Social Cohesion – Page 15 – The Wrongologist

Normalizing Violence Will End Democracy

The Daily Escape:

Bodie Island Lighthouse, Nags Head, NC – June 2022 photo by Jordan Hill Photography

America’s in a dark period, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to see how we can come out of it.

Writing in Foreign Affairs, Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way say:

“The Republican Party…has radicalized into an extremist, antidemocratic force that imperils the US constitutional order. The United States isn’t headed toward Russian – or Hungarian-style autocracy…but something else: a period of protracted regime instability, marked by repeated constitutional crises, heightened political violence, and possibly, periods of authoritarian rule.”

They say we’re heading into a period of protracted instability. They aren’t saying we face a civil war. It’s more subtle: a future of intermittent armed conflict, something like “The Troubles” in Ireland.

You’ve probably seen the campaign ad by Missouri Republican Senate candidate Eric Greitens, where he struts into a home after some camo-clad associates have broken in, saying their purpose is “RINO hunting”. After the team busts into the house, Greitens walks in through a cloud of smoke and says:

“Join the MAGA crew. Get a RINO hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country.”

Hunting down one’s political enemies with guns hasn’t been the American way, but it sure is becoming so now. It’s only a matter of time before racial, sexuality and politically-based violence occurs at scale in America. The Brennan Center found that 17% of America’s local election officials have been threatened during the 2020 election cycle. There’s a growing domestic terror threat to civil servants.

But it was only two weeks ago that Republicans found it easy to have moral clarity when authorities arrested a man and charged him with the attempted murder of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The suspect turned himself in before anything happened. However, Republicans were outraged and questioned why Biden and other Democrats did not condemn what happened.

Candidates say outrageous things all the time in the heat of the moment and lately, hitting below the belt is often rewarded. But that is a far cry from a call to hunt down your political enemies in order to “save the country.”

The GOP is normalizing violence, and it became clear after the Republican response to J6. From Robert Hubbell:

“The Republican National Committee described the events of January 6th as ‘legitimate political discourse.’ Georgia Rep. Andrew Clyde said that video of the attack on the Capitol looked like ‘a normal tourist visit.’ Mike Pence, whom rioters wanted to hang, said on Monday that Democrats were using the January 6th hearings ‘to distract attention.’”

Republicans try pretending that they have no idea what’s happening (“I haven’t seen the ad, so I cannot comment”). But the right thing is to take the risk that someone will yell at them on Facebook and Twitter and condemn it by saying loud and clear, “This isn’t the way for a candidate to conduct himself.”

Unless Republicans change their act, the normalization of violence will move toward its logical conclusion — election officials and politicians will be wounded or killed by someone who believes that violence is a legitimate political tool.

GOP candidates are posting ads about killing us in our homes. The Texas state GOP party wrote a campaign platform calling for the repeal the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and seceding from the US, while saying that gay people should get back in the closet. They passed a resolution declaring that Biden’s election was illegitimate.

This is the platform of the governing party of the nation’s second largest state, and no non-Texas Republican has complained.

Pundits keep saying that Democrats have no chance in the 2022 mid-terms because of Biden’s low approval ratings. Wrongo has repeatedly said that there are “persuadable” voters who can be reached before the Fall. Proof of that is in the 6-point increase in public support for indicting Trump since the start of the J6 hearings.

If pundits argue that Biden’s unpopularity will affect the 2022 races despite Biden’s absence from the ballot, they must also agree that other issues not on the ballot— the J6 conspiracy, the Supreme Court abortion decision, Texas secession, and yes inflation, will also affect the 2022 races.

The 2022 election (not the 2024) will determine our future. Will people vote this Fall based on the price of gas? Or the threat of a recession? Or, will they understand that there’s a real possibility that democracy as we know it in the US could vanish?

Democracy is what’s on the ballot in 2022. Inflation comes and goes. Recessions come and go. If we lose our democracy, it won’t be returning any time soon.

Americans understand democracy. They’ve fought and died for it. Dems can make voters see that democracy is on the ballot this year, while inflation and other issues sadly need to take a back seat.

Let’s not make the mistake of selling Americans short. Democracy is more important than our pocketbooks. People will vote for democracy.

