of the Pennsylvania district’s 11 schools.

Fear sells. Gun laws, apparently, do not.

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In 1800, the urban population of the United States was 6%; 94% was rural. According to the 2010 census, 81% of Americans live in urban areas; only 19% in rural areas.

When I was growing up in the 1960s, 60% of the population lived in urban areas. What did I know about the Second Amendment? Virtually nothing. I’m sure that I read it as we studied our constitution, but it was an outlier, having virtually nothing to do with my life or the rights that I wanted to protect. Guns were something that we saw in westerns or World War II movies. I knew of the N.R.A., but only because their “seal of approval” was on some of the paraphernalia that we used at summer camp for very tepid riflery shooting.

As the statistics above show, I was growing up at a time when America was becoming more and more urbanized. One of the challenges that our country faced was how we as a society could better adapt to more condensed living. Violence in our streets was becoming more of an issue, particularly in those inner-city neighborhoods with high levels of minorities who were poor. Riots broke out in Harlem in 1964, in Los Angeles (Watts) in 1965, and scores of other major cities by 1968.

While many of us believed that better policing would be helpful, the main lessons to be learned was that we were a racially divided nation and poverty was far more endemic among those with darker skin.  The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, known as the Kerner Commission, was released almost fifty years ago to this very day. Among its recommendations were:

“Unless there are sharp changes in the factors influencing Negro settlement patterns within metropolitan areas, there is little doubt that the trend toward Negro majorities will continue.

Providing employment for the swelling Negro ghetto population will require …opening suburban residential areas to Negroes and encouraging them to move closer to industrial centers…”

These are suggestions of reason, of compassion, of common sense. They reflect a vision of America in which non-violent steps are taken to address the existing problems of violence. Nowhere in the Kerner Report is the Second Amendment mentioned. That, truly, would have been an outlier.

Fifty years later, we are hearing from more social observers that as a country, we have regressed over those fifty years. Respect for our government, mainstream media, and many other institutions has eroded. Kurt Anderson has written about this in Fantasyland, and more recently Robert Reich in his just-released The Common Good.

But we don’t need the words of intellectuals to tell us what has happened. That portion of American people who voted in our last presidential election spoke loudly when they almost gave a popular majority to the least intellectual president in this country’s history. The social and economic programs for minorities that the Kerner Commission suggested have been replaced by venom and gun-right rhetoric coming from many disenfranchised non-minority members of our society.

And then came 2018 St. Valentine’s Massacre at Marjory Douglas Stoneman in Parkland, FL. Yes, it was not an isolated incident. It followed a series of horrific mass murders by guns, mostly with automatic weapons. But what was different was the chorus of voices, mostly student voices, that came to the fore. They spoke of reason and compassion. Many spoke of a world in which gun rights are superfluous to the major tasks of learning and living.

It is worthwhile to hear some of the most cogent of those voices. Here is Delaney Tarr:

Granted, she and others might use a dose of humility, just as those of us growing up in “educated” environments in the 1960s could have used the same. In fact, it’s possible that our lack of humility triggered a lot of the backlash the in 50 years resulted in Trump. So, with the enthusiasm and insight of youth, there needs to be an awareness that none of us, no matter what our age or experiences might be, has a corner on wisdom.

Student Emma Gonzalez does an excellent job of pointing out the impatience of her generation with adult b.s. Again, a dose of humility might be good, but let’s not toss out the baby with the bathwater.

One of the best insights on how to deal with the power of guns and the N.R.A. comes from Linda Beigel-Schulman whose son was a teacher at Stoneman Douglas and who was killed in the assault. She goes right to the connection between gun power and the lack of campaign finance laws in the U.S.

What is clear is that the students and the broader family at Stoneman Douglas were doing just fine without a fixation on the Second Amendment. They were learning and trying to improve themselves and others in the world. They are conversant with language that works, and that means that they have a high level of B.S. detection.

In many ways, we have been here before – a growing, educated society not burdened by the political influence of the N.R.A. and its membership. Somehow, we blew it. We need to learn from our mistakes. But let us not forget that an optimistic and civilized society is not one with a gun fixation. Whether the Second Amendment belongs are part of the Bill of Rights is only part of the question. Present or not, we need to elevate our conversation and insight so as to have a society in which guns are an implement of last resort, and last availability. The students at Stoneman Douglas, and many progressive adults may have helpful insight on this, but our challenge is to find a way for gun-lovers to become stake-holders in a society which is committed to non-violence and harmony, not bravado and bullying. This is a tough task, so let’s roll up our sleeves. Maybe the next fifty years will be better.

