Sacrificing thousands of kids on the altar of racist rightwing fantasies
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Sacrificing thousands of kids on the altar of racist rightwing fantasies
by David Atkins
The statistics don't lie: guns kill thousands of American children every year. It is an epidemic of slaughter unparalleled in any other industrialized democracy, yet nothing is done. After every fresh massacre the public becomes further desensitized to the violence even as we are told we cannot and should not talk about the reasons why thousands of our children continue to die violent, bloody and needless deaths. American gun deaths are unique in their inability to generate political action: no one seemed to care much about the politicization of the deaths at Pearl Harbor or the World Trade Center. Those thousands of needless deaths required major political action. But the needless deaths of thousands of children at the barrel of a gun barely registers a mention from elected officials.
Why is this? One reason is that the National Rifle Association has a powerful lobby. That's the story we are often told, at any rate. But it turns out that the NRA isn't remotely as powerful as their mythmaking claims. The NRA wasted $11 million attempting to defeat the President in 2012, and a full two-thirds of the incumbents who lost their House seats were backed by the NRA. The NRA boost to a candidate this election amounted to less that 2% of the vote if that. So whence comes this incredible lobbying power in the face of which the nation is collectively paralyzed in addressing the deaths of thousands of our children (and many more adults) every single year?
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It sounds too awful to contemplate, but reality is a cruel mistress. It's painfully obvious what motivates the rabidly pro-gun base: a deep-seated desire to unwind the social contract and cleanse undesirables who are allegedly stealing their tax dollars. These murderous fear-fueled fantasies have no bearing on any events that will actually take place in the real world (except possibly some decades on by climate change induced migrations), but they are strong motivators nonetheless. Unfortunately, both political parties are also motivated to hold onto the voters who carry these nightmarish visions in their heads.
What this functionally means is that we as a nation are openly allowing thousands of our children to die every year so that certain segments of the population can role-play racist murder fantasies. It's not awful to admit that this is true. It's awful that it's happening, and that we as a nation must pay the price for it with the torn and mutilated bodies of our innocence and our future.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/sacrificing-thousands-of-kids-on-altar.html