The slogan should be “Vote Democratic And Save Democracy”.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – June 19, 2022

Today is Juneteenth. It’s now a federal holiday. Here in the most Conservative corner of Connecticut, the town hall will be closed on Monday, even though Juneteenth doesn’t become an official state holiday in Connecticut until next year.

Data from Google Trends about Connecticut’s interest in searching for the word “Juneteenth” shows the holiday barely registered as a search term before 2020. In 2019, Google Trends rated “Juneteenth” only a 9 out of 100 on the interest scale in Connecticut. During the same period in 2020, the value grew to 72. In 2021, it reached 100, meaning “peak popularity” for the term. On to cartoons.

It will be years before most people observe Juneteenth:

What do we care about?

Gas prices are cutting into Trump’s profits:

The J6 hearings provided insight into Trump’s amorality:

So, why do Republicans stay with him?

While Ginni’s giving Clarence some of her Kool-Aid every day:

Saturday Soother – June 18, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Rainy morning, with Vista House at Crown Point in right foreground, Columbia River Gorge, WA – June 2022 photo by David Leahy Photography

Wrongo has written before about the crushing burden of consumer debt in the US. Medical debt is an American disgrace, and Noam Levey, Kaiser Health News (KHN) Senior Correspondent has written an excellent piece about it. He says that 100 million people in America, some 41% of adults, owe some level of debt to healthcare providers.

But most studies don’t reveal the actual extent of the debt because much of it appears as credit card balances, loans from family, or payment plans arranged with hospitals and other medical providers. To calculate the true extent and burden of this debt, KHN partnered with NPR, and the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) to conduct a nationwide poll designed to capture not just bills patients couldn’t afford, but other forms of borrowing used to pay for health care.

The results are contained in the KFF Health Care Debt Survey. The KFF poll found that half of US adults don’t have the cash to cover an unexpected $500 health care bill. As a result, many simply don’t pay their medical bills. The flood of unpaid bills has made medical debt the most common form of consumer debt in America.

Over the past five years, more than half of US adults report they’ve gone into debt because of medical or dental bills. Moreover, a quarter of adults with health care debt owe more than $5,000, and about 20% with any amount of debt said they don’t expect to ever pay it off.

Debt incurred for health care is forcing many families to cut spending on food and other essentials. The poll also found that millions are being driven from their homes or into bankruptcy:

So, if 100 million people were in debt and 17% declared bankruptcy or lost their home, that’s 17 million people! The KFF poll found that the debt is also preventing Americans from saving for retirement, investing in their children’s educations, or buying a home. And debt from health care is nearly twice as common for adults under 30 as for those 65 and older. And that age cohort is supposed to be much healthier than the elderly.

Perversely, about 1 in 7 people with medical debt said they’ve been denied access to a hospital, doctor, or other provider because of unpaid bills. An even greater share (two-thirds) have put off care that they, or a family member need because of the cost.

Hospitals are among the culprits. They are capitalizing on their patients’ inability to pay. Hospitals and other medical providers are pushing millions of patients who can’t afford to pay into credit cards and other loans. These are high interest rate loans, carrying rates that top 29%, according to research firm IBISWorld.

This collections business is fed by hospitals, including public university systems and nonprofits granted tax breaks to serve their communities, who sell the outstanding debt to collections companies.

Welcome to the best country on earth, (maybe) one that doesn’t have the best health care system (and certainly one without health insurance for all). We have a system which shackles 100 million people to medical debt while at the click of a computer mouse, we send $billions in armaments overseas before those same dollars are recycled into the coffers of our Military-Industrial complex.

That’s all for this week. It’s time for our Saturday Soother, when we take a break from the J6 public hearings and whether Ginni Thomas was another Trumpist plotter. Let’s focus on calming ourselves for whatever insults are coming next week.

Here at the Mansion of Wrong, we’re engaged in an air conditioning project, adding more central air to our home. Hey, we’re aware of the crummy stock market, and the rampant inflation, but consume we must.

To help you clear your head on this warm weekend, grab a seat outdoors and brew up a cup of Supernatural coffee ($18.45/12 oz.) by Lee, MA’s own Barrington Coffee Roasting Company. This espresso is said to have flavors of Concord grape, dark chocolate, plum and tangle berry pie!

Wrongo has no idea what tangle berries look like, much less what they taste like.

