I think part of the problem is that after several years of the lies and vial statements (see cartoon) anything the president does or says is dismissed.
Everyone sees the disconnect these days. Personally I just wish it would all disappear. But it won't. And the president cannot control his anger.
I think that maybe this time, the Emperor did lose his clothes.
Why does the United States refuse to pass new gun control laws? It’s the question that people around the world keep asking.
According to Dr Jonathan Metzl, a psychiatrist and sociologist at Vanderbilt University, white supremacy is the key to understanding America’s gun debate. In his new book, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland, Metzl argues that the intensity and polarization of the US gun debate makes much more sense when understood in the context of whiteness and white privilege.
White Americans’ attempt to defend their status in the racial hierarchy by opposing issues like gun control, healthcare expansion or public school funding ends up injuring themselves, as well as hurting people of color, Metzl argues.
The majority of America’s gun death victims are white men, and most of them die from self-inflicted gunshot wounds. In all, gun suicide claims the lives of 25,000 Americans each year.
White Americans are “dying for a cause”, he writes, even if their form of death is often “slow, excruciating, and invisible”.
Metzl spoke to the Guardian about his analysis this March, and again this week, following what appeared to be a white nationalist terror attack on Latino families doing back-to-school shopping at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, that left 22 people dead. The conversations have been condensed and edited.
Related: 'Blood on their hands': the intelligence officer whose warning over white supremacy was ignored
You argue that America’s debate over gun control laws and gun violence makes a lot more sense if you actually understand it as a debate over race and whiteness in America. Why is that?
In my research I look at the history and the social meanings of how guns came to be these particularly charged social symbols. So many aspects of American gun culture are really entwined with whiteness and white privilege.
Carrying a gun in public has been coded as a white privilege. Advertisers have literally used words like “restoring your manly privilege” as a way of selling assault weapons to white men. In colonial America, landowners could carry guns, and they bestowed that right on to poor whites in order to quell uprisings from “Negroes” and Indians. John Brown’s raid was about weapons. Scholars have written about how the Ku Klux Klan was aimed at disarming African Americans. When African Americans started to carry guns in public – think about Malcolm X during the civil rights era – all of a sudden, the second amendment didn’t apply in many white Americans’ minds. When Huey Newton and the Black Panthers tried to arm themselves, everyone suddenly said, “We need gun control.”
When states like Missouri changed their laws to allow open carry of firearms, there were parades of white Americans who would carry big long guns through congested areas of downtown St Louis, who would go into places like Walmart and burrito restaurants carrying their guns, and they were coded as patriots. At the same time, there were all the stories about African American gun owners who would go to Walmart and get tackled and shot.
Who gets to carry a gun in public? Who is coded as a patriot? Who is coded as a threat, or a terrorist or a gangster? What it means to carry a gun or own a gun or buy a gun – those questions are not neutral. We have 200 years of history, or more, defining that in very racial terms.
What moments in the past few years have demonstrated to you most clearly that it’s impossible to understand America’s gun control debate without talking about whiteness?
The period after a mass shooting is often very telling. When the shooter is white, the context is the individual narrative – this individual disordered white mind. When the shooter is black or brown, all of a sudden the disorder is culture. The narrative we tell then is about terrorism or gangs.
Then there’s the quiet everyday level. There’s nothing more painful than sitting in a room with family members who have lost loved ones to suicide. I’d talk to people who had lost husbands, wives, kids, parents to gun suicide, and they would come to the interview, often, bringing their guns. And I would ask them: did it change how you think about the gun? And they’d argue it’s never the gun’s fault and they’d need the gun in case an invader would attack them. This narrative about protection against the radicalized invader was so profound. They were almost nervous not bringing their guns.
