Tornado Alley (PROG)

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TO THE AMERICAN RIGHT, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SOCIETY
Monday, January 02, 2012

This is disheartening, but not surprising in the least:

Americans buy record numbers of guns for Christmas

According to the FBI, over 1.5 million background checks on customers were requested by gun dealers to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System in December. Nearly 500,000 of those were in the six days before Christmas.

It was the highest number ever in a single month, surpassing the previous record set in November.

On Dec 23 alone there were 102,222 background checks, making it the second busiest single day for buying guns in history.

The actual number of guns bought may have been even higher if individual customers took home more than one each.

Explanations for America's surge in gun buying include that it is a response to the stalled economy with people fearing crime waves. Another theory is that buyers are rushing to gun shops because they believe tighter firearms laws will be introduced in the future.... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/5804114/Gun-sales-soar-amid-fears-of-Barack-Obama-weapons-ban.html ..

The National Rifle Association said people were concerned about self defence because police officer numbers were declining.

A spokesman said: "I think there's an increased realisation that when something bad occurs it's going to be between them and the criminal." ...

Now, you might imagine the NRA would want to downplay that last point -- after all, the Republican Party that acts in lockstep with the NRA, and for which a large number of NRA members regularly vote, is the same party that forces cutbacks in the ranks of police departments because the alternative -- higher taxes -- is utterly unacceptable.

But, of course, no one on the right is in any way embarrassed that cops are losing their jobs, because every wingnut knows that all government departments, agencies, and programs have a failure rate of 100%, so it doesn't matter that we don't have enough cops. (How that jibes with our nation's extraordinarily high rate of incarceration I can't explain, but no wingnut would ever take the time to examine the clear contradiction.)

American right-wingers don't care, because they don't really believe in society. Their favorite foreign politician, Margaret Thatcher, has been quoted this way: .. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Margaret_Thatcher#Third_term_as_Prime_Minister ..

They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour.

To the average American wingnut, there are individuals and families -- and also affinity groups. There are fellow believers in "gun freedom." There are fellow "regular Americans" who aren't repulsive cosmopolitan liberal elitists. There are fellow Christians. There are fellow white people. These groups are worth defending. Society isn't. Any old SOB can become part of society -- Muslims, gays, people on welfare, you name it.

I suppose this harks back to Tom's point .. http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2011/12/ron-paul-not-civil-libertarian-last.html .. about the links connecting Ron Paul's present-day libertarianism and the racist states' rights movement. I agree that it's about race to some extent, but I don't think it's just about race. It's more flexible than that. It's about reserving the unilateral right, or the affinity-group right, to decide who belongs here and who doesn't. It's about deciding, if you choose, that "society" is just you and your guns, and everyone else can just stay the hell off your land (though with the definition of "your land" extended to the creche in the town square and the vacant lot the local Muslims have purchased so they can build a mosque on it).

And even though Ron Paul isn't going to be elected president this year, the libertarianism-by-inches of the mainstream GOP makes us less and less of a society. Thatcher may not have been right when she spoke -- not right about her own country, not right about humanity as a whole -- but, increasingly, her words describe America, or at least what we're becoming.

Posted by Steve M. at 11:34 AM

4 comments: [this is the first one]

c u n d gulag said...

We have a lot of sociopaths and psychopaths in this country.

And nothing speaks more to that than the sheer number of serial killers we have
and the number of gun deaths, both of which would be an outrage in a saner nation.

But not us - we run out and buy more guns.

We're a country of crazy Calvinist cowboys - with solo and group insanity, a feeling of self-determined
individual and collective exceptionalism combined with a religious belief that we are loved by
our Christian God to the exclusion off all others, and armed to the teeth, to boot.

We not only tolerate the insane, we worship them - and even put them in Congress.

Welcome to The United Armed Christian States of Bellevue.
12:08 PM

http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2012/01/to-american-right-there-is-no-such.html

Good, it turned out not to be so much about Ron Paul at all, more about so
many of his supporters and their own American 'society' within the U.S.A.

See also:

Gun Nuts in a Rut
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=69575408

Glock Pistol Sales Surge in Aftermath of Arizona Shootings
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=58675988

School of Glock
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=60834649

The year in crazy: Rush Limbaugh
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=70173797

My Life as a White Supremacist
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=69373928

Extremists finding fertile ground in Northwest US
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=67179015

Insurrectionism Timeline
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=58583125

New Dallas police policy: It's OK to steal, just not too much?
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=70437700

Relying on the Kindness of Strangers
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=70431999

Civilian contractors playing key roles in U.S. drone operations
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=70417953

Video Shows Joe Arpaio's Officer Used Taser On Latino Vet Who Later Died
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=70258085

Judge rules against Arizona sheriff in immigrant stops
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=70264658

When the Uprooted Put Down Roots
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=67839359