Now, put on your wireless headphones and listen to the “Adagio for Oboe, Cello, Organ and Strings”, also known as “Elevazione” or “All’Elevazione” by Domenico Zipoli.

Zipoli was an Italian Jesuit priest who lived much of his life in what is now Argentina. He studied with Scarlatti, became a Jesuit, worked as a missionary, and died in 1726 in Argentina at age 38. If fate had granted Zipoli another 20 to 25 years, he might be regarded today as a major composer. Here it’s performed in 2015 by the Collegia Musica Chiemgau conducted by Elke Burkert :

America’s Homicide Policing Paradox

The Daily Escape:

Lupine, Steptoe Butte SP, WA – June 2022 photo by Francisco B. Aguilar Photography

German Lopez in the NYT writes about how urban gun crime is very concentrated, saying that a small number of city blocks often account for most of the gun violence in US cities. He says that just 4% of city blocks account for the majority of shootings in Chicago:

“The violence is so intensive that a few neighborhoods, blocks or people often drive most of the shootings and murders in a city or county. And this is true in both urban and rural areas, said Patrick Sharkey, a sociologist at Princeton.”

Let’s pick up on the comment that this is true in both urban and rural areas. The WSJ has an article that says there’s been a big spike in murders in rural America:

“Homicide rates in rural America rose 25% in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It was the largest rural increase since the agency began tracking such data in 1999. The CDC considers counties rural if they are located outside metropolitan areas defined by the federal government.”

That’s pretty close to the 30% increase in urban areas. But the WSJ points not to a lack of tough-on-crime policies causing the spike in rural homicides, or a lack of social services, safety net, or investment in anti-poverty measures. Instead, it says that the primary culprits are Covid lockdowns and a lack of “pastoral care” from churches.

As Adam Johnson, who writes on media and politics, points out, in January, the same WSJ said the culprits of increasing urban crime were:

“Progressive prosecutors take the approach of not prosecuting some low-level offenses like drug possession. In Philadelphia, for example, cases brought by the district attorney’s office from 2018 through 2021 dropped by nearly 30% compared with the prior four years. This week, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner defended progressive prosecutors while promising to tackle gun violence at the swearing-in ceremony for his second term.”

The Conservative formula is simple: When crime increases in liberal cities, the cause is: reformist prosecutors, bail reform, and defunding the police movements.

But when murder spikes in counties coded as white or rural, and controlled largely by Republicans, the causes are societal and therefore blameless —namely the fraying of the social fabric brought about by the pandemic. They fail to mention the persistence of drugs in rural America, or how corporations have hollowed out the economies of rural America by moving abroad.

Johnson says that we’re caught in a “Narrative” by leaders in both Parties, that the Covid-era surge in crime was the result of lax DAs, bail reform, and other far-left measures. And the only way to combat it, was to remove the reforms, fund more police, and to effectively sunset the Black Lives Matter movement.

And Johnson says:

“…data very clearly indicates that crime—namely, murder rate—increases appear to be entirely divorced from the policies of the prosecutors and police budgets of the affected areas. Despite the widespread, casual lie that radical, far-left reform prosecutors or defunded police budgets have caused a spike in crime…”

Despite everyone knowing that socio-economic problems are also at the heart of the homicide rates in urban areas.

Still, the “Narrative” is having an effect on Democratic politics. We saw the recall of the progressive DA in San Francisco last week, and the NYT had an article about how Maryland’s Democratic primary for governor is now focused on better solutions to urban crime:

“In Democratic strongholds like Maryland, a rise in violent crime has pushed the party’s candidates to address the issue of public safety in newly urgent terms….Long seen as a political wedge for Republicans to use against Democrats, crime is increasingly a subject of concern within the Democratic Party and the big cities that make up much of its political base.”

The homicide spike is transforming the Democrat’s playbook on law and order. It’s forcing the Party to seek ways of balancing its determination to overhaul the criminal justice system with the imperative to protect some of its most loyal voters from a rising tide of violence.

The challenge is to walk a fine line: How can urban Democrats make the police more responsive but not militarized or heavy-handed; how to move police departments away from the often discriminatory tactics favored by the law-and-order mayors.

