Showing posts with label alt-right. Show all posts
Showing posts with label alt-right. Show all posts

Sunday, August 4, 2019

Enough Is Enough Already! (Yet Again)

Another day, another horrible mass shooting.  This time, it was in fact TWO mass shootings within 24 hours:  one in El Paso, Texas, followed by another in Dayton, Ohio, and so far at least the first one (if not the second as well) appeared to be fueled by racism, xenophobia, and white nationalism (much like the one at the garlic festival in Gilroy, California just days prior).  These two shootings are among the deadliest in this country's history, but in context with the numerous other recent mass shootings it otherwise seems disturbingly banal.  Seems that mass shootings in general have become an almost daily occurrence in recent years, and school shootings in particular an almost weekly occurrence--in the USA at least.  So far there have been 251 mass shootings in 2019 alone.   But the rest of the industrialized world doesn't really seem to have this kind of problem, even in countries where racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and hate groups in general are rife.  Why is that?  Well, there's always....

GUNS.

America is the land of 300 million guns, and combined with a culture that is crazier and more violent than most other "developed" countries, and much more extreme inequality, it is a very lethal combination indeed.  And some states, most notably Florida and Texas, but also Pennsylvania as well, have particularly lax gun laws compared to other states.  Of course, the biggest elephant in the room is the fact that at least 98% of mass shooters are MEN.  Thanks to the patriarchy and the sort of "toxic masculinity" that it creates, combined with the above factors, too many men end up resorting to violence.  Like the Iron Maiden song says, "a briefcase, a lunch, and a man on the edge".  With a gun. I mean, what could possibly go wrong, right?

There should be no doubt at this point that something needs to be done.  However, we do not believe that banning all guns for everyone, or adopting British or European-style gun laws, is the solution, as the genie is already out of the bottle, and there is also that whole Constitution thingy as well.  Thus, the TSAP recommends that the following measures be taken:

  1. Bring back a new and improved 1994 assault-weapons ban yesterday, this time with more teeth.  This time, include all rapid-fire devices and all magazines with more than ten rounds in the ban as well as the previously-banned types of semi-automatic rifles and their knockoffs.
  2. Remove the 20-year ban on gun violence research, yesterday. 
  3. End the gun-show loophole and implement universal background checks, yesterday.
  4. Put a significant excise tax on all bullets/ammo, like Chris Rock recommended. (Seriously)
  5. Treat ammo sales the same as gun sales.  Or better yet, treat bullets like Sudafed:  must show ID, limit on the number that one can buy, the number bought would be recorded, and if you do buy too many, you will be investigated.
  6. Pass a "one gun a month" law at the federal level.  And consider perhaps putting a limit on the number of guns that an individual can own at a given time, except for antiques/relics/curios.
  7. Require reporting of lost or stolen guns.
  8. Regulate firearms like other consumer products in terms of health and safety standards--currently such standards are nonexistent.
  9. Improve enforcement of existing gun laws, which tend not to be enforced very well these days, and improve state reporting of prohibited persons to NICS.  Also, prohibit anyone on the terrorism watch list from buying any guns, period--and consider hate groups to be domestic terrorists as well.
  10. Consider a massive gun buyback program, one that pays significantly more than what the guns are worth on the street.  Voluntary for any still-legal weapons, mandatory for any newly-banned ones. 
  11. And last but not least, improve our woefully-inadequate mental healthcare system.
Of course, to truly solve our gun violence problem would require a fundamental overhaul and transformation of our society, which the TSAP clearly supports.  We need to go from being what Riane Eisler calls a "dominator" society to more of a "partnership" society, as the latter kind is far less violent overall.   But in the meantime, the aforementioned recommendations would go a long way towards taking the dangerous edge off of the problem. 

And like other cases of domestic terrorism, these were most likely due to a combination of toxic masculinity, easy access to deadly weapons (especially the obligatory semi-automatic AR-15, AK-47, or their knockoffs), and a virulent racism and xenophobia fueled by the so-called "alt-right" (read: white supremacists, KKK, and neo-Nazis) as well as the Trump administration that nods, winks, and looks the other way (when they aren't stoking the fire themselves like Trump himself apparently had done recently).  Regardless of the motive, the first two factors are absolutely essential for virtually all mass shootings.   To be clear, these atrocities are, even more disturbingly, NOT isolated incidents or flukes, but the tip of a very large iceberg of hate and violence that appears to be getting worse in recent years.

