esmense's Open Salon Blog

Gun Play

Wed, 2 May 2012 14:05:06 -0400

I'm a pretty conventional woman in her early 60s who, although I’ve spent my adult life mostly in cities – LA, San Francisco, Seattle, New York and, in the mid-70s, Tucson, Arizona -- has never been the victim of a violent crime.

And yet, my life, including a childhood spent in rural and small town places, has been touched by an awful lot of gun violence:

· The first funeral I ever attended, as a 12 year old child, was for a family friend, barely 6 years older, who had been killed accidently by a stray bullet when she entered her backyard to tell her recently-wed husband, who was practicing for a competitive "quick draw" event, that dinner was ready.

· Three other childhood friends suffered gun injuries of various levels of seriousness, two self-inflicted.

· As an adult I’ve worked with two co-workers who, non-lethally, shot themselves while playing with their guns.

· A casual social acquaintance in Tucson, who dealt guns as a sideline, accidentally killed a customer. It was late at night and much drinking was indulged in by both the victim and the shooter.

· A professional colleague in San Francisco and a very close friend from college committed suicide by gun.

· When I was a newlywed during a summer when my husband served as a seasonal ranger in one of our western National Parks, I endured the agony of waiting for the outcome of a many hours long standoff, in a nearly fully occupied but remote campsite, approachable only by boat and helicopter, between park personnel and a sniper intent on killing as many others as he could before killing himself. (Fortunately, he was the only one who died that day, by his own hand.)

· 3 years ago my sister in law, a nurse, working that evening in the emergency room of a hospital in a small Montana town, and her husband who had stopped off at the hospital briefly to bring her a Diet Pepsi, were seriously injured by sniper fire when they went to the aid of a fallen hospital EMT volunteer – dead as it turned out -- in the parking lot. The EMT was a mother of four. The shooter, a "loner" with no connection to any of the victims or to the hospital itself, was later shot, after an hours-long manhunt, by authorities. No motive for why he chose to lie in wait to pick off victims in the hospital’s parking lot will ever be known, other than perhaps, in such a small community, the hospital made for the largest, most accessible location for him to play out his paranoid stand against authority.

These kinds of gun deaths and injuries happen every day in America, without ever making the national news -- or the news at all. And they happen, in persistently large numbers, for one rarely admitted reason; as a culture, we refuse to take guns seriously.

Other countries have high rates of gun ownership without our high rates of gun violence, accidents and deaths. Why? Perhaps it’s because they enjoy cultures that still take firearms seriously as hunting tools and deadly weapons, while in the US, guns are, more than we admit, considered "recreational." Not simply recreational in their use, but fantasy objects, and affirmations, of potency and “lifestyle.” And, of course, because guns have been aggressively marketed as such (including powerful, deadly weapons of war) in the US since at least the Civil War.

A culture that doesn't have a useful, practical attitude toward guns will never have a useful, practical attitude toward gun safety and law. What has recently become frighteningly clear is this; as our personal lack of seriousness about guns increases, so does our lack of legal seriousness; leading to dangerous, fantasy-based, legislation like “Stand Your Ground.”

American’s “recreational” gun use doesn’t include much hunting. The number of Americans who own guns has grown briskly, and the demand for bigger, “badder” guns has grown right along with it, while, over the last couple of centuries, and even more so over the last 50 years, the number of Americans who hunt has continued to decrease dramatically. Gun ownership also continues to grow despite the fact that Americans are more and more likely to live in well-policed, urbanized environments in which the rates of violent crime are decreasing.

The explosion in “Stand Your Ground” legislation, demands for “open carry” and for the right to carry guns in increasingly inappropriate places – church, bars, public parks and playgrounds -- like the explosion in gun ownership, isn’t a response to crime. It’s a response to fantasies about the potency of guns – and, in large part, to intentionally created fantasy paranoia, political and personal, encouraged by a gun lobby that has absolutely no practical, financial interest in public safety. Quite the opposite, in fact.