Still, when crime goes up in urban areas, it’s the reform efforts that are to blame. When crime goes up (by roughly the same percentage) in rural places where no such reforms exist, the “Tough on Crime” approach and the lack of robust social services can’t be blamed.

Both Democrats and Republicans want police budgets to grow. But neither have any answers as to how incremental dollars will reduce homicide rates, or make the police more effective at their jobs.

Thoughts On The Select Committee Hearings

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Scripps Pier, La Jolla, CA – June 2022 photo by Paul Folk

Wrongo and Ms. Right watched all of the J6 Committee’s Public Hearing on Monday, and the final few minutes of the first hearing last Thursday.

These aren’t hearings so much as they are public presentations of the Committee’s investigation to date.

And for that we should be thankful, since there are no long opening statements designed to fluff up a Congress critter’s Twitter account. These “hearings” are designed to reach Americans who no longer watch network news, read newspapers, or otherwise spend more than a few moments to learn about what is going on politically.

We’re seeing a fast-paced and compelling prosecutorial case being made, almost exclusively by Republicans, many of whom were close to Trump’s White House. But, as Tom Sullivan points out: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“As refreshing as it is to see Democrats assembling a public accounting of the events surrounding the Jan. 6 insurrection, an accounting is not the same as holding people accountable.”

We’ve seen sworn statements by senior Trump associates who back in 2020, were in a position to have blown the whistle on the coup plot. Now, they’re attempting to wash their hands of responsibility for the Big Lie. They’re finally willing to speak under oath, in order to launder their reputations. For example, Bill Barr’s hand-washing is rich. Don’t forget that for months he carried Trump’s water by peddling the lie that mail-in balloting was rife with corruption.

Two thoughts:

First, the Select Committee may be the public face, but the DOJ has the final word on whether what we’re seeing is high-level criminality by Trump or his White House enablers. What the House Select Committee CAN do is to create a political environment where it’s possible for the DOJ to indict, prosecute, and win convictions against Trump and his key allies.

And even if the DOJ accomplishes all of that, it won’t wipe away the fact that a significant minority of US voters are just fine with an authoritarian dictatorship, as long as it’s the dictator who they believe will act against their political and cultural enemies. An analysis by WaPo reveals just how pervasive Trump’s Big Lie has become within the GOP: More than 100 GOP primary winners back Trump’s stolen election claim.

Second, Democrats seem to think that they will turn back the tide of Trumpian fascism simply by exposing the truth. The NYT’s Jamelle Bouie calls out the Dem’s leadership gerontocracy that seemingly are no longer able to meet this moment. Bouie argues that they don’t even see the moment:

“What’s missing from party leaders, an absence that is endlessly frustrating to younger liberals, is any sense of urgency and crisis — any sense that our system is on the brink. Despite mounting threats to the right to vote, the right to an abortion and the ability of the federal government to act proactively in the public interest, senior Democrats continue to act as if American politics is back to business as usual.”

Most of the senior Democratic leadership are, like Wrongo, members of the Silent Generation. Most of them are financially secure. They all have the same corporate relationships as do the Republicans. Most will die before they have to face the consequences of their feeble opposition to Republican extremism.

It’s been clear at least since Obama’s second term that the Dem’s leadership has lost the will to stand up and/or fight. And after years of Americans facing one crisis after another with little progress, they need to be replaced by younger leaders with stiffer spines, with a passion for social justice and democracy.

From Martin Longman:

“One reason this is important is because there’s no guarantee that the Establishment will prove more popular at the ballot box than fascism.”

These Democratic Party elders came into national politics in a time of bipartisan consensus and centrist policymaking, a time when the Parties were less ideological and more geographically varied.

American politics since then has returned to what was an earlier state of division, partisanship, and fierce electoral competition. The authoritarianism on display in the Republican Party has antecedents in the behavior of Southern political elites in the 19th century. It has been a part of the GOP since the New Deal.

Millions of Democrats see that American politics has changed in profound ways since the 1990s. They want their leaders to act, (and react) decisively to the gridlock and growing lack of social cohesion, and how both threaten our country.

In a democracy, the voters get what they ask for. If they want candidates who will take away their freedom to choose their leaders, then it will be up to courts to try to save democracy. But we shouldn’t let it get to that.