Gun rights supporters gather at a Guns Across America rally at the Texas state capitol in 2013.View photos Gun rights supporters gather at a Guns Across America rally at the Texas state capitol in 2013. Photograph: Eric Gay/AP More And it was very much coded in racial terms. A number of people I talked to in my book basically said, I’m getting this gun because of Ferguson [the city where the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, by a white police officer in 2015 sparked sustained public protests led by black residents]. These were people who lived 300 miles from Ferguson, in entirely white areas of rural America. When I tried to pin them down about it, they would say, “This could happen anywhere. I have to protect myself and my property.”
I talked to a number of people in African American communities, and for them, this meaning of guns being like a privilege was completely absent. They had very ambiguous or mixed feelings about weapons, because, for a lot of people I spoke with in St Louis they symbolized, “Carry a gun, get shot by the police.”
Given how important you think white privilege is to understanding gun policy, should people be talking or messaging about the gun control debate differently?
I’m not imagining that MSNBC talking more about “how guns are proof that you’re racist” is going to change this debate. The point I’m making is more a diagnostic one than a prescriptive one. I’m saying that until we understand the racial tensions that underlie the gun debate, we’re going to keep asking ourselves why this issue is so intractable.
When we talk about guns and people end up polarized, it’s not just because we disagree about gun politics, it’s because gun politics symbolizes a far greater series of tensions in this country. When we’re talking about guns, we’re also talking about race.
During a talk at a bookstore in Washington DC, a white nationalist group reportedly interrupted you in protest. What happened?
My dad is a Holocaust survivor and he and my grandparents escaped Nazi Austria. It took them about 10 years to get into this country and they were only allowed because of the bravery of people who stood up and vouched for them. One of those people was in the audience, a man in his 80s who volunteered to be my father’s host. As I was saying this, I look up to the back of the store, and there are nine men and one woman coming in with bullhorns, and chanting. They were saying things like “This land is our land” and “invaders out”. They commandeered the talk for about five or 10 minutes. At first people thought it was a joke. And then they got scared. The bookstore is right next door to Comet Pizza, where the Pizzagate shooting happened. And then people, everyday people, stood up and shouted them down. Then they left. It was very well rehearsed. They had a videographer there.
What connection do you see between white Americans’ daily choices about gun politics and the violent attack we saw in El Paso?
My argument is a lot more centrist than I think people realize I think we run a risk of conflating all gun owners with mass shooters. I’ve gotten comments on Twitter about people being mentally ill just for wanting to own an AR-15. I don’t see those as productive. Many of the interventions that we’re suggesting, like background checks, are going to have an impact on gun owners. It’s better off if we have a conversation with them. I think that pathologizing all gun owners gets us further away from any kind of solution that might bring people together.
At the same time, part of what I’m tracking in my research is the politics of racial resentment, a particular form of anti-immigration, anti-government, pro-gun politics that’s been represented in America for a long time. These mass shooters, they’re not coming out of nowhere. They’re a very extreme amplification of the kinds of ideologies that are playing out in a much more quotidian way in middle America.
Did you come away from your research concluding that American gun culture is inherently toxic? Or are there other dimensions to gun ownership and gun culture?
I do think there are many positive things about gun culture. My argument is a lot more centrist than I think people realize.
It’s not just about supremacy and oppression. It’s also about history and tradition and generational meanings. I came away from this research very respectful of gun ownership traditions in many parts of the country, and things people were telling me about guns suggesting safety and protection, about the community networks that gun ownership lets people forge. For many people living in rural America, if anything happens to them, they are far away from support systems, police and other help. I think there are plenty of rational aspects to respecting the tradition of gun ownership.
I have a lot of colleagues and interview subjects and people I’m still having conversations with who are pro-second amendment, people who don’t want mass shootings, and don’t want death. There are a lot of people who are in the middle about this on both sides, but because there’s so many actors that benefit from polarization, everyone from Twitter to the NRA, there’s no benefit to compromising.
But I can list plenty of examples where I think gun policies are not about respecting gun traditions, they’re about really pushing the envelope on seeing how far we can get. I’m not saying that people’s guns should be taken away. I don’t agree that there should be guns in bars and college classrooms. I don’t think that people who are 18 should be carrying assault rifles.