The post There’s something good about growing up without the Second Amendment in your face appeared first on Occasional Planet.

It’s an outlier. It is essentially unrelatable to the other nine amendments in the Bill of Rights or anything else in the U.S. Constitution. But because the founding fathers wanted to make sure that white males would be able to keep slaves in check, the “right to bear arms” was included in a sloppily worded notion called the Second Amendment.

If slavery was America’s original sin, then the Second Amendment is the second sin. And they are related, as that right to bear arms was in large part included in order to perpetuate slavery.

Other than slavery, there was really no need for the Second Amendment. At the time that the constitution was being framed, guns were just another implement of life in on a lightly developed continent.

Guns were definitely an improvement over bows and arrows. There were definite human and non-human threats while living on the prairie. A gun could be useful there. It also would be efficient for the government to know that many potential draftees in a time of war would have their own weapons.

But in a lot of ways, they were just another implement, like a plow or a gas lantern. They made life easier. The Constitution already said that individuals had the right to property, so there was no need to establish a specific “right” to own firearms.

This Amendment facilitated the use of violence, something that is part of human nature. But as we look at countries such as the United Kingdom or Australia, we can see that human nature can function without easy access guns. And Australia is like the United States in that it was a vast expanse that had to be settled under dangerous conditions. But after a school shooting in the late 1990s, they called upon their common sense to make it very difficult to purchase firearms. They have had no school shootings since.

I would love it if the Second Amendment was repealed and most guns were confiscated. My reason is simple – we would be a more civil and civilized society. But I am not so naïve as to think that this will happen. The process of confiscating guns would likely result in domestic carnage the likes of which we have never seen save for the Civil War.

But what we should do is to recognize that the Second Amendment was created on spurious grounds and that it protects a specious right. It is unlike any of the other rights that are essential to a democracy.

What we can do is recognize that this mistake of a “right” will likely be with us for a long time, but we should work to craft gun policy that looks at weapons like any other implement that can be dangerous and needs to be regulated to ensure safety (e.g. power tools).

There are many Americans who resent the lives of metropolitan elites. They have good reason to hold grudges and to want a rebalancing of economic power within our society. But the right to resent should not be confused with the right to bear arms.

It might be easier for us to try to get along better if there were fewer guns. Let’s not lose sight of that.

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When a 94-year-old ex-president gropes your backside, is it sexual assault, sexual harassment, inappropriate touching or what? As women, at long last, feel confident enough and free enough to tell what has happened to them, and as we try to understand the scope of what has been happening for as long as men and women have existed, it seems that we need a better vocabulary to describe these situations. Fortunately, there is the Violence Against Women Lexicon, a resource created by the Centre for Research & Education on Violence Against Women & Children, based in Ontario, Canada.

The Lexicon offers a compendium of terminology, from “Abandonment” to “Youth Violence,” sourced from a wide variety of organizations that work with survivors of abuse and violence of all varieties. Much of what has been reported recently has been lumped under the vague term “sexual misconduct.” But there are better, more precise words, and they’re listed with detailed descriptions in the Lexicon.

Here are some of the terms included in the Lexicon. I’ve selected them [with edits for length] not to be comprehensive — or prurient — but to illustrate that there are nuances and degrees along the spectrum.  I’ve focused less on commonly understood terms, such as rape, and more on terms that are often thrown about without clear definitions, or on those that give precision to specific kinds of behaviors, or on  terms that I didn’t know existed. Some of the terms overlap, perhaps reflecting the lack of consistency in calling abuses by agreed-upon names. Also, in this lexicon, they focus on the abuse of women, but they apply to male victims, as well.

You’re going to cringe at some of these, and — unfortunately — you’re going to recognize many of them as describing some of the abuses we’ve been reading about lately. These terms would be useful, I think, in helping women, healthcare professionals, news reporters, commentators, and law enforcement personnel to be more accurate in defining what has occurred. For a complete—and very disheartening—list of terms about the vast varieties of abuses that continue to run rampant in modern culture, please take a look at the full Lexicon.

Abusive sexual contact: Intentional touching, either directly or through the clothing, of the genitalia, anus, groin, breast, inner thigh, or buttocks of any person without his or her consent, or of a person who is unable to consent or refuse. [9]

Aggravated sexual assault: A sexual assault that involves an injury to the victim or one in which her life is endangered.[15]

Child/Youth sexual abuse: A person under the age of 18 years old who has been involved in a sexual act with a person in a position of trust and authority by age, strength, or intelligence, including acts such as touching, fondling, exposing oneself, participation in prostitution and any participation or viewing of pornography. [12] Any sexual contact with a child or any activity undertaken with a sexual purpose. It can include genital fondling, digital penetration, or an invitation to sexually touch the perpetrator. [28]

Coercive sexual initiation: The use of persistent coercive strategies (i.e., psychological and emotional manipulation, verbal persuasion, or physical tactics) to initiate sexual contact…In some studies, sexual coercion includes the use of alcohol or drugs to decrease the victim’s inhibitions to obtain sexual contact…Other studies narrow the definition to include physical tactics such as continual attempts to sexually arouse the victim and removal of clothing.

