Bang, Bang

Guns, for many people in the United States, are more than objects, or even weapons. They're a facet of identity. And while for many people who feel that guns are too prevalent in the United States that identity is one of machismo and aggression, for the people who hold it, it's about the ability to protect themselves, and the people and property that are important to them. If you pick up a random handgun or self-defense magazine from a store newsstand, it's easy to conclude that somewhere, there is a photographer who's living the good life from the royalties of photos of distressed-looking White women being vaguely menaced by sketchy guys in hoodies.

One of the things that tends to become apparent when you talk to people who have concerns about crime, is that "crime that they care about/frightens them" and "crime" are treated as synonymous. And that the difference between the reporting of or on crime and the actual incidence of crime is purely academic. For all that people can note that "if it bleeds, it leads" as a mantra of modern news media, it never seems to occur to many people that the stories that may their way to them fall into that category.

And people in general tend to treat guns as if they were some sort of death ray; pointing a gun at someone and pulling the trigger simply does them in, and this is true of anyone, whether they've spent enough time on a shooting range to actually know how to handle their weapon well or not.

And so they become seen as easy solutions to a ubiquitous problem, except by those people who have spent enough time around weapons and understand enough about the law (and how people interact with it) to know better. But they're a part of the discussion more rarely than might be hoped.

Flagged

There's a house, a couple of miles or so away from where I live, where the owners often display flags from nations around the world. These are accompanied by the name of the nation (or state) in question and the name of the capital. This has been going on for years, and I suspect that it's lasted through different owners of the home.

Today, however, was a slight exception to the normal pattern.

The flag on display was the "Stars and Bars" or the first national flag of the Confederate States of America. And it was identified as such, and the second line was "Civil War."

Now, I suspect that "the Confederacy" would have been a tight, or even impossible, fit for the sign on the banister. But if the flag is going to be displayed, I think that the historical context is useful, given that many Americans have a fairly tenuous grasp of the nation's history. For many people, the Confederate battle flag, with the stars on diagonal stripes (and also incorrectly referred to as the "Stars and Bars") is what comes to mind when they think of the defunct CSA, which is what makes it such a lightning rod.

Does it make a difference whether people actually understand what flag were flown by the Confederacy? Not really. But I think a better understanding of the Civil War, its players and their motivations would be helpful. Unfortunately, it's often considered a subject best avoided.

Inattention

"If you're not angry (and/or outraged) you're not paying attention."

It's an old trope, but it's having a day again in the aftermath of the recent United States Supreme Court rulings in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc., Et al. v. Bruen, Superintendent of New York State Police, Et al. and Dobbs, State Health Officer of the Mississippi Department of Health, Et al. v. Jackson Women's Health Organization Et al.

My favorite variation on the theme this time out is: "If you aren't angry AND terrified, then you're part of the problem." But as I've said before, it is possible to pay attention, and not be outraged, because comprehension does not require emoting. Furthermore, anger and outrage 1) don't change anything, and 2) are neither a substitute nor prerequisite for effective action to bring about change.

But in this case, I would make the point to people who are upset about the Supreme Court's stances on guns and the right to abortion, is that their current outrage is born of inattention six years ago. Had former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton carried Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, all states carried by President Biden, the Supreme Court would not have a 6 to 3 partisan lean in favor of Republicans. It would, in fact, be the opposite. And it's not like the desire for Conservatives/Republicans to have a Court that would back their plays was a secret. It's a project that's been in the works pretty much for the past 50 years.

In the end, the culprit is likely threefold (at least). Fold one is the negative partisanship of the broad American public, and the effect this has on the "two-party" system. Put simply, if one is not a Republican, the only viable option in the majority of the country is to be a Democrat. There's the odd independent here and there, like Bernie Sanders (who tends to be a Democrat just long enough to run in the party's Presidential primary), but for the most part, "third-parties" (of which there are actually several), are more or less hopeless when it comes to Federal or statewide offices; the big-name independent and third-party candidates that get anywhere or make a splash in the attempt tend to be running on personal name recognition. The upshot of Democrats as simply being pretty much everyone who wants to be politically active or engaged but doesn't want to vote Republican is that the Democrat's "big tent" is large enough to include groups who aren't otherwise on speaking terms. It's said that there's a "moderate wing" and a "progressive wing" of the Democratic Party, but that implies that they're firmly attached to the same bird, a characterization that I am dubious of. And the infighting between the two has prevented

The second fold is the segregation of Democratic and Republican voters at the national level. Recall that while Secretary Clinton lost the Electoral College vote, she won the popular vote. The clustering of "Blue" voters in high-population states hurts Democrats at the national level, as the size of the House of Representatives is capped at 435 seats, and all states must have at least one. States with populations of less than 750,000 or so wind up pulling House seats, and thus Electoral College votes, from the larger states. And each state receives two Senators, regardless of size, and so the fact that there are simply numerically fewer reliably "Blue" states than "Red" ones can make winning the Presidency difficult for Democrats.

Fold the third was the unwise adoption of a philosophy that "demography equals destiny." As Democrats assured themselves that the White grievance politics that appeared to animate the Republican Party would drive away everyone who wasn't White, Rural, Old, Male and Evangelical, they stopped looking for ways to court the voters who didn't fit that profile. And when it turned out that many people from Latin American backgrounds had come to associate Progressivism (and Democratic Socialism... remember that term) with the disastrous socialist dictatorships that had prompted their families to come to the United States in the first place, the fractious party had nothing else ready to offer them outside of motivated misunderstandings of Trumpian rhetoric.

And none of this is new. These are things that could have, and should have, been addressed years ago. But they weren't. Anger and outrage over their consequences won't turn back the clock and fix them, either.

Did You Hear About

There was a story on the NPR website today about a business I've never heard of in a town in Maine that I've never heard of. Someone there put up a sign disparaging Juneteenth, and the Internet became involved. Public relations departments swung into action, relationships were severed and local people expressed their surprise and disappointment that there was actually someone unenlightened in their town.

This is national news, why? I get that the Internet isn't a particularly constrained resource, especially not for an outlet like National Public Radio, but the whole thing strikes me as trivial. It's little more than a "bah, humbug!" applied to a different holiday. It's the sort of thing that people will point to when they decry racism as an active mindset in the United States, but anyone who lives somewhere with more than a dozen other people in the immediate vicinity could find an example much closer to home.

But outrage drives clicks. And what good is a news outlet without an audience? To the degree that the NPR audience is one that rewards putting trivial displays of pettiness on the front page, then that's what NPR will do. People like me still drop in from time to time looking to keep up with what's going on in the world, and so the numbers stay good, and NPR sees no reason to change. But it's occurred to me, and not for the first time, that I should change. Rather than spend my time digging through bits of outrage mining looking for something actually useful, I should go where the useful information is. This will, of course require that I subscribe to something, but since spending attention alone hasn't worked, maybe putting money on the table will be more productive.

Roadside

Some flowers, growing by the side of the street in Seattle. I'm not one for stopping to smell the flowers, but I will pause to photograph them sometimes.