Celebrating Slaughter

 

Photo by https://www.flickr.com/photos/docmonstereyes/
Photo originally posted at https://www.flickr.com/photos/72538882@N00/5507547759
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AR-15_Build_IMG_9439_(5507547759).jpg

Facebook, Twitter (!?) and social media in general, do not offer a forum for robust debate on contentious subjects, making it necessary to keep discussions focused narrowly on select topics. Nowhere is that more evident than in arguments over “Gun Rights” vs. “Gun Control.” In those discussions, pro-gun advocates (and gun control people) have learned to derail arguments with questions and statements unrelated to the opening argument or comment. In a recent example, a statement saying that states with strict gun laws experience more gun violence was met with acounterclaim: immediately, a response claimed that the counterclaim did not explain Chicago, Baltimore, and Detroit.

Notice that the response did not affirm nor deny the accuracy of the comment that a correlation exists between looser gun laws and higher gun violence, but instead chose to change and expand the subject by bringing in an exception to the rule, by raising questions of gun trafficking and gang violence, and thereby increasing the complexity of the discussion and veering it away from a debunked comment while simultaneously forcing that complexity into the narrow confines of social media.

We see the same tactics used by Congress, such as the July 2022 response to the Uvalde, Texas massacre: Missouri Representative Billy Long blamed the mass murders of school children on Roe v. Wade- a non-sequitur. Abortion and the slaughter of children in schoolrooms are two entirely different topics, necessarily addressed by different laws and social standards. One addresses bodily autonomy and religion, the other concerns the protection of viable life.

Again, in June 2022 a Fox News host Jesse Waters blamed the Buffalo NY slaughter at a supermarket on the wearing of medical face masks. Really, Jesse? Ten blacks murdered by a white supremacist and you want me to believe he did it because he wore a mask? How do these circus performers and carnival barkers get voted into high office and well-paid roles as journalists?

Remember when the title, “World’s Dumbest Congressperson” passed from Louie Gohmert to conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene when, in May 2028 and prior to her election a Georgia’s representative, she claimed the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, was actually a “false flag” planned event?

And then there is the propaganda device known as The Big Lie. Texas Senator John Cornyn got educated by California Governor Gavin Newsom when Cornyn claimed that California gun laws do not stop gun crimes, Newsom offered statistics showing that Cornyn’s Texas had a higher rate of gun offences than California. Why don’t our government officials check the facts before they make their fallacious claims? Could it be because we are led by dim-witted anti-intellectualists?

Gun control advocates sometimes use the same tactic, but from my experience, generally when they show a lack of firm grasp of the facts.

In early February 2023, members of Congress began celebrating mass shootings by wearing AR-15 pins, further encouraging strident militia types and wannabees to engage in Gish galloping non-sequiturs against those who seek a solution to the slaughter.

Could it be that those who seek to distract and derail a debate are those that know they have lost the debate, but rather than withdraw, try to force the thread into an endless pursuit of ever-changing topics?

Give up? The answer is “Yes.”

Welcome to ‘Murika, y’all.”

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Injustice Served

 

Photo by John Moeses Bauan on Unsplash

"There is no monopoly on becoming a millionaire. If you’re jealous of those with more money, don’t just sit there and complain — do something to make more money yourself.”

“They say that if you give your children too much, they don’t get the joy out of work. They just want the unearned things to keep falling from the sky.” Gina Rinehart (BrainyQuotes.com)

(That, from a woman for whom $18 billion fell from the sky.) [1]

The world’s richest woman and the universe’s worst poet [2], Australian mining heiress Gina Rinehart, in 2012 told the Sydney Mining Club that Australian miners were “too expensive.” She thinks they should work for two dollars a day, like African workers. Notice that she wants to bring everyone’s wages down to those of African miners, and not to help elevate those African miners to the realm of her Australian workers. You might remember Ms. Rinehart from an earlier statement, in which she wrote, “If you’re jealous of those with more money… spend less time drinking or smoking and socializing and more time working.” Similar to her reluctance to assist in a more equal economy, she wants workers to spend more hours at their labors, thus increasing the profits of the parasitic Plunderbund.