We must prosecute people who have attempted insurrection and/or sedition. That includes the Trump administration’s crimes against the US government and the Constitution.

This is our only available remedy, and even if it it’s pursued, it may not be enough.

Monday Wake Up Call – June 13, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Safety Harbor, FL – June 2022 photo by Jacqueline Faust Photography

A new study by the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights (IREHR) shows that 875 state lawmakers (11.85% of all state lawmakers in the USA) representing all 50 states, have been engaging with far-right Facebook groups:

“After insurrectionists tried to overthrow the presidential election on January 6, 2021….Several state legislators took part in state-level efforts to undermine the results of the 2020 election.…Forty-eight state and local officials, including ten sitting state lawmakers, were outed as members of the far-right paramilitary group, the Oath Keepers.…”

IREHR has identified 789 different far-right Facebook groups, ranging from militia and sovereign citizen groups, antisemitic conspiracy groups, militant COVID Denial groups, Stop the Steal groups, and others:

“These 789 groups were joined 2,115 times by the 875 legislators identified in this report, an average of 2.4 groups per legislator. Some legislators are members of as many as 24 different groups.”

When will we decide that Facebook must be reined in? This is a clear sign that extremism is making its way into elected office everywhere in the country. And that extremism is thriving due to the role played by the internet and social media.

But this didn’t all begin with Jan. 6. We’re dealing with a challenge that began 60+ years ago with a group we rarely hear about, the John Birch Society (JBS). From James Mann in the NY Review of Books:

“The John Birch Society may be little remembered today, but in its time it had a dues-paying membership of at least 30,000, a staff of 240 people, and more than 400 bookstores across the US.”

The JBS was founded by Robert Welch in 1958, along with a group of 11 conservative business leaders. They had been complaining that America was moving toward socialism and that President Eisenhower, the first Republican president in a quarter-century, was doing little to reverse the drift. But the JBS went further than earlier anti-New Deal activists. They portrayed them as the result of foreign conspiracies.

Mann, reviewing Edward H. Miller’s new biography of Welch, A Conspiratorial Life, says that many of the issues, themes, and causes the Birchers seized upon six decades ago are still alive and well on America’s political right today.

Welch complained that department stores didn’t have enough “Merry Christmas” decorations, saying that they were trying to take Christ out of the holiday. The Birch Society called for defending the police against charges of brutality. They opposed water fluoridation with the same fervor as today’s anti-vaxxers. They vigorously fought efforts at gun control, which they said was a preliminary step for confiscation of guns and a Communist takeover of the US.

Sound familiar?

Birchers opposed FDR’s New Deal reforms. Mann says that when Nixon signed into law the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Welch called it “the worst piece of tyranny ever imposed on any people by any government.”

Maybe a bit over the top? They opposed the Brown v. Board of Education decision integrating US public schools. Welch wrote about Brown:

“The storm over integration….has been brought on by the Communists.”

Welch also enlisted doctors who were opposed to the establishment of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. His conspiracy theories suggested either that Communists had orchestrated these changes in American society, or that the changes were themselves a form of creeping communism.

For the Birchers, “communism” became a term used to smear liberalism and Democrats. Doesn’t this sound familiar 64 years later? For example, Trump spokesperson Liz Harrington said this on Friday about the J6 Committee:

“This is a communist committee that has shown that there’s nothing they won’t do.”

Much like Trump’s base, the Birchers refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of political opposition, suggesting that those who disagreed with them were acting in bad faith, or were part of a conspiracy. And like Trumpists, Birchers had considerable influence upon Republican politics. Republican politicians worried about alienating the Birchers in much the same way that Republicans today worry about running afoul of Trump.

Back then, Republicans used the same type of evasion as do today’s Republicans. Barry Goldwater called the Birchers “the finest people in my community” and said they were “the kind [of people] we need in politics”, something very much like when Trump said that there were “very fine people on both sides” after the 2017 riots by neo-Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Time to wake up America! In many ways, J6 was the coming-out party for a new coalition of far-right groups, aimed, as was the John Birch Society, at undermining our democracy.