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
As the linked graphs and numbers show, there are gang members of all backgrounds.
However, non-whites make up a much larger percentage of the total. So, a smaller percentage of the "bad" groups and a bigger percentage of the total population for Caucasians vs. a bigger percentage of the "bad" group and a smaller percentage of the total population for Hispanics and African Americans. Statistically, an individual non-white person is more likely to be a gang member than an individual Caucasian.
I'm not going to go into morality or reasons or go anywhere near comparing which group is worse. I'm just looking at some of the underpinnings of the issue.
If we can reduce those gang numbers, and shift the perspective towards the bigger populations they are a part of, it could perhaps change the narrative.
The illegal immigrants are criminals rant "works" because of numbers like these. It is unfortunate. It's mathematically/numerically hard to separate the good from the bad.
Perhaps actually allowing more "good" minorities into the country would be a solution to addressing these issues. The "bad" numbers would become a smaller percentage of the total. The "average" member of the larger group would be statistically less likely to be "bad."
People often default to thinking in generalities rather than specifics. If we can shift the math to more positive generalities, perhaps we could gain traction on race relations.
Unfortunately, there is a perhaps misguided generality from minorities that more Caucasians land in the "bad" group than the numbers indicate. It's not completely unexpected, though, as minority groups are often sought out by the "bad" Caucasians.
Overpopulation is not addressed in this idea unfortunately.
Just the latest path wondering why has led me down.
Last edited by Bull_Dawg; 08/09/1911:24 AM. Reason: I should have mentioned Caucasians (can) have their own misguided generalities/perceptions. I wasn't trying to say otherwise.
You mess with the "Bull," you get the horns. Fiercely Independent.
I have no clue why you addressed that post to me. A lot of the laws on our books are related to race. Marijuana, the difference in the penalties for crack cocaine verses powdered cocaine. I could go on.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
I didn’t address the post toward you. I clearly said “some of y’all” not “pit and others”
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
It’s cool. But you should alresdy know if I’m addressing someone specific I’ve never hesitated to name names.
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
In all honesty, how many mass shooting have to take place, before tUSA enacts change? Maybe this a Hiroshima/Nagasaki situation again. More people have to die up front, to protect against a greater death toll in the end.
In all honesty, how many mass shooting have to take place, before tUSA enacts change? Maybe this a Hiroshima/Nagasaki situation again. More people have to die up front, to protect against a greater death toll in the end.
What's your answer to how to prevent them? (mass shootings that involve more than 1 victim)
NBC’s Universal Pictures plans to release ‘The Hunt’ despite backlash
NBC Universal still plans to release the controversial movie “The Hunt” as scheduled on September 27 despite significant backlash over the film that depicts privileged vacationers hunting “deplorables” for sport.
“The Hunt” is billed as a satirical take on wealthy thrill-seekers taking a private jet to a five-star resort where they embark on a “deeply rewarding” expedition that involves hunting down and killing designated humans.
The Hollywood Reporter reported on Tuesday that the “violent, R-rated film from producer Jason Blum's Blumhouse follows a dozen MAGA types who wake up in a clearing and realize they are being stalked for sport by elite liberals.”
NBC’s Universal Pictures plans to release ‘The Hunt’ despite backlash
NBC Universal still plans to release the controversial movie “The Hunt” as scheduled on September 27 despite significant backlash over the film that depicts privileged vacationers hunting “deplorables” for sport.
“The Hunt” is billed as a satirical take on wealthy thrill-seekers taking a private jet to a five-star resort where they embark on a “deeply rewarding” expedition that involves hunting down and killing designated humans.
The Hollywood Reporter reported on Tuesday that the “violent, R-rated film from producer Jason Blum's Blumhouse follows a dozen MAGA types who wake up in a clearing and realize they are being stalked for sport by elite liberals.”
See, this is where the left loses rational folks like myself.
