So I would say gun control is a priority for the USA. 9990 people have died this year, according to gun violence archive. The government could ban and buy back automatic rifles often used in these mass slaughter events. This would be my first move to remove the nonsense and dysfunction in America.
I once calculated that about 35 children die every year from gun violence, but this year we're at 39 already. The people who are against doing anything about that find that number acceptable. They are OK with sacrificing 35 children every year for the freedom around guns, the way they are OK with people dying for many other various reason. The freedom not to wear masks or get vaccines. The freedom to be a spreader.
The reason why we haven't done this common sense action is money in politics. Corporations get together and buy politicians. Mitt Romney has taken over 12 million from the NRA.
Then there is a movement against being empathetic towards others. Responding as a community. All these libertarians have come out of the grass with Trump. They were in hiding before.
The Jewish community in my neighborhood mostly vote republican because they don't want taxes because they send their children to Jewish schools. They just don't want to be taxed, that's their main issue.
The right ideology takes life serious only in one place. The manic reparation is about abortion, but they only see the fetus' life, not the mothers. They don't worry about Gerry Santoro. They don't worry about how crime goes up when abortion is illegal. They see it very simply and without context, and no widening the frame. No inclusion of how women are treated in this society.
The culture war around gun control and the right/left fighting is something I'm losing interest in. I know there are families that hunt and there's a strong culture of it in Wisconsin where I grew up. We're not taking away your gun, because you don't hunt game with an automatic rifle. And no, taking away an automatic rifle isn't going to violate the constitution, which also had a rule about politicians enriching themselves in office, and that's largely ignored too. It's literally "a well armed militia," which means guns could be stored at a gun club in a community. When I was in England, the person I knew who had a gun, had to have a gun safe in his house to have the gun. It's not like you can't get a gun in England, it's just filled with safety precautions so this kind of shit doesn't happen. The hysteria around the idea of taking away all the guns is part of the sell of total freedom. But only an idiot thinks it's all or nothing, and falls for the gun lobby propaganda.
I believe bottom basement, government should work towards the preservation of life. Enriching life with generosity would come after that. So that's why they push that line there, because if the left is always trying to unbury us from the debt the right creates with their fiscal responsibility, and the million red herrings of culture wars.
How you string together all these issues is interesting to me. I might have a weak link in that I support the war in Ukraine in that you have to stop a land grab dictator, and if you'd just let him take the country that might save lives. I'm against the right who are against Ukraine because they like homophobic autocrats, and somehow flipped on Russia because they stopped being labeled communist--thought the problem with Russia and China isn't the left or right but the lack of democracy. There's a real problem with democracy in America too, so I have sympathy for isolationism and don't believe in American exceptionalism.
When Mike Pence made a joke about Buttigig having children and taking 2 months of maternity leave, Buttigig's response was to say he's just going to focus on what is important and his family. He recently had a medical scare and he really feels lucky to have his family, and while he can see how it's a political move to target him, he almost says you should bury your head in the sands, or rather your family, which I don't actually agree with, but he's talking coping skills for the slurs that regularly come his way, and I can't even know what that's like. He has often interesting tacs on his arguments, and he proves to be a human being even if his sexual orientation is something people imagine they have the right to object to.
To add to the twists in the tale, it was only the 5th female mass murderer in the USA (NYPost). She saw herself as a them/they. So the whole intolerance for others ways of being is dragged into, or more charitably perhaps, confusion about others ways of being. It's OK to be confused about transgender experience. I have no reference point for not wanting to be my sex, but I also don't perform gender well. I'm more for the erasure of gender mattering, though I suppose I also want to show acceptance of those who are strong on gender conformity, sex assigned or retrograde to that. I love it that they have a word for accepting the assigned gender, cis, or cisgendered: denoting or relating to a person whose gender identity corresponds with the sex registered for them at birth; not transgender. One of the reasons I'm not so freaked out by the situation is that I've worked with transgender people, got to ask my questions, reflected on it a lot. Perhaps that's not other's experience, they don't get to ask questions, they just see spin about it on the infotainment fake news channels.
The unifying ideology of the right is to cherish the right to harm others. They are against life, empathy, reason, democracy. Please don't vote for them.
Links to coverage of the latest massacre:
NY Times: Heavily Armed Assailant Kills Six at Christian School
NY Post: Hallie Scruggs, daughter of pastor, among victims in Nashville school shooting
Republican response: We're not going to fix it.
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