To help you wake up, listen to U2 and Mary J. Blige perform “One”, their song about the search for unity. We featured a 1997 version of this tune in 2021, and this one is from 2009:

Bono told the BBC:

“The concept of oneness is of course an impossible ask….Maybe the song works because it doesn’t call for unity. It presents us as being bound to others whether we like it or not. ‘We get to carry each other’ – not ‘We’ve got to carry each other’.“

How Democrats Should Message The Midterms

The Daily Escape:

Sunset along the Last Dollar Road (from Telluride to Ouray), CO – photo by Rich Briggs Photography

Democrats are messaging like mad about the Jan. 6 attempted coup public hearings that start tomorrow. The NYT is asking whether the “Jan. 6 Hearings Give Democrats a Chance to Recast Midterm Message.”

The NYT thinks the real question is whether the “message” of the Jan. 6 hearings will “resonate” with voters. We know that the Republicans now deny that Jan.6 was an attempted coup. We know that the Big Lie, the Great Replacement Theory, and the idea of the Second Amendment uber alles, are mainstream views of the GOP. The Times shouldn’t be covering the mid-terms and the hearings as if they are sporting events – the future of the American experiment is on the line.

Along the way to becoming a Party that totally supports violence, for years, Republicans have been a Party of Senators who do nothing to solve America’s problems.

And it isn’t simply their position on government spending. Once upon a time, Wrongo considered Republican concerns about government spending and budget deficits a serious viewpoint. But since they give tax cuts to the wealthy and to corporations whenever they’re in power, they have lost all credibility on spending.

Under Republican rule, the US left the international consortium to blunt climate change. They walked away from an Iran nuclear deal that leaves the world in a much less safe place. They politicized the pandemic and mocked efforts by public health officials to prevent Covid from becoming the endemic disease it is today.

Going back five decades, they steadfastly opposed national health insurance for the millions of Americans who had none. Their opposition continued by causing the Clinton plan for health insurance to crash on takeoff. Republicans fought the ACA during the Obama administration, although it passed without a single Republican vote in 2010. They fought to overturn it throughout the Trump years.

Today, the Senate is in a position to act on multiple measures, including gun control, that would improve the lives of millions of Americans. They could vote tomorrow. But they won’t because neither Party can muster a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

The 2022 mid-terms provide a moment for all Americans, including Democrats, Independents, and a few Republicans to do some serious soul searching. They need to answer the question: Do you want a government that does nothing or a government that tries to solve problems?

Do you want to elect representatives who despise government, or do you want men and women who bring informed views and respect for our Constitutional democracy to the House and Senate?

Wrongo was in high school when the book “Profiles in Courage” came out. It was ghost-written for then-Senator John Kennedy (the original JFK, not the current empty suit from Louisiana). The book profiles Senators who defied the opinions of their Party (and constituents) to do what they felt was right. Most of them suffered severe criticism and losses in popularity because of their actions.

Today, no one expects to see a Senator of either Party act solely on the basis of moral courage. It is a terrible shame that it takes more courage for a politician to say or do the right thing than they can muster.

But there’s no public mandate for do-nothingism. And the structure of the Senate empowers a minority who doesn’t want anything to get done. When legislators refuse to legislate, they’re telling the American people that they couldn’t care less about urgent issues like gun violence, fair wages or voting rights.

They’re happy to sit on their hands despite Americans needing their help.

This is anti-democratic. If there was strong public support for do-nothingism, at least our governing institutions would reflect public opinion. But the Senate doesn’t reflect what the public wants.

The Senate has changed drastically since its “Profiles in Courage” days. It was conceived as the body that would cool the passions of the House and consider legislation with a national perspective. But today, the Senate has become a body that shuns debate, avoids legislative give-and-take, proceeds glacially, producing next to nothing.

Wrongo worries that in the mid-terms, Democrats will run mainly against the Big Lie, and their sparse record of legislative achievements. They should run against the “Do Nothing Republicans” in the Senate.

The Democratic Party is more diverse ideologically than the Republicans. This is a messaging challenge for them. The Republican’s coalition is narrower. It’s more ideologically homogenous. Given the Senate’s skewed geography, Republicans need only appeal to their base and little else, to succeed. That allows them to use simpler messages.

In “The Cause, The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783” by Joseph Ellis, he says that before the revolution, colonists didn’t think of themselves as Americans. They described their fight for independence as “The Cause”, an ambiguous term that covered diverse ideas and multiple viewpoints. It succeeded in unifying them against the British.

