Month: July 2012

Americans have the unique ability to think about mass murder and spree killing the same way they conceptualize natural disasters like hurricanes or tornadoes; it's just a thing that happens and can't be stopped. When it strikes there's nothing we can do except hold a vigil, say "Oh, how awful", donate something to the survivors, and go about our day. Usually within about a week we manage to forget it ever happened, and then a few months later the cycle repeats itself.

There is no sense in the wake of these tragedies that it is possible to do anything to prevent them from recurring because, like many other issues in our political process, one half of the potential means to address the problem are completely off the table. The only acceptable solution is more guns, more bullets, more firepower, more high-capacity magazines, and endless complaining about the meager, ineffectual regulations in place (background checks, etc.) that stop only the dumbest and least creative criminals.
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The media and political process inevitably conclude that, gee, if only more people in the theater had been armed they could have shot back…and, uh, hit the attacker in the dark, smoke-filled theater amidst all the panic and confusion.

Oh, he was covered in body armor? Hmm. I guess it's time to legalize more firepower. Concealed carry permits and armor-piercing ammunition for all!

Despite the fact that the "Armed citizens are the best first responders!" argument fails in a half-dozen different ways in this instance – the attack was over in the blink of an eye, the film goers were taken completely by surprise, they were likely unable to see the gunman let alone shoot him, and he would be unharmed by handgun ammunition anyway – it is still all we will hear in response. Like the only solution to economic questions is lower taxes, the only answer to crime, especially gun crime, is more guns. More, more, more. Someday we'll have enough to be safe. But not yet.

The most baffling part about the logic of the NRA-led response is that it is based on a premise that is ignored as soon as it is established. The argument is that guns don't kill people – unhinged or evil people do. OK. Let's accept that premise in full. Why, then, does the NRA fight so hard to make it easier for evil or unhinged people to have access to things like high powered ammunition and large magazines? If the world is full of the scary people they blame for gun crime, these things only serve to make them more efficient killers. We are told that people like the Columbine killers were so full of hatred and violence that if they had no guns they would have used other weapons…and then we are not allowed to point out that they wouldn't have managed to kill a dozen people with a knife. The AR-15 with a 30-round clip didn't make the guy in Aurora, Colorado a killer. It just ensured that he would be really good at it. Change the elements in the equation – weaker ammunition, smaller magazines, a less powerful rifle – and there are fewer casualties. Period.

Second, if the world is full of loons who want to kill their fellow man and we are not allowed to take away their guns (indeed, we are required to give them every possible tool for upping the body count) then I have an alternative. Congress should pass a law that anyone in the U.S., resident or otherwise, can present himself at any hospital, religious institution, or police/fire department and request immediate inpatient psychiatric care at no cost and with legal protection against job loss for missed time. People don't snap and become killers overnight; it is usually a long process of isolation, depression, plotting, and desensitization to violence. Why not attempt to intervene when they first have the thought, "Maybe I should kill a bunch of people in a theater" rather than letting it progress to the point that the idea is palatable, even normal?

Of course this wouldn't help everyone. There are those who would not accept mental health treatment even at no cost.

However, it would stop a few people who might otherwise become violent. Seems like it might be worth the cost, no?

Oh, right. That would be socialized medicine, and the AM airwaves and internet comment sections would fill to bursting with warnings about freeloaders faking it to get a free vacation on the taxpayers' dime. I guess we'll stick with the status quo, and our defense against heavily armed mass murderers will be the vigilante fantasies of adult children who feel powerful when armed and thus foster the illusion that guns are making them safe.

By August 1 the three year experiment of combining Ed and the Deep South will come to an end. I will move back to the flatlands of the Midwest from whence I came. Right off the bat, let us note that I am not leaving because I hate it, but rather out of professional necessity. I no longer have a job here and a school in Illinois was willing to hire me. If it was up to me, I would stay, all kidding and "Ha ha the South blows" jokes aside.

I did not expect to like living here; as many people from Up North do, I moved here with many preconceptions of what life in the South would be like. For the most part, these assumptions proved…remarkably accurate. People assume that the South is barely survivable in the summer (Check. I don't know how anyone lived here before air conditioning. Oh, wait: not many people did, and they were really emphatic about buying other people to do manual labor for them.) It is mild and pleasant during the winter (Check). Many of the rural areas are incredibly depressing (Check). People are really conservative (check) and into the Jesus (check). And then there's the big one that people assume: that everyone is racist. Eh…

My experience has been that race is indeed the 900-pound elephant in the room in the Deep South. People remain very sensitive about the topic, and many people, especially older ones who retain pre-1960 memories, still have a muted sense of "knowing one's place", if you follow me. Overall, however, I have not come away convinced that race is a much bigger issue/problem here than anywhere else. It is probably closer to the forefront of social and political issues here – i.

e., more issues end up being "about" race to some extent – but not by as large a margin as one might expect. Hell, there's probably more racial tension in LA, Cincinnati, or Chicago than in Atlanta.

