John Stoehr
July 06, 2022
ALTERNET
Photo: Screen capture
There was another shooting massacre over the weekend, this one in Highland Park, a picturesque, affluent and majority-white suburb of Chicago, where mass violence of the kind experienced during a Fourth of July parade isn’t supposed to happen on account of Highland Park being picturesque, affluent and majority white.
Mass violence of this kind is supposed to happen in places like Philadelphia, which did experience a shooting during a fireworks display, sending hundreds of spectators fleeing, but that has gotten none of the attention that the Highland Park shooting has gotten on account of Philadelphia, which is majority Black, being where violence is supposed to happen on account of being majority Black.
Evidently, Robert E. Crimo III doesn’t get it.
The 22-year-old, who appears to be white, perched himself atop a building along the holiday parade route with a “high-powered rifle” to shoot into the crowd, killing six and wounding 40. Per the Post: “At least two long bursts of rapid gunfire left five people dead at the scene and sent hundreds of people fleeing in panic, leaving a wake of overturned lawn chairs, coolers and strollers. … One spectator, a father, put his young son in a dumpster for safety as he scrambled to find and shield other family members while bullets rained down.”
I’ll talk more about the shooter after the story has been reported out, although we learned on Tuesday that Crimo had planned the attack for weeks, USA Today reported. The details of his case don’t matter, however, as much as the larger contours they fit in. As I’ve said, all shooting massacres, in one way or another, are a violent reaction to the politics of liberal democracy making it possible to elect the first Black president, who then ceased being subject to the law and became instead the enforcer of it.
That’s impossible for people who see “the law” as the same as white.
So impossible, they feel crazy.
Shooting massacres are the result of “the natural order of things” being turned upside down in a country where “the law” is not the law so much as the law is a white man with a gun. In such an upside-down world, it’s only “natural” for some Americans (ie, usually white men who cannot and will not tolerate “their country” turned upside down) to seek “justice” by “taking the law into their own hands.”
This pattern has held steady since at least 2012, after the Sandy Hook massacre, when the Republicans made a permanent choice. They could do the truly conservative thing – enacting laws that would regulate the distribution of firearms for the purpose of promoting the general welfare and securing the blessings of liberty for all. Or they could recognize the obvious – that liberal democracy and the rule of law in the hands of a Black man had become the enemy.
The writer David Frum once famously said that "if conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.”
That’s close, but more precisely: if the champions of white power become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon white power, nor will they only reject democracy.
They will go to war with it, replacing law and order with anarchy and chaos so that respectable white people doubt democracy, too.
Since 2012, the GOP has built on the structures of white power already in place in police departments around the country. (These structures are why cops can arrest Robert Crimo without incident, but shoot Jayland Walker 60 times, killing him, for no crime at all.)
They radically expanded the number of people with the authority to enforce the law by deputizing every white man willing to wield a gun. They got around the old constraints on law enforcement that were acceptable to respectable white people by resorting to vigilantism.
With easy access to guns, and permission to carry them virtually anywhere, Republicans created conditions for wave after wave of mass death that has for years been tearing apart civil society.
I don’t think the respectable white people who populate places like Highland Park are champions of white power. If choosing between a liberal Democrat and a fascist Republican, I’m confident they’d make the right choice. But respectable white people, who determine so much of the direction and scope of our national politics, are nonetheless the principal beneficiaries of white power. They are the property owners, the bourgeoisie, the social class elected officials turn to when charting a respectable position on any given issue.
As the principal beneficiaries of white power, respectable white people are more often than not insulated from or immune to the consequences of a political party’s decision to go to war with democracy. (It’s a one-sided war that involves “soft targets” like parades.) They are, that is, all the way up to when they are not.
I think that’s the case with the Highland Park massacre. White-power violence first came for immigrants, then Black Lives Matter, then LGBT-plus people. And now, those who had least expected it. “If this can happen here, I promise it can happen anywhere. This is the last place I would ever imagine something like this happening.”
Will respectable white people understand that the Republicans are responsible for the chaos and anarchy, for the upheaval of the established order? Or will they turn to the Republicans to protect them from the chaos and anarchy that the Republicans created?
Blaming 'the gun lobby' and the NRA for violence is a 'convenient fiction' to avoid offending white people
High school students in Minneapolis marching for gun control on February 21, 2018 (Wikimedia Commons).
John Stoehr
John Stoehr is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative; a contributing writer for the Washington Monthly; a contributing editor for Religion Dispatches; and senior editor at Alternet. Follow him @johnastoehr.
Photo: Screen capture
There was another shooting massacre over the weekend, this one in Highland Park, a picturesque, affluent and majority-white suburb of Chicago, where mass violence of the kind experienced during a Fourth of July parade isn’t supposed to happen on account of Highland Park being picturesque, affluent and majority white.