Running against “Do Nothing” Republicans would also use an ambiguous term covering multiple viewpoints. It would allow Democrats to move away from the idea that they have to sell a wider array of ideas to a wider group of voters.

It might also energize both Dems and Independents at a time when they are dispirited.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – June 5, 2022

Since 2019, more than 4,500 children have been shot to death in the US, according to the Gun Violence Archive. That’s about the same number as US military members killed during the 17 years of the Iraq War.

The supporters of permissive gun laws say that an armed society is self-regulating. That we should be able to keep weapons out of the hands of the wrong people. And when we can’t, a law-abiding gun owner will be nearby with their gun to stop the bad guy, wherever they appear.

But life isn’t such a simple binary. And because America has allowed the unlimited proliferation of weapons, we know with certainty that when the switch flips, people will die.

If that is the cost of freedom — if our liberty demands the occasional massacre, including of innocent children — then Republican politicians need to make that case to the rest of us. On to cartoons.

Mental health is only the tip of the iceberg:

Causes of kid trauma are in the eye of beholder:

The “well-regulated militia” isn’t regulated at all:

GOP wants teachers to defend themselves but not think for themselves:

So much misunderstanding:

Anatomy of a hunting gun:

Saturday Wake Up Call – June 4, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Curtis Island Lighthouse, Camden, ME – May 2022 photo by Daniel F. Dishner

Wrongo and Ms. Right are in Pennsylvania for the weekend. A highlight of this trip will be a visit to Longwood Gardens, after which we’ll return home and berate our gardens for their unworthiness. But since we’re in PA, let’s spend a few minutes on their Republican Senatorial primary.

The two leading Republican candidates are using the current debate on gun control as campaign fodder. Former hedge fund CEO David McCormick can be seen in this campaign video shooting a hunting rifle he says he used as a teenager. Next, he picks up a rifle he says he used at the US Military Academy and fires. Then he shoots a semiautomatic assault rifle similar to one he says he used in Iraq.

His competition in the Senate primary, television personality and surgeon Mehmet Oz, has a gun video too. He loads a shotgun and shoots. Then he shoots a semi-automatic pistol. He closes with an AR-15 style rifle. During the clip, he says:

“When people say I don’t support guns? They’re dead wrong,”

These guys have spent millions and months trying to showcase their conservative bona fides to PA’s GOP base voters while attempting to head off skepticism about their elite backgrounds on Wall Street and in Media, respectively. Part of their strategies involved commercials showing them shooting guns. Basically, they are saying to PA voters:

“Hey everyone, I can shoot a gun! Vote for me because I will do nothing to help you in Washington!”

Since we are already reeling from the ongoing and deadly mass shootings, should Republicans glorify the use and ownership of firearms that are weapons of war?

Let’s spend a minute on the current gun culture in America. Despite what Republican politicians say, guns are not a passive defensive tool like a bullet proof vest. They won’t stop a bullet coming at you. Guns are an active, offensive weapon. This active, offensive role of the “virtuous person with a gun” appeals to Republican men who say real men want to actively respond to threats to their property and their families.

The Republicans are pushing to get more guns in schools following the Uvalde shooting. This is the only kind of “do something” action that the Republicans can get behind. It follows the premise that people with guns in school will be able to put down active shooters before they kill kids.

This flies in the face of the facts. That didn’t happen in Uvalde, or in Parkland Memorial in Florida, or in many other places. In the majority of school shootings, the incident ends with unarmed people tackling the shooter. But Republicans will keep saying that armed guards are “deterrents,” even though this isn’t supported by facts. Candidates in both parties have used guns as a campaign prop, but lately, the images have become intentionally provocative in Republican advertising. Their messages convey a cultural and political solidarity more powerfully than most anything else, according to Republican strategists.

Wrongo knows it’s Saturday, our time to chill, but today, it’s time to wake up America! These ads create a dangerous impression that assault-style firearms are casual tools rather than dangerous weapons. They shouldn’t be used to grandstand at Starbucks on the weekend.