I don't know about you, but my favorite part of the Second Amendment is where it says "well-regulated". Too bad so many Republican Congresscritters who are bought and paid for by the NRA can't seem to read the first half of the freaking sentence.  Oh, and nevermind that when it was written, guns at that time fired at most one round per minute, not 600+ per minute like so many of today's killing machines.  Not like the gun lobby and their lackeys really do nuance.

Sunday, October 28, 2018

Enough Is Enough Already! (Yet Again)

Another day, another horrible mass shooting.  This time, it was a truly deplorable and horrific anti-Semitic hate crime in which the genocidal mass murderer shot up a Pittsburgh syangogue because he, in his own words, "just want[ed] to kill Jews."  Yes, really.  This was in fact the deadliest attack on Jews in this country's history, but in context with the numerous other recent mass shootings it otherwise seems disturbingly banal.  Seems that mass shootings in general have become an almost daily occurrence in recent years, and school shootings in particular an almost weekly occurrence--in the USA at least.  But the rest of the industrialized world doesn't really seem to have this kind of problem, even in countries where anti-Semitism and hate groups in general are rife.  Why is that?  Well, there's always....

GUNS.

America is the land of 300 million guns, and combined with a culture that is crazier and more violent than most other "developed" countries, and much more extreme inequality, it is a very lethal combination indeed.  And some states, most notably Florida and Texas, but also Pennsylvania as well, have particularly lax gun laws compared to other states.  Of course, the biggest elephant in the room is the fact that at least 98% of mass shooters are MEN.  Thanks to the patriarchy and the sort of "toxic masculinity" that it creates, combined with the above factors, too many men end up resorting to violence.  Like the Iron Maiden song says, "a briefcase, a lunch, and a man on the edge".  With a gun. I mean, what could possibly go wrong, right?

There should be no doubt at this point that something needs to be done.  However, we do not believe that banning all guns for everyone, or adopting British or European-style gun laws, is the solution, as the genie is already out of the bottle, and there is also that whole Constitution thingy as well.  Thus, the TSAP recommends that the following measures be taken:

  1. Bring back a new and improved 1994 assault-weapons ban yesterday, this time with more teeth.  This time, include all rapid-fire devices and all magazines with more than ten rounds in the ban as well as the previously-banned types of semi-automatic rifles and their knockoffs.
  2. Remove the 20-year ban on gun violence research, yesterday. 
  3. End the gun-show loophole and implement universal background checks, yesterday.
  4. Put a significant excise tax on all bullets/ammo, like Chris Rock recommended. (Seriously)
  5. Treat ammo sales the same as gun sales.  Or better yet, treat bullets like Sudafed:  must show ID, limit on the number that one can buy, the number bought would be recorded, and if you do buy too many, you will be investigated.
  6. Pass a "one gun a month" law at the federal level.  And consider perhaps putting a limit on the number of guns that an individual can own at a given time, except for antiques/relics/curios.
  7. Require reporting of lost or stolen guns.
  8. Regulate firearms like other consumer products in terms of health and safety standards--currently such standards are nonexistent.
  9. Improve enforcement of existing gun laws, which tend not to be enforced very well these days, and improve state reporting of prohibited persons to NICS.  Also, prohibit anyone on the terrorism watch list from buying any guns, period--and consider hate groups to be domestic terrorists as well.
  10. Consider a massive gun buyback program, one that pays significantly more than what the guns are worth on the street.  Voluntary for any still-legal weapons, mandatory for any newly-banned ones. 
  11. And last but not least, improve our woefully-inadequate mental healthcare system.
Of course, to truly solve our gun violence problem would require a fundamental overhaul and transformation of our society, which the TSAP clearly supports.  We need to go from being what Riane Eisler calls a "dominator" society to more of a "partnership" society, as the latter kind is far less violent overall.   But in the meantime, the aforementioned recommendations would go a long way towards taking the dangerous edge off of the problem. 