Mass violence of this kind is supposed to happen in places like Philadelphia, which did experience a shooting during a fireworks display, sending hundreds of spectators fleeing, but that has gotten none of the attention that the Highland Park shooting has gotten on account of Philadelphia, which is majority Black, being where violence is supposed to happen on account of being majority Black.
Evidently, Robert E. Crimo III doesn’t get it.
The 22-year-old, who appears to be white, perched himself atop a building along the holiday parade route with a “high-powered rifle” to shoot into the crowd, killing six and wounding 40. Per the Post: “At least two long bursts of rapid gunfire left five people dead at the scene and sent hundreds of people fleeing in panic, leaving a wake of overturned lawn chairs, coolers and strollers. … One spectator, a father, put his young son in a dumpster for safety as he scrambled to find and shield other family members while bullets rained down.”
I’ll talk more about the shooter after the story has been reported out, although we learned on Tuesday that Crimo had planned the attack for weeks, USA Today reported. The details of his case don’t matter, however, as much as the larger contours they fit in. As I’ve said, all shooting massacres, in one way or another, are a violent reaction to the politics of liberal democracy making it possible to elect the first Black president, who then ceased being subject to the law and became instead the enforcer of it.
That’s impossible for people who see “the law” as the same as white.
So impossible, they feel crazy.
Shooting massacres are the result of “the natural order of things” being turned upside down in a country where “the law” is not the law so much as the law is a white man with a gun. In such an upside-down world, it’s only “natural” for some Americans (ie, usually white men who cannot and will not tolerate “their country” turned upside down) to seek “justice” by “taking the law into their own hands.”
This pattern has held steady since at least 2012, after the Sandy Hook massacre, when the Republicans made a permanent choice. They could do the truly conservative thing – enacting laws that would regulate the distribution of firearms for the purpose of promoting the general welfare and securing the blessings of liberty for all. Or they could recognize the obvious – that liberal democracy and the rule of law in the hands of a Black man had become the enemy.
The writer David Frum once famously said that "if conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.”
That’s close, but more precisely: if the champions of white power become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon white power, nor will they only reject democracy.
They will go to war with it, replacing law and order with anarchy and chaos so that respectable white people doubt democracy, too.
Since 2012, the GOP has built on the structures of white power already in place in police departments around the country. (These structures are why cops can arrest Robert Crimo without incident, but shoot Jayland Walker 60 times, killing him, for no crime at all.)
They radically expanded the number of people with the authority to enforce the law by deputizing every white man willing to wield a gun. They got around the old constraints on law enforcement that were acceptable to respectable white people by resorting to vigilantism.
With easy access to guns, and permission to carry them virtually anywhere, Republicans created conditions for wave after wave of mass death that has for years been tearing apart civil society.
I don’t think the respectable white people who populate places like Highland Park are champions of white power. If choosing between a liberal Democrat and a fascist Republican, I’m confident they’d make the right choice. But respectable white people, who determine so much of the direction and scope of our national politics, are nonetheless the principal beneficiaries of white power. They are the property owners, the bourgeoisie, the social class elected officials turn to when charting a respectable position on any given issue.
As the principal beneficiaries of white power, respectable white people are more often than not insulated from or immune to the consequences of a political party’s decision to go to war with democracy. (It’s a one-sided war that involves “soft targets” like parades.) They are, that is, all the way up to when they are not.
I think that’s the case with the Highland Park massacre. White-power violence first came for immigrants, then Black Lives Matter, then LGBT-plus people. And now, those who had least expected it. “If this can happen here, I promise it can happen anywhere. This is the last place I would ever imagine something like this happening.”
Will respectable white people understand that the Republicans are responsible for the chaos and anarchy, for the upheaval of the established order? Or will they turn to the Republicans to protect them from the chaos and anarchy that the Republicans created?
Blaming 'the gun lobby' and the NRA for violence is a 'convenient fiction' to avoid offending white people
High school students in Minneapolis marching for gun control on February 21, 2018 (Wikimedia Commons).
John Stoehr
June 02, 2022
AlterNet
That’s serious money. Standing up to a “gun lobby” that’s spending a $16 million a year is one thing. A billion bucks, though, is another. One of these the Republicans can weather easily. The other would hurt so much you’d never ever again consider standing up to “the gun lobby.”
My point here is that the NRA and the others are not so powerful as to justify the Republicans’ stand against gun-law reform for the last decade. What’s driving them isn’t money so much as “gun culture,” which is a polite way of describing a white-power reaction to the forces of liberal democracy threatening the “natural order of things.”
A second point
The NRA etc. are not so powerful as to back conservative Senate Democrats into a corner. Joe Manchin, as well as three or four other Democratic senators, wouldn’t lose much by standing up to them.
