Weapons, Authority, and Class Warfare

[struggle4progress]

<snip> So what is the true aim of the pro-gun lobby? Jon Steward explains in his America: The Book; ‘providing black people with enough weapons to wipe each other out.’ I would argue that this explanation has quite a bit more to do with reality than the stated goal of these groups, although perhaps black can be expanded to include all of the lower class.

The gun-toting right realizes that it has largely been successful, through massive propaganda administered by the entertainment industry and others, in convincing the lower classes of America that there enemies are not the rich who have de facto rule over the country, but other members of the working class, for whatever arbitrary reason. Who should you pick as your enemy? Why not someone from another race, or an immigrant, asks the news media? Corporately controlled hip hop asks you, as if there weren’t enough ways to divide the working class, why don’t you form arbitrary gangs, and then slaughter members of other gangs?

This is what mainstream hip hop is so good at, providing America’s impoverished youth with ways of dealing with their problems that are not threatening to the establishment and in many cases actually promote pro-establishment behavior. You want to feel empowered? Why not slap a bitch around! Want to feel good about yourself? Buy a Lexus or a Cadillac! Want to ease your troubles? Get stoned out of your mind on crack! Do you feel violent because of your desolate situation in life? Kill someone of another gang or someone in your own family (Eminem); whoever you want, just don’t take it out on the rich white capitalists who are the real root of your problems. Corporate hip hop does the rulers of the country a great service by peddling these messages, teaching people to find sanctuary in drugs, sex, senseless murder, religion, and other things Marx would call ‘opiates of the people.’ <snip>

So, to summarize, the right wing is gun-happy because they know they won’t ever be the targets of the violence and that, thanks to their insidious propaganda, the working class will fight the bourgeois’ class war for them. And once people in the working class start to kill each other, the bourgeois can amplify these events through its propaganda machine, thus inspiring fear and hatred in the working class and ensuring that the cycle of violence will continue. Aside from this, forcing guns down everyone’s throat helps create the erotic fascination with violence, mass-slaughter, and weaponry that needs to be present in the general population so that no one will object to the annihilation of 100,000 Iraqis or a $412 billion dollar Pentagon budget. And of course, the weapons manufactures, some of the most profitable businesses in America, are also keen on freeing up gun control laws. <snip>

http://www.lefthook.org/Culture/Baake042905.html

[teryang]

1. Popular culture panders to the worst instincts

The cult of violence and guns is about impotence and ignorance.

On the other hand, most gun permits are owned by professional people.

[chlamor]

2. Yep

[bemildred]

3. Not buying it.

The NRA did not invent youth gangs and xenophobia.
They like guns because they like guns. Have you ever
read a gun magazine? They are like porn magazines only
the spreads are weapons, with sensuous re-telling or all
that specifications etc. We had youth gangs in 1850 too.

The Crack epidemic works better if you want to make this
sort of argument.

[teryang]

6. Gangs are a natural mechanism for those out of power

...and without resources. Among the resources they are without is knowledge. The focal point of gang power is human resources and the threat of violence. Surely this existed before modern media.

This doesn't mean that the modern media don't encourage the worst inclinations of the ignorant because they do. I follow this media because I work with the great unwashed and criminals every day. It helps me get into the heads of younger people. The obfuscation of reality by entertainment media is so bad in combination with (academic) ignorance. The natural reaction after a violent crime in most cases is oops, what was I thinking?

I don't really have a problem with a gun magazines. Used to read them all the time. My work no longer requires that I stay current. Like I say, most people who get into specifications are professionals or sportsmen who want to get the most performance/advantage out of the weapons they buy.

I admit that there are certain professional criminals who are up on their weapons specifications but this is in fact rare because most criminals either can't or don't read but they do have boom boxes, watch movies, play video games and watch music videos.

[bemildred]

7. Humans have always banded together. Since day one.

The modern media do mis-educate the population, and that is not an
accident, an informed and active citizenry cannot be ruled.

I don't have a problem with gun magazines either, but they do
glorify guns. I'm just thinking of aquaintances of mine of various
types whose interest is non-professional. Their level of emotional
engagement far surpasses that of an engineer with a new calculator.

I'm pro-2nd amendment, FWIW, but I think there is a public interest
in seeing that people with guns know how to use them, and insurance
might be nice. I am not interested in seeing that only popguns are
allowed to circulate in public. That seems contrary to the point of
having an armed citizenry in the first place.

[teryang]

11. "Emotional engagement"

Good point. This engagement seems to be connected to feelings of power or impotence.