Consent: Agreeing to sexual activity – for example, kissing, touching, intercourse – with another person.  Consent is voluntary.  Even if you consent to sexual activity, you can still change your mind (decide you want to stop).  Without permission (consent), it is sexual assault.[35]

Cyber Misogyny: The various forms of gendered hatred, harassment, and abusive behaviour targeted at women and girls on the Internet. [89]

Dating violence:  Abuse or mistreatment that occurs between “dating partners”, individuals who are having – or may be moving towards – an intimate relationship.1 Dating abuse or dating violence is defined as the perpetration or threat of an act of violence by at least one member of an unmarried couple on the other member within the context of dating or courtship. [21]

Digital Dating Abuse: When one partner in an intimate relationship uses technology (e.g. cell phone) and social media to harass or control the other. [89]

Drug Facilitated Sexual Assault: When alcohol or other drugs are used to sedate or incapacitate a person in order to perpetrate sexual assault. Proactive – a perpetrator puts a drug into a victim’s drink or gives a victim alcohol until she becomes inebriated and incapacitated. Opportunistic – a perpetrator targets a person who is already intoxicated or incapacitated. [83]

Emotional abuse: Includes verbal attacks, such as yelling, screaming and name-calling. Using criticism, verbal threats, social isolation, intimidation or exploitation to dominate another person. Criminal harassment or “stalking” may include threatening a person or their loved ones, damaging their possessions, or harming their pets.[50]

Harassment in the workplace: Any conduct based on age, disability, HIV status, sex, sexual orientation and other factors that is unreciprocated and unwanted and affects the dignity of men and women at work.

Incest: Any sexual behavior imposed on the child by a family member, including extended family members such as teachers or clergy. Sexual contacts may include a variety of verbal and/or physical behaviors; penetration is not necessary for the experience to count as incest. [11]

Intimate sexual violence: Physical, sexual, or psychological harm by a current or former partner or spouse. This type of violence can occur among heterosexual or same-sex couples and does not require sexual intimacy.

Invitation to sexual touching: For a sexual purpose, inviting, counseling or inciting a person under the age of 16 years to touch, directly or indirectly, with a part of the body or with an object, the body of any person, including the body of the person who so invites.

Non-consensual sharing of intimate images: The distribution of intimate images to third parties without the consent of the person shown in the image. [89] Images are often distributed as a form of revenge against a former partner, and may have been taken without the victim’s knowledge or consent, or may have been shared consensually in the context of a former intimate relationship with the expectation that such images would be kept private.

Non-contact unwanted sexual experience: Unwanted experiences that do not involve any touching or penetration, including someone exposing their sexual body parts, flashing, or masturbating in front of the victim, someone making a victim show his or her body parts, someone making a victim look at or participate in sexual photos or movies, or someone harassing the victim in a public place in a way that made the victim feel unsafe. [65]

Partner assault: When a woman is repeatedly subjected to ANY type of intimidation by a husband, boyfriend or ex-lover. The purpose is to control her behaviour by putting her in a state of fear.[3]

Physical abuse: The intentional infliction of pain or injury by: Slapping, shoving, punching kicking, burning, stabbing and/or shooting, poisoning. “Caring” in an abusive way including giving too much medication, keeping confined, neglecting or withholding care, Using a weapon or other objects to threaten, hurt or kill. Sleep deprivation – waking a woman with relentless verbal abuse. [22]

Psychological and emotional abuse: The use of systemic tactics and behaviour intended to control, humiliate, intimidate, instill fear or diminish a person’s sense of self-worth, including: Verbal aggression. Forcibly confining a woman. Stalking/harassment. Deliberately threatening behaviours (e.g., speeding through traffic or playing with weapons). Threatening to harm or kill children, other family members, pets or prized possessions. Threatening to remove, hide or prevent access to children, or threatening to report the woman to authorities. Threatening to put the woman in an institution. Threatening to commit suicide/attempting suicide. Controlling a woman’s time, actions, dress, hairstyle, etc. Denying affection or personal care. Taking away a woman’s teletype writer (TTY), medication, hearing aids or guide dog. Belittling a woman through name calling or descriptions such as ” stupid”, ” crazy” or “irrational”. Accusing a woman of cheating or being promiscuous. Leaving a woman without transportation or any means of communication. [22]

Revenge porn: When a former partner posts images or videos created while the relationship was still intact or that were shared by a partner for private use in order to “get revenge”. [89] This can also include images or videos captured during incidents of sexual assault, recordings made with a hidden camera, or images stolen from personal computers.

