Tag Archives: Guns

Knife to a Gun Fight?

27 Sunday May 2018

Posted by in Minis

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“Never bring a knife to a gunfight!”

It really is a bad-ass line. It’s the kind of thing you’d say to put someone else right in line. The line comes with a few variations, of course, but all of them just smack of really great smack-downatude. You think about saying that line, and you can practically hear the people around you going ‘booom!’ as the object of your derision shrinks in abject humiliation.

I wonder how many people remember where this line comes from?

…or how the scene worked out in the end?

The Message in Itself

05 Thursday Oct 2017

Posted by in Politics

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From the Mission District in San Francisco

I’m beginning to think that left wing politics is the object of a higher grasp, so to speak, or at least that this is how it must appear to its critics. There are those, of course, who simply reject left wing politics outright. Hell, there are those for whom scorn of left wing politics is a favorite sport. But what really fascinates me about the response to various left wing messages are the number of people who can’t quite bring themselves to say ‘no’ outright. Instead, they have all sorts of advice for the lefties among us. You’d almost think these critics were down to help, assuming of course that help means something else.

And by ‘something else’, I mean, something other than anything actually requested at any particular time. The ‘else’ in this case is that ineffable thing in itself. Whatever thing, a lefty actually wants to see done today, that is surely out of the question. But something else? Some other request or demand, made by some other person in some other way…

I expect the folks in the not-your-mascot movement could write a book about all the helpful suggestions they’ve gotten over the years. Instead of protesting a football mascot or opposing a team name, so the thinking goes, y’all should be fixing the reservations, feeding the hungry in Native American communities, and just generally doing practical things to help indigenous people. Rarely do those offering such advice take stock of the actual efforts of such activists to help out their communities, and these critics don’t seem at all impressed by the many Native American activists who say that issues like derogatory sports teams may have something to do with the larger problems facing their people. No, the response is as simple as it is common. Stop protesting and go do something more helpful.

I hope I’ll be excused for suspecting that the ‘stop protesting’ is a little more important to those offering such advice than the “go do something more important.”

Those taking a knee at football games have certainly received similar advice. People just want to watch the game, so they are told. This isn’t the right time to protest, and when the National Anthem is playing, well then, that CERTAINLY isn’t the right time to protest! Anyway, this is all much too divisive. You’ll only alienate people. The players protesting are rich and pampered anyway, so what do they have to protest? If they want to help out more, then they should donate money and do charity work in their own communities.

You read all this stuff, and you might be tempted to think some of these critics aren’t open to concerns about possible police abuse at all, but surely that isn’t the case! Those criticizing protesters couldn’t be more clear about their willingness to consider the issue.

On another day.

In another context.

With a different messenger.

After that messenger has done a certain number of other things to earn their respect.

On this last point, you might be tempted to suggest that people like Colin Kaepernick have indeed given to charity and actively worked to help those in need, but of course this is missing the point. Clearly, he and those with him need to do more. If they do more, then people will listen to them.

Yep!

…just not during the Anthem.

Every major mass-shooting seems to trigger a wave of similar advice. Don’t politicize this! It’s too soon! Now is not the time to raise questions about gun control. Nope! Not now. Not yet.

…maybe later.

So, it seems that America might one day have a serious talk about gun control. It will have to be scheduled during an intermission of indeterminate length between actual mass shootings. This will of course require the cooperation of mass shooters, because they will have to create a pause in the carnage of sufficient length to allow the keepers of the conversation to make the call. It’s not clear just how long we must all wait between shootings, but presumably when the time frame is reached, the keepers of the conversation will proclaim the moment and we can begin to deal with the issues in a serious manner. Surely, they will tell us, when it is time! This whole too-soon thing couldn’t just be a stalling tactic. They will tell us when it is time. Until then, well, it is just to soon.

Hell, it’s too soon to ask if it’s to soon.

Shame on you for wondering about it!

Of course, one might be excused for thinking that the moment any of these conversations could take place (when the issues aren’t in the news and at events people aren’t paying attention to) would in effect constitute precisely the sort of time when the public finds the whole topic easiest to ignore, but such thoughts are far too cynical! Surely, all this advice is sincere. Surely, all these people telling us its the wrong time and the wrong message mean what they say.  If only the right version of any of these messages reached their ears and eyes, they would happily consider the whole thing.

But that never seems to happen!

The actual left wing politics that we see in America is just just a little too human to be worthy of consideration. The real message, the ones so many keep saying they would consider, always seem to rest out there somewhere in the world of possibility, just a bit beyond the grasp of mere mortals. If only we could ever confront that message in itself, the real message, the properly timed message, phrased in just the right way, and put forward by the right person with just the right presentation to be worthy of consideration. Hell, I don’t know that the left wing messages could or even should win out in such an event (a lot depends on the particulars), but that’s rather academic at this point, because the time is not yet right. Under the right conditions, so it would seem, we could at least consider those lefty messages. Until then? Well, we all seem to have better things to do.

You know, like sitting on our couches watching other people do stuff.

And drinking beer.

A Tyrant On Either Side of the Gun Sights

10 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by in Politics

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Meguns&JudPriestshirt

Budding Young Amo-sexual (Embarrassing, I know)

I was about 15 or 16 when my father cancelled our membership in the National Rifle Association (NRA). Money was tight back then, but Dad said that wasn’t entirely the issue. He was also fed up with their politics.