I agree with your points about conspiracy. I don't see it as a conspiracy. It is more the de facto result of a corporate value system that allows only certain of ranges of expression. This is more connected to what sells or what is appealing (often to the baser instincts).

That which appeals to more noble inclinations is usually reserved for audiences of taste and doesn't reach a mass market. This is one of the great ironies of a democratic society, that culture in such a society has a very powerful tendency to become trash. If this is one of the costs I can live with it. On the other hand, I am a great proponent of high quality public education, which appears to be under attack by the trash mongers. A good education allows one to put trash in context, perhaps even to enjoy it only for what its worth. In any case, there is now an elitist approach to education. The highly competitive can get educated. To the devil with everyone else.

Aristocracy has its privileges.

[struggle4progress]

8. Concur in part, dissent in part. If your objection is that the scenario ..

.. painted, read literally, is preposterous, then I must agree.

But in attempting to understand social forces, it may be important to recognize that conspiracy theories can provide correct predictions, even when such theories may not be literally true.

I think there is a way to reread such a text, which is sympathetic to the author's intent and which could expose the kernel of truth which underlies the author's intent and explains the author's emotional investment.

Actual social practice flows out of perceived social realities: policy makers, recording studios, gun makers, the film industry are all unlikely to step out of their own comfort zones, and so the messages actually produced and broadcast reflect the views of those who control the machinery that produce and broadcast those messages.

"Guy in the ghetto wants a flashy car, feels threatened by his neighbors, and blows some of them away" is a message that doesn't threaten recording studios; "angered by economic exploitation, underclass martyrs thoughtfully plot to seize the apparatus of the state" probably takes too many people out of their comfort zones.

And so, in the absence of enough critical voices, the social machinery almost automatically produces results which are consistent with the author's "conspiracy."

[bemildred]

9. I was pointing at the preposterous parts of the argument.

You comments are well taken, systems can adapt without any
"mind" making the decisions, in fact it's obvious once one puts aside
one's grammatical biases and chooses to look. Many living
forms adapt very well with no noticable "intelligence" at all.

In many ways we are members of a hive organism (society) that
pursues interests of it's own rather blindly and without any particular
concern for us.

His point about the effect of the Black Panthers and the like 40
years ago is well taken too, I remember it well.

His argument in other places is simplistic and smacks of personifying
things which are not persons.

One of the things that most strikes me is the failure/refusal of the
US Government to assume it's nominal role as a regulator and manager
of the common enterprise.

[Igel]

4. This tries to wedge a point of view into a narrow box to confirm

the author's point of view.

A lot of NRA-type people I knew in Oregon are into making sure they can defend themselves, or feel protected (it matters little whether the opponent is the FBI, the russkies, or the black youth gang alledgely prowling the street). You can put the minister of the church I was in into that category: protect his family. Lower class and minority people aren't involved, per se, because the area he lived in wasn't poor, and the entire city must have been 98% white.

Others like the challenge of shooting. My brother custom built his own black powder (sending out for the barrels). He was also an Arizona silhouette competition winner for a few years.

Others like guns the way I like guitars. I read up on the tonal properties of different woods, bracings, and finishes, as well as the history of the instrument and its music. I had a roommate who mixed his own powder and alloys for reloading and had a lot of different bullet moulds. He kept meticulous records trying to understand the relation between bullet weight, alloy, shape, and powder composition vs. speed, distance, etc. He drove an armored truck.

And there's hunting. My brother became a javelina hunter, briefly. And the armored-truck-driving roommate never failed to bag a deer every fall. The minister always packed a handgun when hunting for finishing off any deer that he or his hunting party wounded.

Some people in the church I was in felt vague pressure to get a gun. Everybody target shot or hunted, or both, and you just felt left out of the conversation or group activities at times if you were male and belonged to neither group.

[patdem]

5. I think they (guns) should not only be registered but the owners be forced

to purchase liability insurance in case they are sued for killing someone, since we are denied any recourse from gun companies...just like cars...

I MUST have a car to get to work, yet I am FORCED to have a license to drive and FORCED to have insurance on said car...just in case I have an accident, though in my 30 years of driving I have NEVER had an accident!

[leftofthedial]

10. "the bourgeois’ class war" ??

that's a laugh.

The only class war i the super-rich against all the rest of us. Their lackeys have hijacked the gun lobby as part of their campaign to drive as many wedges in the middle and working classes as possible and to distract us from what they are doing

divide and conquer

sleight of hand

[struggle4progress]

12. Since there's almost no tradition of class analysis in modern America ...

... I'm inclined to cut the author some slack for sloppy analysis: most people don't hear any class analysis and consequently can't be expected to do such an analysis very well.