BLAMING THE FLIES FOR THE GARBAGE
Michael Moore recently wrote on his website and elsewhere a Letter from Flint called "A Sad Truth About America." It might have been subtitled "A Sad Truth About the American Left"--disregarding, for now, the patriotic US Über Alles co-option of the name "America" to mean just the United States. One half-expected Moore's story about a school shooting of a six-year-old girl in Flint to be an indictment of poverty, racism, government-perpetuated fear, denial of social services, under-funded schools, job exportation, lack of living wages, destruction and failure of unions, the violence-producing "war on drugs," industrial chemicals that sometimes promote violent behavior, and the fact that the US government itself is the global role-model for the use of violence and weapons as problem-solving tools. As Moore might word it, one would have been wrong.
Moore didn't jump on any of these things as contributing factors to the epidemic of shootings nor the shooting of the little girl in Flint. Instead, he reworded the Clinton/Gore administration's line on handgun control to make it more down-to-earth. This administration, naturally enough, ignores social and governmental factors in causing gun (and other) violence, even as it has brought the United States into the record books for the death penalty, arms exports, weapons development, militarizing the police, creating space warfare programs, and utterly indiscriminate bombing of non-compliant countries.
The anti-hand gun Clinton/Gore administration has the dubious distinction of presiding over the point of the Iraq Sanctions where deaths caused by that vile program (over a million and a half) have exceeded the number of deaths caused by any military campaign in US history of warfare--including the atomic bombing of Japan. Iraq sanctions have killed about 15 times more than the US killed at Hiroshima. And Moore, without qualification, joins this administration in advocating handgun control? If it isn't patently obvious, this is to merely swat the flies--the inevitable symptoms that were bred and fed by a corporate-serving government. The garbage that nurtures the flies, apparently, may be left right there on the backs of people; it's just the visible consequences that Moore, Clinton, and Gore don't like. After all, these symptoms expose and indict illegitimate, cruel, and unjust corporate-serving policies. And riding to the rescue with newer, "tougher" restrictions serves to increase state power, thus leading to more negative symptoms, and on we go towards outright authoritarianism.
Moore may be sincere in his anguish for the slain child, but it is hard to see the balance as about four thousand children (under eight years old), no less innocent and valuable human beings, die every month in Iraq from the effects of Clinton's vicious sanctions. If, as Meddlin' Albright, et ilk, is fond of saying, this is Saddam Hussein's fault; it sure was not apparent before the Bush bombings when Iraq had one of the best, if not the best, health-care systems and child survival levels in the entire Middle East. Unlike the shooting in Flint, Moore's tax dollars help pay for the horrors in Iraq. He may have even voted for US representatives who support the atrocity. All of this makes any "concern" for even hundreds of shootings in the US ring disharmoniously as unbalanced and disingenuous. The priority concern for only those nearby, in one's own community or country, is understandable, but it must not be more than a partial, although top, concern. It must not override the integrity of empathy for all. Are Moore and others not concerned about killings of children but just about killings close to home that are hard to ignore or hide?
Until recently, Amnesty International seemed to care--not about all human rights violations--but only about those that were not in the US or not caused by US programs. There were no grounds for respecting AI's integrity. Thankfully, that's changed. As for Clinton and the rest of the very selective folks who aver that they don't approve of the killing of children (bring out the halos), one can drive a truck through the hole where their integrity and human empathy should be. As US handgun control proponents leave the funeral for a slain US child, they go home to continue the denial of health care to millions of children; they allow pesticides to contaminate children's food; they allow toxic incinerators and other smokestack industries to dump poisons onto schools and neighborhoods; they foist questionable, dangerous, and barely-tested drugs like Ritalin and Prozac onto children; they advocate executions of juvenile offenders; they cut funding for safer public transportation; they let public schools go to hell; they let culpable industries avoid cleanups of lead and other toxins; they experiment on kids (and everyone) with genetically-mutated foods; they destroy everyone's receptivity to antibiotics by failure to adequately regulate animal-based foods; and they allow chlorine and its by-product, dioxin, to contaminate foods, food packaging, diapers, paper products, household cleansers, lawns, typical cigarettes, school sanitation chemicals, and every other damn thing, even though the elements are especially damaging to children.