I was mortified.

The old “If guns are outlawed” sticker was then sitting on the bumper of my first car (which wasn’t yet running), and a stack of hunting and shooting magazines rested on a shelf in my bedroom. My private arsenal had already outgrown the gun-case. At the time, there just wasn’t much about the NRA that I didn’t like. Oh sure I’d noticed a myopic one-sidedness to some of the articles in those magazines, but for the most part, I was down for the main agenda. Dad never did explain to me what had bothered him about the NRA back then (the early 80s). I reckon he was just hoping I would grow a dose of moderation at some point. This was hardly the only obsession that could have given him cause for such concerns.

I guess Dad got his way on this one at least. My views on guns and gun control are complex. ‘Ambivalent’ may be a better word. My take on the legal issues doesn’t map well onto either the left or the right on the actual issue of gun ownership. I’m open to gun control, but skeptical of its impact (at least one any scale that’s practically possible in the present political climate). It hasn’t escaped my notice that I live in a region where firearms can be damned useful. (By way of illustration, one of my students took a job collecting plant samples this summer. Part of her training including a day or so learning how to handle a firearm. In the land of polar bears, a gun can be an essential part of scientific research.) I’ve also got a lot of friends and neighbors who feed themselves by use of firearms, and I’m not in the habit of turning down a good bowl of tutu (caribou) stew. The bottom line is that I won’t be campaigning for full disarmament anytime soon. Few do, really, but if complete disarmament is your bandwagon, then I am definitely not on board.

There is one other bandwagon I’m not climbing aboard any time soon, and that is the one run by the NRA. Any latent interest I might have had in that organization slipped away during the Clinton administration. The television ads from that era telling us that every honest gun owner ought to be a member didn’t exactly inspire me to get out my checkbook. Hearing countless people spouting their fears about ‘thuh guvment’ was enough to send shivers up my spine and put a large dose of queazy in the pit of my stomach. I recall “Impeach Clinton” bumper stickers within the first few months of his first administration. In time his critics would find reasons. In the interim, suddenly Bill Clinton was the source of the New World Order, notwithstanding Bush Senior’s use of the  phrase to sell Desert Storm. Within the space of a single election, Clinton became the source of all that was wrong with the world. Seeing the same people who had supported centralization of power throughout the Reagan and Bush administrations suddenly play underdog against government authority was more than a little disconcerting.

It got a lot more disconcerting after the Oklahoma City bombing.

You can’t run a direct line of reasoning from Charlton Heston’s “take my gun from my cold dead hands” speech to that bombing, no, but these two notes fit in the same damned tune. The right wing now sings a constant chorus of ‘don’t tread on me’ messages, and most of them serve simultaneously to valorize the weekend warrior games of countless over-gown boys and to demonize the best efforts of anyone involved in pretty much any kind public service. Hating the government is a popular sport in what passes for ‘conservative’ circles these days. The problem is you can’t shoot at the government and you can’t bomb the government. Hell, you can’t even shout at the government. You can only do these things to real people, people who work for the government, and the trouble with demonizing that government is its a damned effective way to demonize real people. It’s a damned effective way to justify hurting real people. An awful lot of people died in Oklahoma City because someone decided to strike a blow against the government, and his ideas about that government had an awful lot in common with those pushed by the NRA for a couple decades now. Is the one the cause of the other? Maybe not, but it’s a damned reckless message just the same.

What I specifically object to is the scorched earth tactics that the NRA keeps producing. Talking of Second Amendment solutions and other confrontations with the government may sound like the words of brave people put-upon by dark forces and powerful institutions, but they are also clear and obvious efforts to intimidate the rest of us. While other interest groups go to the voting booths, hire lawyers to plead their case, or sometimes take to the streets with a sign or three, elements of the gun rights crowd keep threatening to use their guns under some unspecified conditions. It’s easy enough to imagine the scenario without its details. They will fight back against tyranny, of course; that’s what these people keep telling us. The problem of course is that tyranny may very well be a few unwelcome regulations and the tyrant may well be (as it was in Oklahoma City) ordinary people just trying to do their damned jobs.

Don’t get me wrong. For better or for worse, the Second Amendment is part of American government. There are certainly arguments to be made about its proper scope, and still other arguments to be made about the effectiveness of various gun control measures, but there is no excuse for the constant litany of violent fantasies surrounding firearms ownership. An awful lot of people keep telling us they and their guns are the best protection from government overreach, and every time I see or hear this message I find myself hoping for protection from precisely the folks producing it. I realize echos of this message come to us from the days of America’s founding fathers, but those echos have been twisted by ideology, augmented by fraudulent representations, and generally milked for everything they could possibly be worth. In the end, it isn’t America’s founders that keep this threat of violence alive in America’s politics today. It is the words and deeds of shameless people.

…which of course brings us to the latest twist in Donald Trump’s campaign. These are his words on the subject:

Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish the second amendment. By the way, and if she gets to pick, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do folks, although the second amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.