Yet they have not.
I think they understand that “the gun lobby” is for them a convenient fiction. Instead of demanding that their respectable white constituents acknowledge the political advantages inherent in being respectable white constituents – by calling “gun culture” a manifestation of white power and by calling gun control a manifestation of liberal democracy – Democratic Senators can instead blame “the gun lobby” for Washington’s impotent reaction to a decade of murdered innocents.
Ditto for Joe Biden.
I would presume that the president knows perfectly well what I’m spelling out here: that blaming “the gun lobby” is doublespeak used to avoid offending white supporters steeped in, to paraphrase Neil Meyer, the deep American reverence for guns and mythological manliness.
That’s my second point. The same white-power impulses pushing the Republicans against gun-law reform are the same white-power impulses pushing just enough Democratic senators away from it. This framing is so dominant as to constitute our political reality, which is another way of saying that racism constitutes our political reality.
The result, as long as the Senate filibuster remains intact, is congressional impotence in the face of a decade of murdered innocents. The result is a country in which the pernicious dread and fear of terrorism anytime anyplace colonizes the American mind.
A third point
To their immense credit, my left-liberal brethren are empurpled with frustration and rage. They cannot accept and will never accept a present time that’s bound by the white-power parameters of the past.
That’s good. We must keep fighting.
But let’s not let the political advantages inherent in being white liberals blind us to the resilience of those deeply rooted political advantages. (I do not intend to explain to nonwhite liberals what they already know.)
Desperate for action of any kind, white liberals are loudly and in increasing numbers calling on Biden to lean harder on Joe Manchin and the other conservative Senate Democrats. Force them to take a stand against “the gun lobby,” they say. Force them to carve out an exception to the filibuster to pass a weapons ban and other reforms.
And if they balk, well, at least the base of the Democratic Party, when it comes time to vote in November, will know exactly who to blame.
As The Atlantic’s Molly Jong-Fast said Wednesday: “A win on guns would not only protect children; it would shore up Biden’s anemic poll numbers and excite the Democratic base. If Democratic voters don’t show up this fall, it will be because they’ve lost faith in Democrats’ ability to deliver. And yet, Democrats seem to be terrified to deliver.”
Molly is far from alone. White liberals have been calling on party leaders to do something in increasing numbers and with increasing volume. But due to their desperation (I’m being generous here), white liberals have not thought enough about the true character and deep history of the problem. “Do something” is a variation of “the gun lobby.”
It’s a convenient fiction.
We could and should demand that white liberals acknowledge the historic political advantages inherent in being white liberals. “Exciting the base” in November would therefore be a moot point. The base would already be crystal clear about who’s to blame and what. But that’s hard work, even for – perhaps especially for – white liberals.
Instead, it’s easier to demand party leaders do something, anything, saying if they don’t, the base of the Democratic Party won’t turn out.
Yet, as I said, the base should already know who’s to blame and what. That is, if it’s not blinded by the white-power impulses involved on account of benefitting from those very same white-power impulses. Blaming party leaders is the path of least resistance. It’s a convenient fiction white liberals use to avoid offending other white liberals.
In doing so, white liberals end up reinforcing a framing of the issue that’s so dominant as to constitute our political reality, which is another way of saying racism constitutes our political reality.
As long as the pernicious fear of terrorism anywhere anytime colonizes our minds, none of us, no one, is free. White liberals can choose freedom from history. They must start with themselves.
AlterNet
USA Today ran a frontpage story this morning about “the gun lobby” fattening its impact “far beyond the NRA.” It rounds up the various groups united in opposition to gun-law reform. Altogether, last year these organizations spent nearly $16 million on lobbying, a record.
The story was on the frontpage, because spending by “the gun lobby” is topical. The president, in mourning two teachers and 19 children shot to pieces in the Uvalde massacre, demanded the Republicans, especially in the Senate, stand up to “the gun lobby.” The USA Today report provided valuable context. There’s more here than the NRA.
I’m somewhat blind to numbers. I don’t usually pay attention to dollar amounts. Today, however, I happened to notice that while $16 million is a lot to normal people, to the very obscenely rich, who can spend such vast sums as to bend political reality in their favor, it’s pocket change.
As if to provide a point of comparison, another story in today’s paper was about Kremlin capo Andrey Melnichencko, who lost a super-yacht to international sanctions against Russia, but managed to save another. The former is worth $600 million. The latter is worth $300 million.
The story was on the frontpage, because spending by “the gun lobby” is topical. The president, in mourning two teachers and 19 children shot to pieces in the Uvalde massacre, demanded the Republicans, especially in the Senate, stand up to “the gun lobby.” The USA Today report provided valuable context. There’s more here than the NRA.