She claims superpowers by pointing to her 24/7 work hours as an example for all of us. She calls upon us common folk to work hard, invest and reinvest our meager wages, to find our own way to pleonexia — the greed that knows no limits. The lady does not, however, explain how we are to save funds for that investment on the wages she would like the rich to pay. Neither does she enlighten us as to what we are to do about the loss of retirement and investment funds, by those of us who did work 24/7, to pay executive bonuses to people who drove their companies into near-bankruptcy and caused a worldwide recession.

I’ve seen a pattern in the attitudes among the uber-rich toward the working class: the more money they inherit, the more they claim to have made their fortunes through hard work. Isn’t it interesting that most of those who actually — you know — worked for their money share an empathy for the plight of the working class?

Of course, there exist parasites at both ends of the economic spectrum. I once provided an acquaintance with a key to my apartment and the use of my computer and printer to aid him in his job search. His unemployment compensation neared an end and he had fallen on his savings to survive. Food stamps and the kindness of friends and associates saved him from homelessness. He spent his time while I worked to print out Drudge Reports, listen to Rush Limbaugh rants, and write letters to the editor in which he lambasted liberals for their welfare mentality. The only evidence I saw of a job search lay in a stream of letters to his former employer, in which he pleaded for his old job. The very wealthy are not alone in their willingness to leech from those who provide them. But the very wealthy possess the resources to persuade millions of workers to invest in the fallacy of trickle-down economics with their labors and their votes.

A Facebook friend and fellow blogger writes that we should refrain from name-calling when we discuss the crimes of right-wing extremists and their effective propaganda machine, but I disagree. I only regret that the legions of lawyers available to the right-wing rich render me unable to call the greediest of them and the sheer stupidity of their ditto heads by appropriate names. That, and the fact that the English language does not provide words worthy of their lack of common morality.

Ethan Couch, a Tarrant County, Texas teen got drunk, killed four people in an auto accident and was sentenced to ten years of probation after the teen’s lawyers pleaded that his father’s wealth instilled in him a lack of personal responsibility and a psychological condition called “Affluenza.” [1] The boy will spend time in a $450,000 per year luxury rehabilitation center in Southern California. [2]

Shaun Goodman also got drunk and led police in a high-speed chase through the streets of Olympia, Washington. He wrecked his $70,000 Ferrari by smashing it into two cars and a house. Yes, a house. While he waited for the trial for his seventh DUI arrest, a judge signed an order permitting Goodman to attend the 2013 Super Bowl game in New York. He is now serving a one-year work-release sentence, leaving behind a simple and unanswered question: has justice been served? [3]

Those two cases might lead one to wonder whether we have a two-tiered justice system, or if an exchange of money in plain, brown envelopes might have aided the decisions. I am working hard to quiet the cynical voice that urges me to opine the latter.

While the American inheritance-class wealthy deny they are engaged in class warfare, Ms. Rinehart and her fellow plunderers encourage it [6]. They have the the power, but the working class the numbers. The Story is in how that balance affects the future

Citations:

[1] https://www.afr.com/chanticleer/18b-cash-pile-lets-rinehart-play-both-sides-of-energy-transition-20221205-p5c3tq
[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/everyone-is-laughing-at-australias-richest-persons-ode-to-mining-2012-2
[3] https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/ethan-couch-affluenza-10-years-since-deadly-drunk-driving-crash/287-a8ea72a1-592e-49dd-a097-fd1bb80e237e
[4] https://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-texas-teen-drunk-driving-probation-affluenza-20131212-story.html
[5] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/man-arrested-on-suspicion-of-eighth-dui-after-seattle-hit-and-run/
[6] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-05/rinehart-says-aussie-workers-overpaid-unproductive/4243866

Suggested Reading:

Shipley, David K. The Working Poor: Invisible in America, Alfred A. Knopf, 2004.
Bregman, Rutger. Utopia for Realists. Back Bay Books, 2016.
Correspondents of the New York Times, Class Matters. Times Books, 2005.
Desmond, Matthew, Poverty By America. Crown, 2023

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