Sexual coercion: Unwanted sexual penetration that occurs after a person is pressured in a nonphysical way. Sexual coercion refers to unwanted vaginal, oral, or anal sex after being pressured in ways that included being worn down by someone who repeatedly asked for sex or showed they were unhappy; feeling pressured by being lied to, being told promises that were untrue, having someone threaten to end a relationship or spread rumors; and sexual pressure due to someone using their influence or authority. [66]

Sexual interference: For a sexual purpose, touching, directly or indirectly, with a part of the body or with an object, any part of the body of a person under the age of 16 years. [76]

Sexual solicitation or advance: A person suggests that if you become sexually involved with him or her, he or she will give you a better grade or some other type of incentive. [17]

Unwanted sexual contact: Unwanted sexual experiences involving touch but not sexual penetration, such as being kissed in a sexual way, or having sexual body parts fondled or grabbed.

Voyeurism: Surreptitiously, observing — including by mechanical or electronic means — or makes a visual recording of a person who is in circumstances that give rise to a reasonable expectation of privacy, if the person is in a place in which a person can reasonably be expected to be nude, to expose his or her genital organs or anal region or her breasts, or to be engaged in explicit sexual activity; if the person is nude, is exposing his or her genital organs or anal region or her breasts, or is engaged in explicit sexual activity, and the observation or recording is done for the purpose of observing or recording a person in such a state or engaged in such an activity;  or the observation or recording is done for a sexual purpose. [76]

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In 1934, following the era of Al Capone and the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, Congress placed restrictions on the sale, purchase and ownership of what it termed “Class 3 weapons,” aka automatic weapons. Fast forward to 2017 Las Vegas – enabled by a device called a bump stock, Stephen Paddock killed 59 people and injured more than 500 in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

Was Paddock using automatic weapons? Not really, but with a bump stock, a legal AR15 semi-automatic becomes every bit as lethal as the Tommy guns of the roaring twenties.

How did the modern bump stock come about? Ask its developer Jeremiah Cottle of Moran, TX. [from an article on Tactical Life.com]

I’ve been a recreational shooter my entire life, and I’ve always enjoyed shooting full-auto weapons. At the same time, purchasing a Class 3 firearm is outrageously expensive, not to mention it requires a mountain of paperwork sure to give you life-threatening paper cuts. I had bump fired in the past, but it was completely uncontrollable, unsafe and unusable. I wanted to find a way to change that, to make bump firing safer and more controlled.

So, I thought about it, and I prayed about it. Ultimately, I decided to go for it. I used all of my savings from the military, sold everything in my house that wasn’t nailed down and started making 3D-printed models and solving problems. Finally, I sent the stock to the BATFE [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives] when I had a design that was close to being commercially ready. I was so happy when I got the word that it was approved.

Cottle’s company, Slide Fire is the principal manufacturer of the bump stock. Its promotional videos are chilling. Have a look at their showpiece.

How does a bump stock get past Federal regulators? The approval letter from BATFE explains

“The stock has no automatically functioning mechanical parts or springs and performs no automatic mechanical functions when installed … Accordingly, we find that the ‘bump-stock’ is a firearm part and is not regulated as a firearm under the Gun Control Act or the National Firearms Act.”

More from Jeremiah Cottle:

Some people like drag racing, some people like skiing and some people, like me, love full-auto. Unfortunately, the average recreational shooter doesn’t have access to a Class 3 firearm of their very own—they’re just expensive and impractical, like buying your own personal golf-cart hovercraft. I mean, if you can afford it, why not? For everyone else, Slide Fire brings shooters the same full-auto experience but without having to take out a second mortgage on their home.

I wonder how much Cottle loves full-auto in light of what happened in Las Vegas. Maybe the incident didn’t affect him. According to Slide Fire’s video, it’s every man’s birthright, freedom unleashed. But right now @SlidefireSol is getting slammed on Twitter and rightly so.

One of Slide Fire’s videos begins with a quote it says is from George Washington [it is actually a misquote from George Washington Carver], “When you can do common things in uncommon ways, you will command the attention of the world.” Sad to say, in this case, the idea is very true.

