It’s not “funny”. But to borrow your phrasing, it’s almost as though gun access, gun control, gun violence (and threats of violence), gun rights advocacy, and gun-related law enforcement were and continue to be racist, along with quite a lot of the rest of US policy and society. If you read (or even read about) the book you are lazily mischaracterizing you would see that the racism of gun control is discussed there at length.
There is indeed a consistent principle there – white supremacy (and more generally, rich straight white male supremacy). All of the rest – “public safety”, “free markets”, “job creation”, “economic growth”, “liberty”, “equality”, “patriotism”, “justice”, “respect for the law”, “meritocracy”, “republicanism”, “accountability”, “fiscal responsibility”, “originalism”, “family values”, “Christianity”, “truth”, etc. – are secondary, swappable, and dispensable smokescreens. At a glance these post-facto “principled” justifications seem contradictory and hypocritical, but that’s only for listeners who take any of them at face value.
Those who quick-change their claimed fundamental philosophical principles whenever convenient routinely turn around and (to use your term) smear anyone opposed to them.
> gun rights advocacy, and gun-related law enforcement were and continue to be racist, along with quite a lot of the rest of US policy and society… There is indeed a consistent principle there – white supremacy (and more generally, rich straight white male supremacy).
As a non-white immigrant to American, this uniquely American form of self flagellation is remarkable to me. Of all the things I find noteworthy about America and its history, I think of those other things you listed. The “racism” is among the least notable of characteristics. Historical slavery and dominance by the ethnic majority is what America shares with countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East—not what sets it apart!
Sometimes, though, I feel guilty for pushing back on this sort of thinking. This depredation of one’s own history and cultural heritage is incomprehensible to me as a foreigner, but maybe this zealous self loathing is actually what drives America’s distinctive capacity for self improvement.
Ah yes, we should all instead celebrate mass murder, slavery, mass incarceration, torture, etc. Hooray for the Battle of Wounded Knee!
While we are at it we should be cheering for children to be shot at school mass shootings, women to die in dangerous pregnancies they were forced to carry to term, innocents to rot in prison after crooked cops planted drugs on them, transgender teenagers to be lynched, and elderly homeless people to die on the street after being defrauded of their life savings.
Because caring about what happens to other people would be “self flagellation”, a deep waste if we could instead spend that attention on working for a big suburban McMansion packed with servants where we can train our own children to be entitled little shits, to prepare them to come out at the top of the coming social turmoil when global warming starts to really wreak havoc. Just don’t let those kids get near public school teachers, Tucker told me they are all pedophiles.
There is indeed a consistent principle there – white supremacy (and more generally, rich straight white male supremacy). All of the rest – “public safety”, “free markets”, “job creation”, “economic growth”, “liberty”, “equality”, “patriotism”, “justice”, “respect for the law”, “meritocracy”, “republicanism”, “accountability”, “fiscal responsibility”, “originalism”, “family values”, “Christianity”, “truth”, etc. – are secondary, swappable, and dispensable smokescreens. At a glance these post-facto “principled” justifications seem contradictory and hypocritical, but that’s only for listeners who take any of them at face value.
Those who quick-change their claimed fundamental philosophical principles whenever convenient routinely turn around and (to use your term) smear anyone opposed to them.