To say these remarks have sparked outrage is putting it mildly, but let’s be clear. This is not an obvious call for gun owners to assassinate Hillary Clinton. It isn’t even a clear call for armed rebellion in the case that Hillary wins the election. There isn’t really anything clear about this message at all, but then again there wouldn’t be.

It’s Trump, remember?

He and clarity have never really been on speaking terms.

What this rhetoric ALSO isn’t is a responsible case for the Second Amendment. To begin with, the claim that Hillary Clinton wants to abolish the Second Amendment is hardly supported by the evidence. She favors a variety of gun control measures, yes. This does not mean she wishes to abolish the Second Amendment after all. It’s a straw Hillary that Trump is talking about, not the real one.

It’s really not clear how the straw Hillary who wants to abolish the Second Amendment altogether would even go about it, but it actually is clear that she couldn’t do it just by appointing a few judges. That move is neither sufficient nor necessary to do away with the Second Amendment (in principle or practice).

Hillary may well support gun control measures that many gun owners wouldn’t want to see passed. She may even advocate measures that ought not to be passed by any objective measure of their merits. Gun control measures, perfectly sound or bat-shit crazy, do NOT add up to the abolition of the Second Amendment. And let’s be clear, even Scalia, in the infamous Heller decision suggested that some regulations could be consistent with the existence of the Second Amendment, a Second Amendment he construed explicitly (and quite controversially as an individual right).

Simply put, regulations are on the table with or without Hillary as POTUS. Also the Second Amendment remains on the table with or without Hillary as POTUS. Far from the dooms-day scenario Trump trots out in this speech, another Presidential Clinton is at best/worst just another twist in the long case history of the Aecond Amendment. It’s not the end of the Second Amendment or civilization itself. So, yes, Trump is exaggerating, which is putting it mildly.

That exaggeration is not simply a mistake. Realizing just how badly Trump is exaggerating the prospect of a Presidential Hillary helps us understand how to take the comment that Second Amendment people might be able to do something about her after all. These Second Amendment people would be acting in a fantasy world in which a President, and a President alone is enough to render the legal landscape hopeless. If Trump is really suggesting something as mild as voting or rallying to his cause, then there is no need to raise the specter of a gun-grabbing apocalypse in preparation for it. His wording is ambiguous of course, but it’s the ambiguity of plausible deniability. And when speaking to millions, some of whom are clearly quite excitable, Trump’s message will take on many meanings. He knows that. The man is not THAT stupid. Many, perhaps most will take his words to mean something as radical as it takes to say something really rude to a cotton-picking liberal, but some will take them far worse. Some folks are quite prepared to kick their John Wayne fantasies into high gear. A responsible candidate knows this, and a responsible candidate doesn’t rouse his support base, or any subsection of it to the brink of violence.

Trump does.

He has been doing this throughout his campaign. I know of no other candidate in recent memory who has deliberately provoked violence at his own rallies, always falling short of directly calling for it, but often coming as close as one might without explicitly endorsing it.

During the primary season, the actual violence at campaign rallies clearly worked in Trump’s favor. What began as a series of news stories about Trump’s own supporters beating various protestors transitioned seamlessly into a series of stories about protestors engaged in all manner of violence against Trump’s own supporters.

Trump’s fighting words couldn’t help but fall on angry ears for his critics. Many of us have responded with such radical actions as a contemptuous tweet or a few minutes of outraged gripetude, but some took it further. Some engaged in genuine violence. The pay-off for Trump was obvious enough as he and his supporters played the victim and cast his critics as those with no respect for civil society.

What better context for Trump to present himself as the law-and order candidate!?!

A responsible candidate would have asked his supporters to step back and let security handle matters. If Trump said such things on some occasions, on others he talked about how those beaten deserved it, suggested he would pay for the lawyers of those beating protesters, and otherwise said a number of things encouraging the violence in his own supporters. and to provoke violence against his opponents.

Simply put, violence has worked well for Trump. He provoked it to his benefit in the primaries, and it should come as no surprise that he continues to do so in the present general election cycle. He started the general election by fantasizing about hitting his critics at the Democratic National Convention. You can see it in this passage. It isn’t until the very end that we come to realize he is talking about something other than outright violence, and you come to that only after indulging in a long violent fantasy.

The things that were said about me, I mean, should I go through some of the names? I, You know what I wanted to, I wanted to hit a couple of those speakers so hard, I would have hit them, no-no, I was gonna hit them so, I was all set, and then I got a call from a highly respected governor, ‘how’s it going Donald?’ I said; “well it’s going good, but they are really saying bad things about me. I’m gonna hit them so hard, I was gonna hit one guy in particular, a very little guy, I was gonna hit this guy so hard his head would spin, he wouldn’t know what the Hell happened, and, he came out of nowhere, he came out of nowhere; they made deals with me, ‘would you help me this; would you make this deal and solve the problem.?’ I solved the problem. I do a great job. I was going to hit a number of those speakers so hard their heads would spin. They’d never recover. And that’s what I did with a a lot of, that’s why I still don’t have certain people endorsing me. They still haven’t recovered.

It could be an accident of course. And elves could bake chocolate cookies under a full moon. This is a conscious effort on Trump’s part. Just as above, this is a message calculated to stimulate violence. It is ambiguous enough to evade responsibility for that violence, but it’s evocative enough to encourage it just the same.

