I mean what is Tucker Carlson, AM radio, the NRA, etc. -- tons of right-wing media schtick -- what is it but riling up the hoi polloi with these sorts of fears and revanchist thoughts about uppity blacks, illegals and the left, crafting the idea for their audience that they are under extreme duress and attack from subversive forces, and expressly tying their audience's political agency to their guns, and then letting events naturally transpire from there.
For some reason we watch all THAT play out but then assume the fears are coming from us and the threats to take away the guns, which is subtle but deeply aggrandizing, makes us feel better our pleas for gun control have any effect at all. Instead we should watch all that play out and see the forest through the trees and what's really happening, the deplorable base clings to their guns because they really want to act on what they're being told to do, and they want to be prepared if not eventually take the fight to their political enemies. The basic structure is pretty transparent, and in fact effective, that the authoritarian right is absolutely ginning up violent fantasies among their audience, all but telling them guns are fundamental to the pitched ideological battle, and effectively laundering the battle to street goons and the mentally ill and the front line solider ideologue types.
I mean, again, put differently:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...ome-addresses/
Quote:
Days after organizing an armed protest outside the Islamic Center of Irving, Tex., the spokesman for a local anti-Islam group published the names and addresses “of every Muslim and Muslim sympathizer that stood up for … Sharia tribunals in Irving,” according to the the Dallas Morning News.
Like I beg us all, don't for a moment think the guns are incidental or accidental or happenstance or just tough-guy cosplay stuff, and treat them like the political tools of intimidation they're sold and marketed and amplified as, it's sort of an important truth to recognize. I mean again, if the right showed up to public political events with a noose and a burning cross, we'd all be like "ohh hot damn look at what these guys are trying to say, it's obvious!" but they instead show up armed with guns and in military fatigues and we're like oh how quaint, these dainty men think we're going to gun grab instead of the equivalently obvious political message they're communicating by waving their guns around at everyone.
Last edited by DVaut1; 12-04-2018 at 09:51 AM.