what are you bootlicking gun nuts up to

[Agent]

no text

[Inferno]

#content

[Samurai]

I was wondering about that a bit. Given the deployment near DC of the 82nd Airborne Division, a battalion of which has and whose deployment the Secretary of Defence has , you'd think this might be the time for a well-regulated militia, but the NRA have, I'm told, been strangely silent on the matter...

[dexeron]

I keep thinking about the weird ambivalence to destruction John Lennon demonstrated in the White Album version of Revolution (no 1) and then I was thinking about Nina Simone's much more direct answer to what he was saying.



But also I kind of feel like:



And at this point I feel like the only thing I really have to offer is memes.

Unless you're on my Facebook. Then you get to read my lengthy political diatribes.

So count yourself lucky.

[dexeron]

But also, I mean, speaking of gun nuts.

1. Ahab still makes videos on Youtube that are pretty cool. He recently got in a spat with some other gun video maker person about revolvers and it was kind of amusing.

2. I'm alternately amused and disturbed by how much more pro-gun I've become as I've moved left. Like, I know that liberals are supposed to be anti-gun, and I also absolutely acknowledge that our country is deranged when it comes to our relationship with firearms... but also, like, I dunno. There's a point where you go past liberal, when you're like "liberals are better than conservatives, but yikes, they're not good either" and then you're hanging out with communists and socialists and all of a sudden it's "oh, guns are valuable tools to fight oppression" and then you throw up in your mouth a little because you agree with right-wing asshole fascists on something. I mean, you disagree with fascists on what "oppression" is, and who is doing the "oppressing," but still, it's a little too close to home. But also, those fascists are all armed, so maybe it's a good idea to also be armed, because they're also huge cowards when it comes to targets that can fight back?

But also bang bang pew pew sticks are fun, so it's all good.

[Samurai]

Ahab's videos are fun, and I say that as someone who is totally happy to live in a country without general access to firearms. I've never really been convinced that the general populace, even armed with semi-automatic weapons and with hugely superior numbers, could stand for long against the most well-equipped military in the world if the latter chose to follow an authoritarian leader. It's reassuring that the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has reminded servicemen and women that their duty is principally to the constitution rather than the executive.

[dexeron]

That's why I'm so torn about it. The idea of the folks who think they'll "water the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants" being able to actually win against the military is absolutely laughable; but at the same time, there are other forces beyond the military who are armed and want to commit violence against marginalized groups, and against those forces it makes sense to be able to protect oneself. To really grossly oversimplify: Lynching didn't end in the U.S. because of stricter laws or non-violent protest. It ended when the members of lynch mobs started getting killed by those they were trying to lynch.

And it's really not about defeating the military (if the military is firing on civilians, we've already gone way beyond the point where America has ceased to exist in any meaningful sense) as it is about deterring potential violence. It's about giving that little bit of pause to those who give the orders, both in an official capacity and those in "unofficial" groups. It's about creating an opportunity cost for those who otherwise would not see any negative consequence to behaving badly.

I know this must seem absolutely bonkers to folks in sensible nations where the worst sorts of folks don't have easy access to firearms, and thus no one needs to be able to defend against them. Unfortunately, they do here in the U.S. and so it can be argued that at least one sensible solution (in a nation where the police force that's supposed to protect us has often been already infiltrated by those aforementioned groups, and even if not, their response times are far too slow) is to arm oneself. It's absurd and ridiculous and honestly it's probably not that bad.

It's not Mad Max over here.

At the same time, though, we do have instances where members of the Proud Boys or other alt-right nationalist/racist groups have doxxed folks, gone to their homes, and tried to intimidate/threaten them, and in a few cases bring violence against them. We do have vulnerable folk who aren't going to be protected by the cops (and calling the cops is more likely to get them killed or at least harassed.) Folks do have the right to defend themselves, although exercising that right is just going to bring law enforcement attention anyway, which leads to its own problems, of course.

In other words, my nation is absolutely bonkers and broken, and it probably always has been, but now it's just a lot more obvious.

I mean, we've got police openly beating journalists and peaceful protesters, and not even caring that they're on camera. They're not going after looters. They're just openly wailing away on folks who aren't any possible threat.

Land of the Free. Home of the Brave.

[Despanan]

I just want to point out that I was doing this shit before it was cool.

It's great to see what we were all talking about with OWS FINALLY catching on in a big way, but it's frustrating that it took ten years, countless murdered black people, electing a senile, cocaine-addicted gameshow host famous for playing a bad caricature of a businessman to our highest office AND a global pandemic for the rest of you to get on board.

[dexeron]

The last four years have done more to "radicalize" me than anything that's come before. Hell, even just since the freaking primary this year, I've lost a lot of faith in the politics of incrementalist reform. I'm not really "revolutionary" like you are, but I can't in good faith call myself a Democrat anymore.

But yeah, it's wild seeing topics and ideas that once were just completely off-limits are being bandied about in the mainstream dialogue. The sad thing is, that's entirely the other side's fault. Their inability to rein themselves in has led to this place. If George Floyd's death were followed by token "reforms" and apologizes, or hell, the police just refraining from showing their unwashed ass for five minutes, this probably would have sank back into the background like every other time. But now they're beating journalists and white people, and that's got everyone's attention. I mean, it's an awful indictment of our society that this has been going on for decades, and few have really cared. Black people get murdered by cops all the time, and no one seems to care. But a couple white kids get beat on camera, and suddenly it's an issue worth addressing. It really shows where our priorities are as a nation, I guess.

But, like I said, the cops couldn't t control themselves. They couldn't be satisfied with hegemony; they wanted more, and they overreached, and now people who were always able to ignore the problem before are suddenly saying "Wait, they're attacking people who look like me now! Maybe we should do something about this?"

I still don't know if it will ultimately accomplish anything in the long-term, but it's still huge that things like defunding the police or prison abolition are actually being talked about as mainstream topics.

It also pisses me the fuck off, because so many of you leftists in 2016 were like: "Well, Clinton would mean more status-quo and nothing would change. At least with Trump maybe things will get so bad people will actually stand up and demand change." God damn you for being right.

[Samurai]

The main way, short of revolution, to effect real change in first-past-the-post electoral systems is to get electoral reform implemented. There have actually been mainstream calls to scrap the electoral college in recent years, which I'm certain some Americans have been saying this for a long time, but I hadn't heard mentioned in national media before. That's a step on the road, and taking congressional boundary changes out of political hands would be another.

But you need to break the two-party system for there really to be a bit of radicalism in government again, and that requires proportional representation or something equivalent. Yes, it could let some fruit-loop libertarians and one-issue parties into Congress, but it could also admit greens and even social democrats. With the natural majority in the US already Democratic, the Overton window could conceivably be moved left enough that government stops being a de facto instrument of plutocracy.