And so here we are, at a new low point in American politics, at least in my own memory, a Presidential candidate stirring up violence in the service of his own campaign. It says a lot about Trump’s character that he is willing to do this to get the position. It says a lot about how he plans to run the country, and what it says about those plans is damned frightening. We can add his penchant for promoting violence to Trump’s sustained and very deliberate courtship of white nationalists throughout his campaign. This man has already done irreparable harm to the nation, and it’s hard to imagine what good things he could possibly do as President to overcome the harm he is clearly willing to do in the service of becoming President. More likely, he will just go on hurting people and encouraging his supporters to do the same.

Today’s message is distinctive insofar as it’s a clear and definitive marriage of two trends within the current GOP. On the one hand, we have Trump’s general efforts to wind up the nation to state of hysteria, to create the sense that America rests on the brink of social breakdown. On the other we have the long-standing right-wing message of violent opposition to government authority, one rooted in a myopic devotion to a single civil right. It’s marriage made in Hell, or at least a cheesy overpriced hotel equivalent thereof. Donald Trump is a huckster. That much should be clear to pretty much anyone this side of a mental ward. But he’s a huckster with a heart full of bile.

Pay No Attention to the Abe in the Corner!

07 Sunday Dec 2014

Posted by in History, Politics

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One of the most beautiful gifts of the internet is the ability to learn at a glance the wisdom of America’s founding fathers. In fact, one can often find these pearls of wisdom beautifully packaged in nice visuals. They are perfect for a tweet or a quick illustration, and so very informative. Most of all, they are ever so conveniently one quick google away.

Take for instance the warning these men left for us regarding the evils of big government! Thomas Jefferson is particularly valuable in this regard. Why you could almost imagine him to be commenting directly on current affairs couldn’t you? Isn’t Tom just swell?

(You may as usual click to embiggen any of these quotations)

Thomas Jefferson was particularly keen on the importance of political dissent.

SpuriousTommyDissents

Thinking along similar lines, our founding fathers spoke directly to the issue of gun control. I mean, these comments are just so perfect. You’d almost think some of these quotes had been written by folks working for the NRA. Check it out!

More than that! Our great founders were no friends of the nanny state. They were quite clear that people shouldn’t expect too much from government. It’s there to give everyone a chance, but folks really shouldn’t expect any more than that. You read some of these things, and you can’t help thinking it’s almost as if they were actually thinking about the New Deal.  I guess these guys were just prescient or something.

James Madison wouldn’t have any truck with this notion of a living constitution. He’d school the modern liberals right quick about that nonsense!

SpuriousMadisonisanoriginalist

On religion, let me tell you, the founders of our great nation were clear about the importance of the Christian faith!

Oddly, the founders were also pretty damned clear about the evils of Christianity. Apparently, they had strong views on that too.

…It’s just a little strange.

I know this is getting to be a tiresome theme in this post, but the wisdom of Thomas Jefferson is not to be outdone. At times, he could almost seem to be a contemporary motivational speaker. Watch out Tony Robbins!

Not to be outdone, even George Washington carved his legacy into this little gem about taking responsibility for one’s personal mistakes.

SpuriousGeorgedon'ttaknoeexcuses

Honestly, the wisdom of the founding fathers would seem to be amazing at times. Sometimes their prescience is uncanny. It’s an amazing thing to see just how well-suited their statements can be to present-day matters. Luckily, that wisdom was not limited to the original founders. It was around in the civil war era too. Could anyone possibly be more on the mark than Abraham Lincoln?

TotallyRealLincolnnailsit

Seriously!

Listen to Abe folks.

Hold Your Nose; I’m Going to Talk About ‘#LiberalTips2AvoidRape’

20 Wednesday Feb 2013

Posted by in Politics

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Joe Salazar
(Image from Denver Post)

Okay, so this hashtag, #LiberalTips2AvoidRape, stood as the top trend on Twitter for much of today. Last I checked, the twitter page for this one contains a mixed bag of comments intended to illustrate the absurdity of Colorado Congressman, Joe, Salazar’s comments on the prospect of allowing guns on college campuses. Net dust-ups being what they are, quite a few folks are happy to fold any manner of insulting reference to liberals in there, and quite a few more folks have revealed (perhaps unintentionally) a trace of a tendency to blame the victim of rape in their approach to the subject. It’s an ugly chapter in a full book of ugly twitterage; y’all can see for yourself if you like:

https://twitter.com/search?q=%23LiberalTips2AvoidRape&src=hash

Yes, those of us on the left have weighed in on the subject as well, not just at Twitter, but also in the mainstream media. The Huffington Post produced a piece on this, and MSNBC couldn’t help noting the irony that a Democrat had just put his foot in his mouth over the topic of rape.

What fascinates me about this issue isn’t the repugnant nature of the humor, or even the views expressed in some of the worst jokes; it’s the degree to which outrage over Salazar’s comments facilitates an interesting shift in the politics of common sense.

College campuses have traditionally been gun-free zones. (I remember this from my old freshman informative speech, which was on gun safety. I was allowed to bring a gun-stalk into class for a prop, just so long as I left the barrel at home.) It does appear that the law in question is a new development in Colorado, but access to guns on campus is definitely not the norm. Much of the American public and much more of us on the left (including a rather large number of folks in academia) see this as a basic common sense policy. Whatever the (de-)merits of gun ownership in the rest of the public, the conventional wisdom has been to keep guns off our campuses. Hell, we don’t even allow them at my college, polar bear alerts notwithstanding.