There is no practical reason for a person with the easy access to law enforcement protections that were apparently available to George Zimmerman, for instance, to prowl his neighborhood armed. Nor is there any responsible reason, other than recreational play or mass murder, for most purchases of the kind of weapons used by the perpetrators in mass shootings at Ft. Hood, Virginia Tech, a political rally in Tucson, among many other tragedies endured in the last few decades. The only “serious” use of these weapons is dealing as much death as possible in as short a time as possible.

Unfortunately for the victims of those shootings – and the increasing number of victims of irresponsible Stand Your Ground legislation that played a part in the death of Trayvon Martin and others, the gun industry can’t easily and conveniently serve its merely playful customers without easily and conveniently serving its murderous, and dangerously foolish, ones too.

Personally, I’m tired of arguments for ever-more-irresponsible gun legislation made in the name of “responsible” gun owners. I actually know a few “responsible” gun owners. Responsible gun owners don’t strap on weapons to bully other participants at political rallies and in other public places, they don’t sue, as some fool did here in Seattle a couple of years ago, to carry at the kiddies’ pool, and they don’t act out fantasies of an authority they don’t actually possess in armed pursuit of unarmed teenagers. In other words they don’t allow paranoia and fantasy to overcome common sense – nor do they insist on supporting laws that throw common sense to the winds.

Responsible societies, and citizens, don’t argue for protection of the kind of deeply foolish and dangerous behavior increasingly promoted by the NRA.

That widely distributed picture of Jeb Bush, a smart man, with a hot pink suited and motherly looking NRA representative beside him, stupidly signing the state’s “Stand Your Ground” law (while grinning as inanely as if he has just signed off on candy and Xboxes for all of Florida’s children) should be deeply embarrassing, not only to him -- but to every American with a lick of common sense, gun owner or not.

It’s time to be a lot more honest about the real reasons we haven’t, and perhaps never will, adopted effective, practical firearm and public safety policies in this country – why increasingly we seem less concerned with keeping the general public safe from mass murderers, and our neighborhoods safe from fantasy-addled vigilantes, than we are with keeping even the most lethal weapons safe for extremists and nut cases. Those reasons have nothing to do with the melodramatic constitutional arguments put forward by the gun industry and swallowed hook, line and sinker by its clientele. Those arguments are marketing strategies at heart -- aimed at stroking the egos, flattering the self-importance, and inflaming the paranoia of potential customers. Ginned up by an industry that has long known that in an increasingly well-policed, urbanized society selling guns based on genuine consumer need for weapons and hunting tools can never provide the sales volume they can enjoy by marketing them as status-conferring, ego-stroking, endlessly collectable, recreational and “life-style” toys.

We don’t have to give up our gun rights. But we do have to stop accommodating the greed of the gun manufacturers, and the fantasies of fools.

The Radical Elite

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 10:04:36 -0400

"The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition." Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, in The Washington Post, April 27th

When the always-on-top-of-the-most-conventional-and-conservative-wisdom Washington Post begins to take notice of the Republican Party's radicalism, you know it's become radical indeed. But, it is important, I think, to point out that this is a radicalism embraced by a significant portion of the nation's elite and those in the affluent and often educated classes who see their interests most closely aligned with that elite.

The Tea Party isn't a pack of working class yahoos. Tea Partiers are, in general, more educated and affluent, not less so, than the general population. And the embrace of romance novelist Ayn Rand's loony ideas isn't thriving among the poor and downtrodden -- those ideas hold their greatest appeal to our affluent and elite financial classes, and wield the greatest influence among members of that class who have served in, and are served by, our government.

Today's yahoos most often have a college education, a good job in an industry that is heavily supported by government spending, and the kind of retirement package that for most other Americans is just a curious relic of someone else's past.

Is this "radicalism" often cynical and self-serving on the part of our elites -- and has the corporate and business world increasingly come to believe that what you say is judged by how it sells, not how closely it aligns with the truth or how absurdly it wanders into fantasy? Yes. But it is a mistake to think cynicism is the only, or even most important, explanation.