The post Rapid fire weapons – every man’s birthright? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Mitch McConnell, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and most other Republicans are champions when it comes to playing “Kick the can down the road.” You can fill in the blank after the euphemistic six words: “Now is not the time to …” Sometimes they add two more words to make a full sentence, “Now is not the time to play politics.”

The mass shooting in Las Vegas is just another example of avoidance and distraction. The gunman, Stephen Paddock, had over forty rifles. He had an arsenal sufficient to kill nearly sixty people and wound over five hundred. But it’s not the right time to talk about gun control.

Well, I suppose that you could say that if a meteor landed on your head, “now would not be the right time to discuss gravity.” Unlike gun violence, being bopped upside the head by a meteor is not something that is man-made, and it does not require a man-made solution.

When, if ever, do Republicans think that it is the right time to talk about gun control? We all know that this is a specious question, because they never want to talk about. Whether we’re talking about Sandy Hook or the Pulse Nightclub shooting, or Las Vegas, it doesn’t matter. Now is not the time and there never will be a time.

It’s not that different from their views on health care. The myriad of plans that Republicans had to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act all seemed to be missing something. In a word, we’re talking about talking.

Some people think that Senator John McCain’s reasons for opposing the latest versions in the Senate of repeal and replace were minimalist. He did not necessarily say that he opposed the policies presented by his Republican colleagues. Instead, he said that a process was not being followed, a process that involves study, dialogue, deliberations and conversation. He was saying to Mitch McConnell and others, “Now is the time to talk about health care.” That seemed to be too much for his Senate leadership to accept; after all, with health care, we were only talking about one-sixth of the entire American economy.

Republicans are good at playing the news cycles. They know the drill. Something serious happens, the media comes in and covers it with varying degrees of serious consideration followed by what often is a maudlin aftermath. By then, we’re all worn out and ready to move on. And by then, Republicans can be confident that America does not have the appetite to give serious consideration to issues like gun control or health care.

One of the things that we work with students on is “B.S. Detection.” Five-year-olds begin to get the hang of it; by the time that kids are ten, they have a good handle on it. But there seems to be a certain numbing and dumbing nature to much of our education system and Republicans definitely know how to capitalize on that. So, they can say, “now is not the time to …” and they get away with it because not enough of the public sees the B.S. in it. Shame on them; shame on us.

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If you were looking for a hackneyed and inelegant metaphor for privilege and inequality, the building I work in would be an excellent choice. It’s a tower above a dilapidated shopping mall, and while there is constant construction, it’s always work on the offices in the tower. The shopping mall will probably never reopen. The bottom wilts, and the people at the top can safely comment on the noise the construction makes. It’s the only part of it that touches their lives.

I went in to work on September 15^th, 2017, around 7:30. By the time the coffee kicked in and I was fully sentient, it was 9:00 or so. Around this time we were called to the office center for a brief meeting about the Stokely ruling. “We’re not going to talk about this very long,” said a manager, “because that wouldn’t be office-appropriate. If you want to know more, Google it.” The manager laid out several options for us: Stay and work, go work from home, or just go home. Management was worried about the ensuing violence from protestors after the ruling. They seemed to think St. Louis would explode in the same way the major cities did in the 1960’s, or LA in the 1990’s. Protestors would ostensibly block highways, and roving gangs of brigands would rob us of our property, and perhaps our lives.

I opted to stay, thinking that the trouble was overstated. I dimly perceived various conversations about the ruling around me, as I frequently keep my headphones in at work.

“I’m going home, cause I’m white, and they might come after me. And if someone tries to hurt my wife, I’ll go to jail. And it’ll be a fair ruling.” I found this one difficult to parse. I can understand the desire to protect one’s family. I can’t understand bragging to a coworker about the pain you’d inflict on someone who would attack your family. And I can’t get inside the worldview that considers whiteness to be a persecuted identity. I should note that this quote came from an otherwise very kind and thoughtful person.

Later, I heard people watching the riots unfold on TV in another room. The media, of course, quickly focused on a burning car. My coworkers laughed and offered suggestions on what the protestors would do “if they were smart”. “Why would the protestors do that? It’s irrational,” they said of the car. I’m sure it was, but I don’t expect people willed with righteous anger at the murder of one of their fellow citizens to be the most rational and understated arguers. Just as I had trouble processing the person threatening violence against imaginary people who might hurt their family, they had trouble understanding why people might burn cars. Why don’t they just protest peacefully? I suspect the idea of systemic problems of racism or state did not enter their minds.

Sometimes I wonder if we could convince law-and-order types that police repression here has the same character as similar violence in Iran, or Egypt, or Saudi Arabia, or Russia, that they might come to their senses. These are, for me, fleeting considerations. I’m reasonably sure they wouldn’t change many minds.