Okay, so conservatives want to see these policies changed, and many on the right side of the political spectrum have come to see gun-free zones as a terrible sort of policy. It is for them common sense that taking guns away from students, staff, and faculty makes college a more dangerous place. This is for folks on the right simply a common sense issue.

The gun lobby has even produced some reasonable arguments on the topic of safe-zones, in effect showing that a pocket of unarmed citizens in the context of a larger community full of weapons creates unfortunate unintended consequences. But of course much of this argument has focused on K-12 schools, which are smaller, and in many cases lack armed security. Colleges on the other hand typically employ security forces of their own along with a variety of measures such as call-boxes, whistles, etc. So, with or without a personal weapon, a college is not normally the kind of soft target one sees in a public school. Add to this genuine fears about the sorts of dangers armed students may themselves pose to a campus population (just think about well-armed frat brothers!) and you have a range of variables to look at. There is a genuine empirical question as to how all of these considerations stack up.

Are we safer with guns on campus or without them?

That is a fair question, and I can actually see reasonable and honest people coming down on either side of the answer to it. That is also the question Salazar was trying to answer in his speech, trying anyway. Frankly, it looks like he lost his train of thought and kept talking anyway, which was a bad idea. So, he ends up suggesting that safe zones were created to protect women (which is from the standpoint of a woman who wants to protect herself with a gun, …well, getting the problem backwards). Salazar’s argument that a woman might accidentally kill someone who isn’t attacking her is misplaced at best. Concerns over accidental gunfire, mistaken shootings, or crimes of passion, etc. require a much larger scope of considerations. Putting them all on the shoulders of a single woman (hypothetical or otherwise), particularly one in fear of genuine harm is foolishness taken to 11. And to hear Salazar  making this entire case while using a universal ‘you’  throughout the speech (as if he spoke from experience) lends the whole thing a real fingernails-on-chalkboard experience.

All in all, it’s a thoroughly mockable performance. Apparently, the University of Colorado didn’t help matters by publishing some truly awful advice to rape victims on its website. And of course the point of the #LiberalTips2AvoidRape hashtag is to mock Salazar’s performance (and that of the University). …and of course to cash in on the mockery so as to finesse a number of tough questions.

Many of the tweets mocking Salazar seem to miss the basic context of the debate itself, suggesting that he thinks whistles will work most anyplace. He wasn’t. He was talking about whistles on and around a college campus. Others suggest that Salazar wants to disarm women in general, which is just a blatant misrepresentation of Salazar’s actual comments. Salazar’s suggestion that women might not know if they are about to be attacked has been taken as a suggestion that they will not know when they are actually being raped. It would seem that Salazar’s own foolishness makes a good license to add to it with a range of subtle (and not-so-subtle) misrepresentations.

The hashtag serves as an excellent vehicle for abstracting the larger question, and enabling right wing net-warriors to present their own values as the default judgement. Instead of making a case that women would be safer on campus with a gun than simply relying on all the other devices available on campus, one can simply mock Salazar (and liberals in general) for believing that a whistle could stop a rapist.  And if folks would prefer to think of this in terms of an imaginary scenario where no-one else is around, well then, how many folks would check them on the fact. (It doesn’t help that Twitter tends t suspend accounts that engage in direct debate, so mistakes or distortions of this kind typically go unchallenged.) Perhaps this is one of the means by which social media seem to facilitate polarization of the issues. What can you say in a hundred and forty characters that won’t be some variety of ‘y’all suck!’

No, I’m not concerned about about netiquette here. Some people do suck, and I have no problem when folks want to call them out for it. What does concern me is the degree to which this new whipping boy for the right seems to be serving as a short-cut right through an interesting discussion about whether or not we (as a nation) want to open up a variety of safe zones to gun owners. I’m also fascinated by the degree to which the status quo for college campuses has, at least in the minds of the right wing, become a form of lunacy. Why make the case for your own policy preferences when you can simply point at Joe Salazar and watch the left squirm? And through all of this, the bulk of the public will never hear a solid case for the net-effect of changing gun-laws on college campuses.

The prospects for a reasonable discussion of gun-control have never been very good.

Today, they just got a little worse.

Fragments of Skepticism From My Youth

06 Friday Jul 2012

Posted by in atheism, Childhood, Religion

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I have been reading some of the why-I-am-an-atheist stories over on Pharyngula, and it has led to thoughts about the various moments in my younger days which might have led me down that path. I wouldn’t say that any of these stories could really constitute an adequate answer to the question of why I am an atheist. Taken together, I’m not sure they do add up to such an answer either; instead they form a record of the impressions made by various skeptical thoughts in my youth. Some of these were my thoughts; some came from others, but each of them has made a lasting impression on me.

As to others, well we shall see…

***

A CARTOON BIBLE AND AN EAGER YOUNG MIND: No sooner had I learned to read than I decided to tackle the cartoon Bible sitting beside the bed. In fact, I think the ability to read that bible had been one of the major selling points for learning to read to begin with. Cartoons or not, this was a thick volume and it took a lot of time to work through it, just a little reading every night for God knows how long!