I'm cool w/tough gun laws. In fact, I am in favor of them.
However, to think that these mass murders are only due to our gun laws is beyond ignorant.
In fact, I can't believe people are really that ignorant and it makes me question their motives. The only answer is they are just playing the blame game and trying to widen the divide. No one is really that dumb.............right?
I’m really sorry to do this Pit, but I don’t want endless threads on the same topic, and unfortunately we’re gonna be talking about this over and over again.
Why? Cause it won’t stop when we have losers like:
Las Vegas Man Faces Weapons Charge After Outlining Plans To Attack Synagogue, Bar
A Las Vegas security guard is facing a federal weapons charge after authorities say he discussed making explosives and was planning attacks on a local synagogue and a bar that catered to the LGBTQ community.
According to the Justice Department, 23-year-old Conor Climo promoted white supremacy and communicated with people who identified with a white supremacist extremist organization.
Acting on a search warrant, law enforcement discovered bomb-making materials, which prosecutors described as “the component parts of a destructive device,” at Climo’s home.
Climo was arrested Thursday morning and later charged with one count of possession of an unregistered firearm. He appeared in court Friday.
A criminal complaint says that Climo discussed making Molotov cocktails and improvised explosive devices as well as his plans to attack a synagogue in Las Vegas during online encrypted conversations this year.
Climo also talked about conducting surveillance on a bar in downtown Las Vegas that he believed catered to the LGBTQ community and tried to recruit a homeless person to conduct “pre-attack surveillance” at a synagogue and other targets, according to the complaint.
While carrying out the search warrant, investigators found a notebook that contained hand-drawn diagrams of a potential attack in Las Vegas and drawings of “timed explosive devices,” the complaint said.
In 2016, Climo made local news headlines after he began patrolling his neighborhood with a semi-automatic rifle in an effort to start an armed neighborhood watch program in the Centennial Hills area of Las Vegas.
“If there is possibly a very determined enemy, we at least have the means to deal with it,” Climo told KTNV at the time.
Climo later agreed to leave his weapons at home after residents expressed their concern.
Climo’s arrest comes four days after federal prosecutors deemed last weekend’s deadly mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, a case of domestic terrorism.
The suspect in that attack, which left 22 people dead, confessed to officers that he was specifically targeting Mexican people, police said.
While that massacre was labeled an act of “domestic terrorism,” another deadly mass shooting that occurred less than 24 hours later in Dayton, Ohio, was not.
There is currently no federal law that specifically criminalizes “domestic terrorism,” which can make federal officials hesitant to use the label, according to HuffPost’s senior justice reporter, Ryan J. Reilly.
In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, FBI Director Christopher Wray said the bureau takes domestic terrorism “extremely seriously.”
Wray told the Senate committee that a “majority” of those types of cases investigated by the FBI are motivated by a form of “what you might call white supremacist violence.”
If convicted on the criminal weapons charge, Climo could face a maximum of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
_______________
He learned this crap from somewhere.
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
It wasn't long ago you were calling for all Liberals to arm themselves against the mean old Conservatives.
Post after post about it.
Seems to me you have already done enough when it comes to the violence in America.
All Americans should arm themselves. If Charlottesville wasn't proof of that, nothing is. You must have forgotten the GOP rallying cry. "Nothing stops a bad guy with a gun like a good guy with a gun".
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
See, this is where the left loses rational folks like myself.
I'm cool w/tough gun laws. In fact, I am in favor of them.
However, to think that these mass murders are only due to our gun laws is beyond ignorant.
In fact, I can't believe people are really that ignorant and it makes me question their motives. The only answer is they are just playing the blame game and trying to widen the divide. No one is really that dumb.............right?
I think if we were staring from scratch here, it would have a huge impact on stopping mass shootings. But there are already 300,000,000 million guns in our society now so it's not really going to have that much of an impact.
As of this moment I think ideological rhetoric has the greatest impact. But man, when your country has had more mass shootings than days in the year, you have to start somewhere.