I was second-to-last to leave, with the last right behind me. I drove home and did not see a single person blocking highways or acting illegally on the way. I took a nap when I got back. I didn’t join in the protests, though I was sympathetic, and plenty of my friends did. Lately I’m having trouble believing that my individual presence at demonstrations means much. I am not particularly proud of this.

According to friends who did go, a thousand or more people protested peacefully, and a handful did not. The narrative in the reactionary media, however, seemed to be that of savages bursting through ordinary society. Mob rule.

The police, on the other hand, used pepper spray and gas grenades and the other tools of repression against peaceful protestors. They trampled an old lady, captured in a disturbing video. According to the Riverfront Times, the end of that day saw 11 injured officers and 32 arrests. Doubtless the arrests have increased in the couple days since.

My friends and I went out for drinks that night. The streets were a little emptier, but we saw no protestors or vandals. I went home around midnight. My friends stayed out even later, and the only thing they noticed out of the ordinary is that the bars weren’t very crowded. My guess is that, like my coworker above, people were afraid of gangs of non-Caucasian bandits roaming the streets.

The city did not explode, though there were sparks and conflagrations here and there. But the specter of mass conflict frightens the complacent such that they would prefer police repression to justice.

When I returned from what felt like a lengthy weekend, the office was largely back to normal. The only comments I heard relating to Stokely and the protests were some hurried inquiries about some coworkers’ friends who were cops. Were they ok? Did someone hurl a brick at them? Just about no concern for the protestors. But that’s the advantage of the tower, I suppose: Surrounded by security, wealth, prosperity, girded by the violence of the state apparatus, we can see injustice happening at a distance. And we can safely ignore or denounce it at our will.

The post The View From The Tower appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Joe – Thank you. Your panel discussion of the Berkley/Antifa/Snowflake “controversy” reminded me why of I don’t watch morning news programs. It is too annoying to work all day while I’m debating with you in my head.

It is simultaneously humorous and frustrating that the newfound awareness of the “Antifa” is instant Republican fodder.

Conveniently, now in the “Summer of Trump 2017” – the conservative media is eager to focus on the very few liberals who are violent – picking up on the NRA’s narrative du jour. Now, thanks to the “Antifa’s” actions, Republicans can choose not to face the well-organized and entrenched evil of white supremacy in America or how it is now the true, active, and very public base of the Republican Party because of a very few liberals who gained notoriety.

I always denounce threatening words and threatening actions and physical violence regardless of the source. But I know that this white nationalist threat exists in every corner of the US. I don’t live in a bubble. The people who ignore this hateful reality are in the ones in a bubble. And the people who discuss it so glibly are the “mentally stunted”.

I’m 48 years old and in my lifetime, I have heard no condemnation of racism by Republicans that is backed up by action. Democrats haven’t done enough either. But I have never seen Republicans call for more thorough investigations and prosecutions when synagogues and mosques targeted and burned or when white pro-life activists threaten the lives of doctors and commit assault against legally operating abortion providers.

Republican politicians consistently turn a blind eye when it suits them – further infantilizing the white working class by not owning up to their support of systemic racism in our communities and our culture.

But I’m in a liberal bubble. Sigh.

A few Republican politicians have come forward to denounce the KKK, but have you debated on your show why they likely won’t change laws to actually protect people and why they certainly won’t change the policies that continue to keep people divided by race? Until they do that, violence will increase, because they are pitting us against each other.

Then, Joe, you talked about law and order. Again – do you hear that? That’s the echo of the right-wing echo-chamber messaging.

Did you care when, earlier this year, a 2006 Department of Homeland Security study was reported to find that “domestic terrorism investigations focused on militia extremists, white supremacist extremists, and sovereign citizen extremists often have identified active links to law enforcement officers”?  And that white supremacists were “avoiding overt displays of their beliefs” to gain “employment with law enforcement agencies”?

Did you or any other Republican object when Trump gave the DOJ direction to stop pursuing terrorism investigations by Neo-Nazis and only focus on Islamic terrorists? I heard crickets from my bubble. That was a clear-as-day green light for Neo-Nazis and a signal that law enforcement would once again turn a blind eye to crimes against minorities and our democracy.

It was a far cry from the small progress made at the DOJ to fairly represent people equally under the law during Obama’s administration, which Republicans were chomping at the bit to undo. Did any Republicans fight for racial equality during the confirmation process of Trump’s nominees? No. They stuck together and marched in almost perfect time, happy to remove so many African-Americans from leadership positions.