…well, no he doesn’t, but you get my point.

Now my choice of early reading material ought to tell you something about my youthful priorities, but please let me assure you that I was every bit as boring and straight-laced as you might have gathered from this fact. Anyway, I loved that book, and I loved it for the right reasons, as some might say; I wanted to learn about God.

So, you can imagine my surprise when my father told me he didn’t believe in the story of Noah and the flood. I was shocked. The mere possibility that any detail of that sacred cartoon filled bundle of Godly goodness could be wrong was beyond me. So, I did what any properly annoying first grader would do. I asked why? Dad told me that the very notion God would need a flood to clear away so many bad people would mean that God made a mistake in the first place, and that seemed unlikely. This is where I must admit I failed in my childhood duties and let Dad off with a single ‘why’. Seriously, I should have pestered him for hours after that. Instead, I just sat there dumb-damned and trying to soak up this new possibility. The Bible could be wrong about something.

Wow!

***

A CHICK IN THE BOY’S BATHROOM: I remember the first time I ever saw a Chick tract. For those of you blessed with ignorance about these things, let me sully your mind with a brief explanation. A chick tract is a cartoon sermon produced by Jack Chick publications. Back in the mid-seventies, it would have been Chick himself who did the one I saw that day. Chick Tracts typically follow the life of some character engaged in a sinful activity such as believing in Evolution, Practicing Paganism, Celebrating Halloween, Playing D&D, or Going to a Catholic Church, for example. The tract will normally include graphic threats of hellfire and damnation before introducing the good news that all of this can be averted by embracing Jesus Christ. It’s a pretty standard script from which neither Chick himself nor those who have filled his shoes deviate by much.

I was in 4th or 5th grade, and I found one of these in the school bathroom. I don’t remember a lot of details, but it definitely followed the familiar script. I don’t think the positive Jesus-loves-you theme made much of an impression on me at the time; I was still tingling in horror at the thought of Hellfire and damnation, and at the thought that someone could be perverse enough to believe in such things. For a kid raised in a Spiritualist household (just think New Age, but not quite as marketable, at least not on the cusp on the 80s) this was quite a shocker. I had heard of people that believed in Hell, but I hadn’t to my knowledge met any of them. And I didn’t know which scared me more; the fantastic thought of actual hellfire, or the very real prospect that someone who embraced the concept had been at my school.

It was shortly after this that I began talking about my ‘beliefs’ (and those of my family) with some classmates. I quickly discovered that my parents were not comfortable with this. I also discovered that I actually knew quite a few people who believed in Hell; I might even have known the person responsible for putting the tract in the school bathroom. And thus I grew to understand my parents’ reluctance to engage in open discussion of the topic.

…and before moving on, let me just say that I think it very fitting that my first encounter with a chick tract would be finding one of them in a bathroom. I could only wish it had been properly disposed of.

***

SASQUATCH, WHERE FOR ART THOU: The highlight of my 6th grade year was the big field trip to somewhere with cabins (I want to say Big Bear). Yes, that’s right; it was that sort of field trip. In the days and weeks leading up to the trip, I heard talk of bunk-beds, long hikes, campfires, and roasted marsh-mellows. …and something else.

Bigfoot! …of course.

Now, you have to remember this was Southern California, and it was the 1970s. Bigfoot was big (pun intended), as was the Devil’s Triangle, and UFOs were everywhere. I even remember a popular movie about reincarnation, and another one about the discovery of Noah’s Ark somewhere in the Himalayas. All of this seemed much more plausible to me as a 6th grader, but more than that, I think it seemed much more plausible to people in the 70s.

I blame it on disco!

The trip would include all the things we talked about, including at least one encounter with Bigfoot, or at least one of our teachers dressed up like him in the dark. It didn’t really fool anyone, …well not after word got out about the zipper.

But the next day…

I don’t remember exactly what we were all supposed to be doing on that day, but apparently it amounted to a stretch of free time. I was near the edge of the campground when some of my classmates began to point out into the trees, just up the mountainside a little. I can still hear them talking; “What is that?” “It’s moving!” “Holy crap!” and “That thing is big!” There weren’t any teachers around this particular spot in the campground, but more and more children (myself included) made our way to the edge of the trees to see what the others were looking at.

I couldn’t see a damned thing!

Like a lot of my classmates I was scared, and I was curious, and those two emotions fought for control of my soul (or at least my feet) in that little spot near the edge of the forest just below the side of a hill. I really wanted to see Bigfoot, and I wanted to live through the experience. In an effort to satisfy my fear while edging closer to the unknown danger I picked up a rock, as did a few of my classmates (because of course Bigfoot would have been no match for 6th graders with rocks). I then stepped as close as I could bring myself to the forest.

When someone said it was moving towards us (whatever it was) we all took a step or three back, but we didn’t quite run. And then of course nothing happened. I grew more and more frustrated, because I still couldn’t see a damned thing. …dammit!

Several of my classmates had surpassed the what-is-that stage and begun to claim with absolute certainty that they were looking right at a Bigfoot. They pointed, and I looked, and I just didn’t see it. A couple kids pointed more and proclaimed still more loudly, and I still didn’t see a damned thing. I edged closer to the forest. I wasn’t the only one who didn’t see him, but I may well have been the kid there who most wanted to.