I’m somewhat blind to numbers. I don’t usually pay attention to dollar amounts. Today, however, I happened to notice that while $16 million is a lot to normal people, to the very obscenely rich, who can spend such vast sums as to bend political reality in their favor, it’s pocket change.
As if to provide a point of comparison, another story in today’s paper was about Kremlin capo Andrey Melnichencko, who lost a super-yacht to international sanctions against Russia, but managed to save another. The former is worth $600 million. The latter is worth $300 million.
That’s serious money. Standing up to a “gun lobby” that’s spending a $16 million a year is one thing. A billion bucks, though, is another. One of these the Republicans can weather easily. The other would hurt so much you’d never ever again consider standing up to “the gun lobby.”
My point here is that the NRA and the others are not so powerful as to justify the Republicans’ stand against gun-law reform for the last decade. What’s driving them isn’t money so much as “gun culture,” which is a polite way of describing a white-power reaction to the forces of liberal democracy threatening the “natural order of things.”
A second point
The NRA etc. are not so powerful as to back conservative Senate Democrats into a corner. Joe Manchin, as well as three or four other Democratic senators, wouldn’t lose much by standing up to them.
Yet they have not.
I think they understand that “the gun lobby” is for them a convenient fiction. Instead of demanding that their respectable white constituents acknowledge the political advantages inherent in being respectable white constituents – by calling “gun culture” a manifestation of white power and by calling gun control a manifestation of liberal democracy – Democratic Senators can instead blame “the gun lobby” for Washington’s impotent reaction to a decade of murdered innocents.
Ditto for Joe Biden.
I would presume that the president knows perfectly well what I’m spelling out here: that blaming “the gun lobby” is doublespeak used to avoid offending white supporters steeped in, to paraphrase Neil Meyer, the deep American reverence for guns and mythological manliness.
That’s my second point. The same white-power impulses pushing the Republicans against gun-law reform are the same white-power impulses pushing just enough Democratic senators away from it. This framing is so dominant as to constitute our political reality, which is another way of saying that racism constitutes our political reality.
The result, as long as the Senate filibuster remains intact, is congressional impotence in the face of a decade of murdered innocents. The result is a country in which the pernicious dread and fear of terrorism anytime anyplace colonizes the American mind.
A third point
To their immense credit, my left-liberal brethren are empurpled with frustration and rage. They cannot accept and will never accept a present time that’s bound by the white-power parameters of the past.
That’s good. We must keep fighting.
But let’s not let the political advantages inherent in being white liberals blind us to the resilience of those deeply rooted political advantages. (I do not intend to explain to nonwhite liberals what they already know.)
Desperate for action of any kind, white liberals are loudly and in increasing numbers calling on Biden to lean harder on Joe Manchin and the other conservative Senate Democrats. Force them to take a stand against “the gun lobby,” they say. Force them to carve out an exception to the filibuster to pass a weapons ban and other reforms.
And if they balk, well, at least the base of the Democratic Party, when it comes time to vote in November, will know exactly who to blame.
As The Atlantic’s Molly Jong-Fast said Wednesday: “A win on guns would not only protect children; it would shore up Biden’s anemic poll numbers and excite the Democratic base. If Democratic voters don’t show up this fall, it will be because they’ve lost faith in Democrats’ ability to deliver. And yet, Democrats seem to be terrified to deliver.”
Molly is far from alone. White liberals have been calling on party leaders to do something in increasing numbers and with increasing volume. But due to their desperation (I’m being generous here), white liberals have not thought enough about the true character and deep history of the problem. “Do something” is a variation of “the gun lobby.”
It’s a convenient fiction.
We could and should demand that white liberals acknowledge the historic political advantages inherent in being white liberals. “Exciting the base” in November would therefore be a moot point. The base would already be crystal clear about who’s to blame and what. But that’s hard work, even for – perhaps especially for – white liberals.
Instead, it’s easier to demand party leaders do something, anything, saying if they don’t, the base of the Democratic Party won’t turn out.
Yet, as I said, the base should already know who’s to blame and what. That is, if it’s not blinded by the white-power impulses involved on account of benefitting from those very same white-power impulses. Blaming party leaders is the path of least resistance. It’s a convenient fiction white liberals use to avoid offending other white liberals.
In doing so, white liberals end up reinforcing a framing of the issue that’s so dominant as to constitute our political reality, which is another way of saying racism constitutes our political reality.
As long as the pernicious fear of terrorism anywhere anytime colonizes our minds, none of us, no one, is free. White liberals can choose freedom from history. They must start with themselves.
John Stoehr is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative; a contributing writer for the Washington Monthly; a contributing editor for Religion Dispatches; and senior editor at Alternet. Follow him @johnastoehr.
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