To help you wake up, spend a few minutes celebrating the life of Ronnie Hawkins, a rockabilly singer who helped create and launch The Band. He died this week. From Robbie Robertson:

“Ronnie Hawkins brought me down from Canada to the Mississippi delta when I was 16. He recorded two songs I’d written and thought I might be talented….Ron prided himself in always having top notch players in his group. Levon Helm was his drummer in the Hawks and I talked Ron into hiring Rick Danko on bass and vocals, Richard Manuel on piano and vocals and Garth Hudson on organ and sax. Along with Levon and me this became the magic combination.

Ronnie was the godfather. The one who made this all happen. After the Hawks left Ron and went out on our own, we joined up with Bob Dylan. Next the Hawks became “The Band” and the rest is history….All starting out with Ronnie Hawkins.”

There are tons of Ronnie Hawkins videos out there. Here’s one from the 1978 epic “The Last Waltz” a documentary film by Martin Scorsese, capturing The Band’s last performance. Ronnie Hawkins was invited back to participate in covering Bo Diddley’s tune “Who Do You Love?”:

Ronnie Hawkins has the greatest rock & roll quote ever:

“90% of all the money I’ve ever had in my life I spent on women, booze and drugs. The other 10% I just blew.”

It’s Not Just The Guns, It’s The Ammo

The Daily Escape:

Antarctica – May, 2022 photo by Jason Row Photography

Wrongo shot the AR-15 at Fort Ord, CA while in the military in 1966. Back then, the US Army had its Combat Developments Experimentation Command, known as CDEC, there. Fort Ord is now closed, but its location on Monterey Bay in California, made it a beautiful place to spend a weekend, if not military training.

In the 1960s, Fort Ord was the home of the 4th Replacement Training Center, with upward of 50,000 soldiers preparing for their upcoming tour of Vietnam. As part of our training, we participated in the night fire tests of the AR-15. Those tests simulated the conditions that small squads faced in combat. The idea was to compare the performance of the AR-15 against the M-14, the incumbent weapon.

The Army adopted the lighter AR-15 in a model they called the M-16. James Fallows, writing in 1988 in The Atlantic, said this about the weapon:

“By the middle of 1967, when the M-16 had been in combat for about a year and a half, a sufficient number of soldiers had written to their parents about their unreliable equipment and a sufficient number of parents had sent those letters to their congressmen to attract the attention of the House Armed Services Committee, which formed an investigating subcommittee.”

The subcommittee examined the problems caused by the M-16, and Fallows’ article is worth reading to see how badly the Army procurement process failed the US soldier in Vietnam. The Army made several changes to the AR-15 as it became the M-16. All of them served to make the weapon unreliable in combat conditions and less useful as a weapon of war.

But Wrongo wants to focus on the M-16’s high velocity bullet. From Fallows:

“Nearly a century before American troops were ordered into Vietnam, weapons designers had made a discovery in the science of ‘wound ballistics.’ The discovery was that a small, fast-traveling bullet often did a great deal more damage than a larger round when fired into….a human body…”

On Sunday, 60 Minutes re-broadcast a story on the lethality of the AR-15. The focus was on how the gun’s high velocity rounds cause devastating and often lethal wounds that first responders and emergency rooms have great difficulty repairing.

The Intercept brings this back to the Uvalde shooting: (Brackets by Wrongo)

“Many circumstances of this week’s elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, are incomprehensible….The [wound] damage was so severe that agonized parents had to give DNA samples to identify their children.”

Imagine. The request pointed to the obvious: Many of the children who had been killed were so grievously injured that it was impossible to identify their bodies. And that DNA identification process took hours.

Much of the damage was because in addition to the killer using the AR-15, a weapon of war, he also used hollow point bullets, one of the most physically destructive forms of ammunition. Hollow-point bullets open upon impact thereby causing more damage to their targets:

Source: Guns and Ammo

They can easily be purchased throughout the US, but the rest of the world thinks the use of expanding rounds on the battlefield is a war crime. The International Criminal Court bars their use, and they are prohibited by a declaration of the Hague Convention (which of course, the US has never ratified).

The US military has authorized hollow-point ammo. Civilian ammosexual proponents of the hollow-point ammo argue that the bullet reduces harm to nearby civilians, since it’s less likely to pass through its intended target or to ricochet. They also say that it’s useful in hunting big game, so the animal can be killed in one hit. Just like it works in 10 year-old grammar school students.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Social Cohesion