And I just didn’t.

I’m not entirely sure why, but a few kids began to throw rocks into the forest. When one of the rocks came bouncing back down the side of the mountain, we all took a few hurried steps back. …only most everyone else took a few more than I did, and suddenly there I was out ahead of anyone else. To fully appreciate this you have to understand that I was a pretty flighty kid. (Seriously, my sister and a few of my old classmates could tell you stories, but thankfully this isn’t their blog). For the moment, I was well out ahead of my classmates, rock in hand, ready to confront Bigfoot all by myself if need be.

And damned mad, that he wasn’t making an appearance.

He never did.

When the teachers finally broke up the whole thing and called us inside, I became completely disgusted with the matter, and especially at my classmates. I had recently become acquainted with the phrase; “mass hysteria,” and in the wake of the absentee Bigfoot incident, I made damned sure that everyone within ear-shot was became as familiar with it.

…I could be a really annoying kid.

***

BAD AIM: When I was 14, my Dad and I attended the Daisy International BB-Gun Championship held that year in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Seriously, I think it was mostly the states that supplied teams, but Mexico and Canada sent teams, so I guess that made it an international event. Now I was a budding young gun-nut (seriously, I was), so I hope you will understand that this event was Disneyland, Christmas, and my birthday all rolled into one as far as I was concerned. And I did reasonably well, not well enough to win anything mind you, but, …what the Hell! I was 1 point 1x off a tie for third in prone (he says beaming with pride). But, what the Hell is this story doing here, you may ask?

Well, the contest included a Sunday.

As I recall, there were three options for activities on Sunday morning. One of them was a movie, I do remember that. The third option, I don’t recall, but you’ll never guess the one I chose. I chose to go to a church (or at least a sermon held in the great ballroom that we called church that day). This was my chance to witness mainstream religion in all its glory, and to do it without much effort. For half an hour I could peer into the lives of my Christian classmates and learn what God meant to them, at least on Sundays.

The sermon?

It was about how sin is like missing the mark and failing to hit the bullseye. For half an hour this minister told us all about the nature of sin; it was, in his view, essentially bad aim. I couldn’t believe my ears. I don’t think I had quite mastered the word ‘patronizing’ yet, but as I sat there struggling with the icky feeling in my gut, I knew there had to be some word for the utter stupidity of this man’s sermon. And I came away wondering; is this what mainstream preachers do? …make up lame analogies based on the presumed interests of their target audience?

Suffice to say, I wasn’t dying to repeat the experience.

***

ABSOLUTELY! …OH, WAIT A MINUTE! The words were quite familiar, Hell I had probably said them myself a time or two; “You can’t just expect God to walk up and greet you in person.” It was High school and one of my classmates had just said this in response to another person. I remember nodding in earnest, because everyone knew you couldn’t just expect that, …and then a thought struck me like a bug in the mouth while riding a skateboard.

Why not?

Was that really so unreasonable? Why couldn’t you just say; I’ll believe in God if I actually meet him. And if God failed to pass this test, would He really hold it against someone for having adopted such a standard? Or would he say; oh that’s just So&So; he wants more evidence than I  feel like giving. He’ll learn when I get around to it.

I can’t say that I made this my standard just then, or really that I ever have taken such a stance (it is a bit of a caricature), but in that particular moment, I simply ceased to think of it as an unreasonable position.

Course the fact that my mind was on this while talking to a really cute girl is the rally sad part of this story.

Really, it is.

***

SAY IT AIN’T SO, JOE! I was a freshman in College when my friend Joe told me there were factual errors in the Bible, and I did a double-take. Joe may be surprised to know this, but that was a pretty powerful moment for me, not because I was enamored of the Bible, but because I had grown accustomed to the notion that religious beliefs were vague and fuzzy and didn’t really leave anyone with enough leverage to say; “no that’s just wrong.” This may well have been the first time that I heard any religious matter described as a simple factual error.

Surely, the whole thing was much more complicated than that, I thought, …unless it wasn’t.

This conversation renewed my interest in scripture; but this time it had me wondering just what would happen if you approached the text with more straight-forward expectations than I had grown accustomed to. I think that conversation might have been what led me to read The Age of Reason and to take that “Bible as Literature” class. Having been raised in a world of spirits that may or may not manifest themselves at any given time and Auras that you can see if you’re in the right mind and hold your eyes just like so, the notion that religious matters could raise clear questions of truth value was a little novel to me. …A few years and one article by Anthony Flew later, I even had a word for the problem Joe had just set me to thinking about.

It was ‘falsifiability’.

Godwin Gets a Gun: Joe Worzelbacher Shoots a Nazi, …or a Tomato!

23 Saturday Jun 2012

Posted by in Politics

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So, I just saw this campaign video from Joe “The Plumber” Worzelbacher (He’s Running for a House Seat in Ohio), and I swear a little part of me just died. It’s not like I was expecting much from Joe, or from the political opportunists intent on helping him stretch his fifteen minutes (and the collective Hell that goes with it) just a little longer. But Damn! If stupid really does burn, then the state of Ohio needs to open a new hospital wing just to deal the fall-out from this particular idiot-bomb.