It’s a sad day for me when I realize that even my “moderate” Republican friends, who are similar to you, will ignore all that and just be glad to jump on Antifa actions and smear liberals, while only reservedly shaking their heads and give a quiet “oh, jeez, that’s terrible” at violence by bad white cops or atrocious white nationalists.

And, oh! The “free speech” hand-wringing from you and your panel about right-leaning speakers who were supposedly deprived of their first amendment rights and the fate of liberal college students.

Fake News Alert! A college cancelling a speaker is not “limiting their free speech.” These well-financed and well-represented speech-givers have ample media outlets, the internet, podcasts, and more. What the universities are taking away is money and promotion and their name. And that is within their rights.

The people and students protesting aren’t limiting free speech. They are rejecting the content of that speech. And that protest is their free speech!

Of course, there should be no violence – but your faux concern about free speech – please. Republicans just don’t like it when people tell them they aren’t wanted. They can’t seem to handle rejection (i.e. reality) as well as us liberal snowflakes.

And – it keeps making me laugh – your offer to send “some people” to help Berkeley protect the Alt Right demonstrators? Forgive me – I must have missed it – did you offer to send some people to Charlottesville to protect the Jews and Christians in their places of worship? Did you send “some people” to protect protesters in Ferguson? In Baltimore? Funny how you want to protect the Alt Right’s rights, isn’t it?

When the organizer of the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” march, Jason Kessler, wanted to give a press conference after the unfortunate events that weekend, he was provided a microphone and the press was waiting for him – with bated breath – ready to report his free speech to the world.

Kessler was shouted down by an opponent and then complained that free speech is dead. Someone stole the spot light during his moment of hateful glory. Boo hoo hoo! Talk about a snowflake. Racists and their supporters have been shouting down and taking away the mic from black people for decades.

Actually Joe, free speech is not dead in Berkeley because of liberals – it just doesn’t ONLY belong to Republicans.

I know, Joe, you are smarter than me – reading the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times – as a child. RME. You are more elitist than me. You are slicker than me. Your hair stands taller than mine. But I’m not living in a bubble because I don’t want to listen to right wing ideology. I hear it, I see it, and I reject it.

(Sources: NRA.com, Reuters, Intercept/IBT, Morning Joe)

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I had been planning on writing yet another article decrying the afflictive double standard and dog whistle politics of the term “terrorism.” Saturday, thousands of Muslims in Cologne, Germany marched to protest Islamic extremism, and I wanted to express how ineffably tired I am of having to march with a “Love & Unity” sign to prove my humanity/innocence/possession of a heart, but when Muslims are the victims instead of the perpetrators no one has “Love & Unity” with us. But it’s been written again and again and again and again and again.

Then on Sunday, 47 year old Darren Osborne drove a van into a crowd of Muslims leaving Ramadan night prayers at a London mosque, killing at least one person and injuring near a dozen others. Witnesses say Osborne shouted he wanted to “kill all Muslims” and that he did it as retribution “for London Bridge.” The CNN headline read, “London van hits pedestrians in Finsbury Park,” all mentions of the deliberate targeting of Muslims curiously omitted. News outlets lined up pundits to say they “weren’t sure” if it was terrorism or not (no mention of hate crimes either), but they all took a few moments to spout a few glib words on “diversity.” No word yet if Trump will respond by tweeting some blather about his Muslim Ban.

Of the entire incident, what struck me most is that I—  I didn’t react. Other than a frisson of anger at the hypocrisy and a few twangs of grief at lives lost… I feel almost… unperturbed. Logically, I feel where the overwhelming sadness and despondency ought to be— where it has unfailingly been in the past— but none of its symptoms have manifested. Instead, I just feel dispassion. And that worries me. I don’t ever want to be the type of person who shrugs or turns a blind eye to someone’s pain.

But I’m coming to realize this isn’t really the onset of callousness and cold-hearted antipathy. If I feel rather impassive at the moment, it’s not because I’m losing my capacity for empathy, it’s because over the last 6 months or so, I’ve developed a (questionably healthy) defense mechanism to The Era of Trump and realized that sometimes the best thing I can do for my mental health is accept occasional apathy. And I’m also realizing that maybe, just maybe, it’s not peculiar to me— that this defensive quasi-cynicism exists as a sort of distinctive facet of the collective consciousness of people of color (if such a thing exists) post-Trump.