One thing about the race issue did, in my experience, stand out like a sore thumb, though. Living around the Midwest, overt racism – the "I hate this group of people and have actual malice toward them" kind – always seemed to be a lower class phenomenon. The people in Chicago, for example, who are most likely to sit around a bar bitching about Darkies or whatever are knuckleheads from the bottom of our high school classes who regularly get fired from their job delivering pizzas. This has very much not been my experience in the South; the "Bubba" types – lower class, thick drawls, driving red pickup trucks – are not the people from whom I have heard terrible, racist things. Down here the racism seems to be, or at least feels like, a suburban, private school kid phenomenon. That's just my impression. I have no data here. It's merely an observation.

Look, I am not saying that no one who lives in the suburbs and has a lot of money in the North is racist. My point is that I was expecting the South to be populated with racist hillbillies when for the most part the hillbillies are pleasant people (although not free of unpleasant ideas, thanks to their involvement in the more lunatic branches of Protestantism).
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On the occasions on which I did hear really racist stuff, it was inevitably coming from the mouth of someone who did not fit the Redneck stereotype at all. I heard people say some horrible shit – eugenics appears to have a strong underground following among well-off suburban white kids – and not appear to have the slightest idea that they were saying something racist.

Although this surprised me, it makes sense. Lower class people, black and white, probably have some un-PC ideas about one another but regularly have to interact (going to the same dilapidated public schools, working the same shitty jobs, etc). For the people with money down here, the segregation is complete and the white kids of Marietta are raised on an unbroken diet of Boortz/Beck/Limbaugh, Falwell-type religion, and private laments about how much better things were before…You Know. Before the "social order" was changed by meddling outsiders.

In other words, the people who should know better – the ones with high incomes and access to education, culture, and so on – seem to be more likely to hold and express racist beliefs than the ones who wear the stereotype of being racists. Part of this reflects sample bias; I live in a college town (obviously) and college kids are notoriously parochial, sheltered, insensitive, and at times arrogant. Sometimes younger people say racist things because they are repeating things from people who raised them. Regardless, although it pains parts of my brain to admit it, I do believe that the Redneck Southerner might get more crap than he deserves. Conservative as hell? Religious in the extreme? Culturally unrefined? Sure. But they're hardly roaming the streets complaining about The Negroes or refusing to work next to a black person. The only Southerners I've encountered who appear to have attitudes of that kind are named things like Mason and Ashley and went to ,000/yr high schools.

And that, in short, is the exact opposite of what I expected based on 30 years of South stereotypes from my Yankee upbringing.

On Monday we talked about how the political process is turning the Supreme Court into a kind of super-legislature to resolve the contentious issues that elected officials lack the will to resolve themselves. That's bad enough on its own but the political process follows it up by using the Court as a punching bag, undermining public confidence in institutions that are supposed to be symbols of trust, consistency, and fairness.

One thing that differentiates the American right from conservatives in other similar nations is its willingness to throw the institutions of the state under the bus for short-term political gain. The heart of conservatism, at least historically, is the defense of institutions: the family, the state, religion, and so on. While the liberals are running around promoting a libertine "Do as thou wilt" philosophy, conservatives traditionally grab the moral high ground by defending culture, traditions, and social institutions. That happens today in some instances (the defense of "traditional marriage", for example) but for the most part, the American right's ability to defend the institutions of the state (i.
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e., the government) has been crippled by decades of ideological litmus-testing that have promoted free market worship above, quite literally, god and country. In other words, Americans rarely defend their institutions when they make unpopular decisions. If the Supreme Court makes a decision that the right doesn't like, no one says "We don't like this outcome but we accept it as legitimate, and we will work within the process to change it." Instead, the message is, "If the Supreme Court does something we don't like, then fuck the Supreme Court. It's corrupt, undemocratic, and untrustworthy."

When teaching the presidency, I always assign Al Gore's concession speech after the debacle of the 2000 election. The quote that stands out to me:

Now the U.S. Supreme Court has spoken. Let there be no doubt, while I strongly disagree with the court's decision, I accept it. I accept the finality of this outcome which will be ratified next Monday in the Electoral College.

This is in line with the spirit in which the Constitution was written and those so-often-exalted "Founders" hoped the system they created would function. You will not like every decision the government makes, and the fact that you do not like it does not mean that the government is not functioning. By the time they reach seven or eight years old most small children have grasped the fact that one does not always get everything one wants in life. I think that the authors of the Constitution expected nothing more than that we would apply that life lesson to the democratic process.

The problem is that it's just too tempting and there's too much cheap political gain to be had from feeding the anti-government paranoia that fills the heads of so many Americans.
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They rail against "activist judges" and promote the idea that if the legal system produces an outcome with which you disagree, you should be able to ignore it. If the Court does something you do not like, it is evidence that the Court is controlled by dark forces and cannot be trusted. The end result, of course, is that what is supposed to be the least political (although certainly not apolitical, as we discussed earlier this week) is held in the same regard as the rest of our political institutions. Opinion polling shows that the Court's approval rating among the public isn't much higher than the President's mediocre rating, although both certainly dwarf Congress's miserable performance.

You may be thinking that the reason Americans believe, as the polls show, that the Court makes decisions based on personal political ideology is because the Court does exactly that.
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Given our embarrassingly low levels of information, though, that assumption is tenuous. It is more likely that we assume this about the Court because we don't know anything about it except that we don't trust it and it makes decisions that we dislike.
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The more highly visible the Court becomes, the more it is undermined. The more it is undermined, the more we believe that the entire government is worthless. The more we believe that, the more "small government" rhetoric and the people spouting it seem appealing.