So, Godwin’s Law aside, what’s wrong with this ad?

I’m going to say right off the bat that I don’t know enough about the Armenian Holocaust to really deal with it properly. I will add that I would be damned surprised if Joe did either, or the idiot who wrote his speech in this video, whoever that may have been and whatever drug he may have been taking at the time.

On one level, Joe’s argument really presents a very simple exercise in fallacy recognition. He mentions two laws followed by two genocides. Joe offers no analysis in support of his contention that they are linked, but he does fire off a couple rounds while giving us time to let the obvious connection sink in. …and my gosh golly aren’t we all impressed!

This is a Post Hoc fallacy, pure and simple. Done.

It should be added that Joe has subsequently denied he was claiming gun control caused the Holocaust, and then he went on to explain that it could never have happened without disarming the people first. (Actually, Joe attributes this particular claim to Hitler, so I suppose he still has grounds for plausible deniability on the matter, but of course the question is why does he bring it up if he doesn’t intend to advance the claim?) Seriously, this is the rhetoric of a complete coward. If he can’t make up his mind whether or not he means to say gun control made the Holocaust possible, then he really ought to shut his festering gob.

Irony of Ironies, Joe thinks his critics are pushing a political agenda. (And seriously, how lacking in self-consciousness do you have to be to make such an accusation about people critical of YOUR OWN POLITICAL CAMPAIGN ADD?) Joe also says that his critics must hate history, because apparently they don’t want to hear it. One of Joe’s spokesman (Phil Christofanelli) adds that Joe is a student of history. …yeah right! The prospect that Joe’s critics may just know more about the subject than he or his speech writer does seems to escape these guys, …or perhaps they are simply hoping that prospect will escape Ohio voters.

But of course Joe isn’t the only happy hustler to trot this line of powdered camel dung out and offer us a straw. It’s a fairly conventional line of bullshit from the gun lobby and assorted gun enthusiasts, …actually, I should say from the less intelligent and completely dishonest members of gun-toting crowd. Seriously, there are decent and intelligent gun-owning folks out there. You can tell who they are because they are not the ones laying this line of crap down on the table and expecting you tor snort it.

But lets sort through a few specifics, shall we? Near as I can tell Joe was actually talking about a gun control law passed in 1938, but let’s not quibble over that detail. No, let’s quibble over the fact that Germany had already passed gun control laws in 1919, 1920, and 1928. Each of these laws modified the legal options for gun ownership in different ways, and there is no clear reason to choose the 1938 law as the smoking gun (pun intended) for Nazi gun control. Joe’s sophisticated periodization is little other than an ad hoc choice of the date most convenient to his own narrative (much as his choice of 1939 as the beginning of the holocaust-according-to-Joe). Joe picked the most convenient date for his own story, and that was about it.

Did I mention this argument is pure camel dung?

Okay, but let’s think about this for a minute. 1938(9)? What had already happened in Germany by that point? Well, let’s see. On the basis of the 1932 elections, Hitler had been appointed Chancellor in January of 1933. This was followed soon after by a suspicious fire in the Reichstag (German parliamentary building) that February. The following day President Hindenburg granted Hitler emergency powers, and in March the German Parliament (under great pressure from the Nazi party) signed away the bulk of its powers to Hitler in a law known as the Enabling Act. In effect, the democratic institutions of Weimar Germany had already come to a pretty full stop by the end of 1934, 5 years before the key to everything in Joe’s gun-induced euphoria.

…and of course by this time the Nazis were already locking up their political enemies.

In late June and early July of 1934, Nazi leadership killed about a hundred of their own in a fascinating little purge known as the “Night of the Long Knives.” By early August Hitler had fused the offices of President and Chancellor, thus making himself, …well, der Fuhrer. And with that Nazi leadership is in pretty much full swing, the law is what they say it is at this point in history, …4-5 years before the law Joe offers as the key to it all.

The Nuremberg Laws were passed in 1935, installing legal repression of Jews throughout Germany, 4 years before the terrible law which Joe wants us to believe made it all possible.

By 1939, the Nazis had already been using concentration camps for 6 years. They weren’t killing people in mass yet, but they were already working them to death in large numbers, and when push came to shove, yes, they were already killing people. Italy had already invaded Ethiopia, the Japanese had already taken Manchuria, and Francisco Franco had already seized power in Spain, all with the support of Germany. Hitler had already seized Austria and begun his push for the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia.

Despite all the crimes the Nazis had already committed, all the freedoms they had already taken away, Joe wants us to think a law passed in 1938(9) made it all possible. It’s amazing! It is completely asinine to suggest that private German citizens were in a position to stop Nazi atrocities in 1938, let alone to suggest the largely unarmed Jewish population, could have managed it. This is not history. This is fantasy.

So, just remember this the next time one of these smug little idiots decides to illustrate the Dunning-Kruger Effect by giving you the pop-gun and bubble-gum history of the Holocaust, conveniently simplified for the benefit of the American gun-lobby. There is only one way to make that argument, and that is to be so damned ignorant about the history in question that you just don’t know any better.

Apparently, Joe doesn’t know any better.

He’s hoping a lot of people in Ohio don’t either.