The night of November 8, I remember the insidious feeling of dread creeping over me, slowly giving away to a consumptive panic when I realized it wasn’t just a fluke or a grand karmic joke, it was really happening. The man who began his campaign by saying “Mexicans are rapists,” earned bonus points for calling for the “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” and couldn’t even be stopped by hot mic recordings when he bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy”— that man was going to become the most powerful person in the world. I remember my eyes being glued to the electoral college tallies in the same morbid sort of way you can’t look away from a tragic accident. I remember my brain being a jumble of panic as once-worst-case-scenarios suddenly seemed inevitable, images striking me of my grandparents being unable to return to the country even with Green Cards, of my parents’ citizenship being revoked, of my siblings being rounded up for internment camps. I remember questioning the next morning if I should leave my apartment, afraid what his 60 million voters would now feel emboldened to do. I remember feeling like each and every one of those voters had looked directly at me and told me I didn’t belong in their country, and that knowledge squeezed like rubber bands around my chest so I couldn’t catch a full breath of air or form a coherent sentence. I remember looking at the faces around me that were in various states of terror or denial as each of our private nightmares seemed to come to life, and no amount of hugs stemmed the tears. During lunch I usually worked on law school applications, but I remember that day just staring immobilized at the screen because I couldn’t look that far into the future without drowning in waves of crushing panic again. I remember constantly feeling nauseated and bone weary, unable to eat or sleep for almost a week. I remember waking up every morning in the weeks after, terrified this would be the day a severed pig head, or racist graffiti at the very least, showed up in front of the apartment I shared with another hijabi woman. I remember the only time the panic truly drowned me and I gave into the terror was a little over a week later when there was a suspected hate crime on campus, and the night I found out I remember how I struggled to bring my voice to lower than a shout and how the only words I could formulate were a torrent of curses as I practically yanked my hair out in frustration. I remember vowing never to return to that bone-crushing panic again, and I remember the dispassion taking over ever since.

So if I say that I felt impassive in the face of Sunday’s London attack beyond my angry huffs and frustrated sighs, understand it’s just because at this point I can’t afford to allow something which is, in the grand scheme of things, relatively small to pierce my armor of dispassion. You have to understand that over the last six months I saw hate crimes against Muslims spike after the election to such a level that I was convinced I was next, but I couldn’t summon more than an unaffected shrug at the possibility, adopting an “if it happens, it happens” sort of mentality. I saw a slew of Cabinet positions filled by alt-Right Neo-Nazis, racist conspiracy theorists, and Islamophobes, including one who said Islam is a “vicious cancer inside the body of 1.7 billion people” that had to be “excised,” and all I felt was mild relief the man who called to “exterminate” Muslims wasn’t chosen. I saw a man motivated by extremist far-right views kill 6 people in a Quebec mosque in a shooting rampage, but I couldn’t summon an ounce of surprise it had happened, only that Trudeau condemned it so roundly. I saw a British politician, after the London Bridge Terror Attacks, suggest the internment of Muslims as a solution to extremism, and I couldn’t summon more than a bitter, humorless laugh that that was really the solution he was proposing. For goodness sake, last month a man tried to harass me on the street and yell racial slurs at me as he drove by and, I swear to you— rather than sink into despair as I did a year ago— I just cackled at him, wanting to tell him he’d have to do better than that if he wanted to scare me.

After the grand upset that was Trump’s election, nothing seems to faze me. Since then, I’ve been able to summon copious amounts of anger and disgust— and grief in small doses— at the state of politics, but everything else has succumbed to a void of apathy. Each terrible piece of news has been met with a derisive woosh of air in an indignant exhale, but it all just felt inevitable. It’s the same frustrated, resigned air with which BlackLivesMatter activists greet every failure to indict police officers who shoot unarmed Black men unprovoked. We all expected it. It’s the same fatalistic way Muslims square their shoulders when, despite all their prayers, the gunman turned out to be ISIS-affiliated after all. We all expected it. It’s the same repulsed tone in which anti-deportation attorneys snarl “of course, they did” after they learn ICE tore up yet another family with their raids and forced deportations. We all expected it. It’s not that we don’t care, it’s that if we broke apart after each time the world showed its hostility, there’d be nothing left in us but desolate despair, abject terror, and bottomless grief. And then we wouldn’t be able to make it through the day, let alone work to make anything better.

And I’m not sure how I feel about my realizations about my own dispassion, even if I’m not the only one to retreat behind defensive cynicism lest we bow to panicked despair again. Because at at some level, that despair we’re avoiding is a sign we’re still human, and embracing that grief is a reminder to never turn away from someone’s plight in disconcern. I worry that this dispassion will stunt my capacity for empathy because that’s one thing I never want to lose. But if the dispassion is the only thing keeping depression from crushing shoulders that cannot bear the horrors of the world, I’m loathe to disavow its protection. How else are we to survive the unholy mess that is The Era of Trump?

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