The motive in this case was very clear:  he hated Jews and wanted to kill them.  And like other cases of domestic terrorism, it was most likely due to a combination of toxic masculinity, easy access to deadly weapons (especially the obligatory semi-automatic AR-15 or its knockoffs), and a virulent anti-Semitism fueled by the so-called "alt-right" (read:  white supremacists, KKK, and neo-Nazis) as well as the Trump administration that nods, winks, and looks the other way (when they aren't stoking the fire themselves).  Regardless of the motive, the first two factors are absolutely essential for virtually all mass shootings, whether in places of worship or otherwise.

And on the heels of another incident of Trump-inspired right-wing domestic terrorism, the pipe bombs sent by an angry and disgruntled Trump supporter to various prominent Democrats, this becomes even more disturbingly NOT an isolated incident or fluke, but the tip of a very large iceberg of virulent hate and violence.

I don't know about you, but my favorite part of the Second Amendment is where it says "well-regulated".  Too bad so many Republican Congresscritters who are bought and paid for by the NRA can't seem to read the first half of the freaking sentence.  Oh, and nevermind that when it was written, guns at that time fired at most one round per minute, not 600+ per minute like so many of today's killing machines.  Not like the gun lobby and their lackeys really do nuance.

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

We Must Condemn the Alt-Reich (Or, What Hath Trump Wrought?)

First, let's be brutally honest about what the so-called "alt-right" really is:  they are a repackaged and rebranded collection of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and KKK, with some neo-reactionaries, neo-Confederates, and fellow-travelers thrown in for good measure.  Even the term "white nationalist" is a euphemism for what these racist, hate-mongering deplorables really are.  Let's get that straight first.

Second, let's be brutally honest about what really happened in Charlottesville, VA on August 12-13, 2017.  A group of the aforementioned Alt-Reich white supremacist hatemongers descended on the town of Charlottesville to protest the taking down of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.  And that protest quickly got out of hand.  What started as marching through town with citronella Tiki torches (end-of-summer sale at Walmart, what else) ended in violence and bloodshed when the increasingly angry and restless (and armed) crowd of modern-day brownshirts clashed with the counter-protestors who opposed them.  One of the white supremacists, James Alex Fields, Jr., even used his accelerating car as a weapon and drove through a crowd of counter-protestors, killing Heather Heyer and injuring at least 19 others.   And yes, that is premeditated murder--it was planned and he exhibited what is known as "universal malice" when he deliberately used his car as a deadly weapon against his targets.  In fact, it is clearly an act of domestic terrorism.  And the black man that was brutally beaten with poles by a group of white supremacists in a parking garage?  He was the victim of a modern-day lynching.

Then Un-President Trump, ever careful not to offend his deplorable base that voted for him, blamed the violence on "both sides", drawing the ultimate false equivalency--a dog whistle that was not lost on the neo-Nazis.  Then, two days after it happened and after much criticism, he then finally named the problem--racism, white supremacists, KKK, neo-Nazis--but then almost in the same breath implied that we should all "unite" (!) with them.  Then, in his next speech, he even had the GALL to blame the violence on the "alt-left", whatever that is.  Sounds like more "alt-facts" as usual, Donald.  Sadly, this comes as no surprise.

Further emboldened, some neo-Nazis even vandalized the Boston Holocaust Memorial shortly after, the second time this summer after 22 straight years of no such incidents.   The broken glass was clearly an echo of the infamous Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, and there were swastikas and anti-Semitic graffiti everywhere.  So much for a "post-racial society".   It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that hate crimes have accelerated since the Trump campaign and especially since the election.

It should be painfully obvious now that Trump in fact created, or at least unleashed, this monster, or at least its latest incarnation which he keeps enabling.  And he utterly failed his biggest moral test yet by not immediately and unequivocally naming and condemning this monster. Worse, he even once referred to them collectively as "fine people".

To all those who voted for Trump, how does it feel to be on the wrong side of history?  Because we wouldn't know anything about that.  Believe me.