These people prove, by their own actions or silence, that they are not concerned about the welfare of children. There ought to be a "Megan's Law" to warn us if they live or work in our communities. So, why do they SAY they care? Many, for unfathomable reasons, actually believe the official rhetoric as-seen-on-TV. However, it is more than a little obvious that the anti-gun campaign is yet another authoritarian ploy "for our protection," as ever, (a) to increase the balance of power in favor of a still out-of-control and increasingly dangerous police force, (b) to disarm the public (especially poor, especially black) in expectation of possible justifiable and expected reaction (if not revolt) against neoliberal austerity programs and deprivation of rights, (c) to let the government monitor owners of weapons owners in case a total prohibition is wanted in the future, and (d) to make the killers in government office appear to have warm human feelings so that they can remain in power to continue what can only be called mass-murder.
This gun-control deal is a classic ruse in that anyone who opposes it or criticizes it is easily painted, by a compliant and complicit corporate media, as supporting the killing of children. Identical tactics are afoot to privatize and hand over control of Internet communications to the government. If you support Internet freedom and oppose government monitoring, censorship, and control, you are painted as an advocate of kiddyporn or terrorism. If you question the anti-smoking campaign that intentionally ignores some of the world's worst industrial chemical contaminants added to typical cigarettes, you are considered an advocate of lung cancer and the addiction of kids. If you resist urine tests and drug searches in schools, etc., you must be a dope addict or pusher. If you oppose the Iraq Sanctions and bombing of Yugoslavia, you must support brutal dictators and genocide. "Liberals" and many "Lefties" have fallen for these cynical, manipulative tactics. Indeed the campaigns are AIMED at those who have, or claim to have, empathy for others to bring them, for "safety" reasons, onto the side of the authorities. The idea, though, is to tightly LIMIT the concern so that it does not indict, challenge, embarrass, weaken, or discredit the US Corporate/Government establishment.
It is not that it wouldn't be a fine idea to disarm the US population to "save the children" (any implications that one does not want to protect children ought to be treated as slander), but it is a BAD, ominous idea when THIS incredibly violent, sociopathic, authoritarian, ruthless, capital-Über-Alles, increasingly Police-State government wants to limit gun ownership. It is absurdly arbitrary. The "concerns" cannot be believed. This government program ought not be supported as if it is being promoted by anyone who actually cares for the health and welfare of children. If you want to stop violence in schools and the streets to protect the kids, get to work ENDING the "war on drugs" that brought so many guns to the underground economy. Demand living wages, adequate unemployment subsidies, and national public-funded health care so that armed robbery will not be just about the only career option for so many, and so that millions won't be arming themselves for protection. Do not tolerate racism, which dehumanizes races in each other's eyes and makes killing all the more easy. Divert Pentagon money to public schools so that kids will be exposed to alternatives and learn enough to get a decent job or make a living by themselves. Stop the death penalty and rein in killer-cops so that most of the population won't become coldly accustomed to death as a legitimate problem-solving option. Do not accept the "risk/benefit" policies that let certain numbers of people die, with no consequences to the perpetrators, so that some novel drug or chemical can rake in profits for the few. Perhaps above everything, remove all corporate influence from Public Broadcasting airwaves so that all the above can be exposed, communicated, and discussed, and so that alternatives can be presented to the mainstream public. "Democratically" allowing the "alternative" press to exist when it is economically barred from the mainstream is inadequate.
To oppose gun (and all) violence in these ways is not to "side with the NRA," Repuglicans, or right-wing militias. It is to oppose the culture of death that is, preposterously, pretending to be anti-death by "protecting the kids from guns." Those on the left might do an integrity check on themselves by thinking a little about the (reluctant) use of guns by the Zapatistas, for one, but also the Cuban overthrow of Batista, the Sandinista revolution, and--what the heck--the US revolution against England. If one prefers a nonviolent Gandhi route for removing corrupt governments, that may not work nowadays against pepper-spray, rubber bullets, tear gas, stun-guns, police torture, and 'justifiable shooting" techniques--not to mention media propaganda that will describe your peaceful action as "a violent confrontation." Attend anti-gun rallies if you wish, but bring along signs and leaflets that address the corporate/government CAUSES of the immediate problems. Don't elect homicidal officials by casting compromise votes for "lesser evils." Oppose all candidates if they do their killing "cleanly" by supporting deadly chemicals, the death penalty, weapons, war, or whatever. Do the whole thing at once--not just the disarming; that is, advocate gun control but with a vital reservation: as long as it does not benefit the arguably most homicidal establishment in history.