It used to be us that gave travel warnings about dangerous destinations around the globe. Now it's the globe putting out travel warnings on us.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
Again, I am a proponent of stricter gun laws and I don't see why the public can get their hands on some of weapons that they do. It's asking for trouble.
What really disturbs me is that the Dayton shooter bought his firearms legally even though he had a "Hit List" and a "Rape List" while in high school. He also showed others videos of mass murderers and told people he wanted to "hurt" others.
My question is why is a sick f... like this allowed to legally purchase firearms?
So again, I am all for stricter laws and regulations.
I just don't like when people try to act like that will solve the problem. This is a multi-faceted issue that isn't going away.
Again, I am a proponent of stricter gun laws and I don't see why the public can get their hands on some of weapons that they do. It's asking for trouble.
What really disturbs me is that the Dayton shooter bought his firearms legally even though he had a "Hit List" and a "Rape List" while in high school. He also showed others videos of mass murderers and told people he wanted to "hurt" others.
My question is why is a sick f... like this allowed to legally purchase firearms?
So again, I am all for stricter laws and regulations.
I just don't like when people try to act like that will solve the problem. This is a multi-faceted issue that isn't going away.
No one ever reported it, because there is no public mental health system. Same with the Stoneman Douglas school in Florida, except he had been reported but exempted due to an Obama regulation to keep minorities out of jail.
Despite these incidents and the police’s knowledge of them, Dayton police chief Richard Biehl said Sunday that there’s “nothing in this individual’s record that would have precluded him from getting these weapons.”
You should read that more thouroughly. He made it easier for those on social security to get guns. That regulation only stopped 75000 people from access to a firearm.
Maybe you should read it closer. They are talking about people whose mental capacity doesn't even leave them in charge of their own money. I have a relative that this applies to. God help us if he is in charge of a firearm.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
I just don't like when people try to act like that will solve the problem. This is a multi-faceted issue that isn't going away.
Agreed. After 9/11 airport security measures stopped Islamic terrorists from crashing planes into buildings, but it didn't stop terrorism as a whole. They simply adjusted their tactics.
I believe the same thing would happen with mass shootings. Take away their ability to buy guns and they'll use something else. Bombs, knifes, and cars are 3 methods that come to mind from previous attacks.
It's supposed to be hard! If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard... is what makes it great!
NBC’s Universal Pictures plans to release ‘The Hunt’ despite backlash
NBC Universal still plans to release the controversial movie “The Hunt” as scheduled on September 27 despite significant backlash over the film that depicts privileged vacationers hunting “deplorables” for sport.
“The Hunt” is billed as a satirical take on wealthy thrill-seekers taking a private jet to a five-star resort where they embark on a “deeply rewarding” expedition that involves hunting down and killing designated humans.
The Hollywood Reporter reported on Tuesday that the “violent, R-rated film from producer Jason Blum's Blumhouse follows a dozen MAGA types who wake up in a clearing and realize they are being stalked for sport by elite liberals.”
I'm really surprised there are no comments about this Hollywood film promoting political violence.
'The Hunt' canceled by Universal following significant backlash
Universal Pictures has canceled the September 27 release of the controversial movie "The Hunt," in the wake of significant backlash over the film that depicts privileged vacationers hunting "deplorables" for sport.
NBC’s Universal Pictures, which shares parent company Comcast with NBC News and MSNBC, told Fox News on Wednesday that the movie’s marketing campaign would be “temporarily paused” on the heels of the tragic mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, Dayton, Ohio, and Gilroy, California.
Who knows? Perhaps it will never be released now. Seemed like a st00pit premise, anyway. No desire to support movie folk who worked an entire project from start to finish while wearing their 'Bad Idea' jeans.
The murders continue while folks like you--on both sides--continue to point fingers and encourage more hate, bias, and mistrust between the sides.
I really believe that the very extreme levels of animosity that are so prevalent in this country are one of the major reasons that fuel these hate crimes.
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