The older, whiter, more male and more affluent base of the party doesn't embrace these ideas just out of cynicism and self-interest -- it embraces them out of a self-interested cluelessness based in limited, privileged experience; an inability to see, understand and accept the economic change, and social, economic and other poor consequences of that change that have taken place over the last 30-50 years. Changes encouraged by policies they have supported; policies that have benefitted the eldest and most elite while often causing harm to other Americans, most especially younger Americans.

The older, whiter, more affluent Americans who support the Republican Party are drawn from the most privileged generations in the history of the world. Generations that during their own youth, especially if they were white and male, were the recipients of the greatest public investment in their economic future of any generations in history.

These were generations in which even unionized, working class parents could afford to send their children to college, secure their own retirement and acquire valuable assets for those children to inherit, generations in which the very bright sons of unionized postmen and plumbers were being given access to the most elite colleges and invited into the elite financial world, generations that now see themselves as "meritocrats" while systematically working to undermine the conditions and structures that made their "meritocratic" rise possible.

In other words, these radicals are often the most privileged, the most spoiled, people in the nation.

Everyone, left, right and center, defends their self-interest in the political arena. There is nothing wrong with that, as long as we understand those interests in the context of competing interests and the greater good. In fact, if we don't understand our own self interest we are unlikely to understand, and respect, those interests that conflict with ours -- and we have no grounds for compromise.

But, the radicalism of the Republican Party reflects the limited and increasingly fantastical views of a uniquely privileged group of Americans who recognize no interests but their own, and who's interests, and understanding, have become increasingly detached from the better interests, and experienced realities, of the nation as a whole.

Romney's Glib Economic Advice

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 17:04:41 -0400

“Take a shot, go for it. Take a risk, get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business,” Mitt Romney to students at Otterbein University in Ohio.

As Romney suggests, many entrepreneurs can and have borrowed from family. Some can even, like Mitt himself, start what he has called a “small business” with millions, perhaps billions, of other people’s capital. But, the presumption that most bright, creative and ambitious people out there today have those kinds of resources, and the failure to recognize and acknowledge the difficult, often near heroic, feats of patience, persistence, flexibility and creativity -- of those who don't, is a problem in a man who is seeking to lead the nation with the claim that economic competency is his main qualification for doing so. It also appears to be a presumption many of our media elites, those who have criticized criticism of Romney’s statement, apparently share.

I own a small business with my husband -- totally self-financed by savings and sacrifices and, among other things, going without health insurance for the first several years. We have a small staff that's been with us for a long time, but over the years we have also used seasonal and part time help, mostly college students, mostly community college students hoping to go on to a four year college, and trade school students, from poor and working class families. We offer higher than average wages and the kind of flexibility in terms of hours that big box stores and others retailers – that provide the jobs most commonly available to young people -- no longer are willing to provide.

Over the last 20 years, that’s provided us with an opportunity to see the ever more difficult obstacles facing often extremely bright, creative and ambitious kids from much less than affluent backgrounds, and, in some cases, watch the long but persistent struggle they must wage to get an education, gain skills and climb the economic ladder. Obviously, none of these employees’ parents could pay for their education much less help launch them in business. In fact, more than one of our employees over the years has been working to pay for their education, support themselves, and send money home to family members who had become seriously ill or were disabled. More than one had more than one job -- working a fulltime job, plus, working part time with us, while also attending school.

One young man, who set up our initial website 15 or 16 years ago, and over the years has become a friend, was basically homeless when he started working for us -- couch surfing with friends, catching classes at local community colleges when he could afford to. He was the late-in-life youngest son of a father who in the ‘70s and ‘80s had had a successful career in high tech. Like many others he lost his job in the recession of the late 80s and, as happens commonly to men in technical fields who find themselves unemployed in their 50s and beyond, was never able to work at that level again. In fact, in the ‘90s he experienced long periods of unemployment. By the time our employee was college age his parents’ dire financial straits had torn the family apart. At one point though, after this young man had worked with us for a couple of years, his Dad landed a job and his circumstances improved enough to offer his son a place to live and a chance to attend school full time. That lasted less than a year before his father was laid off again; our now former employee had to go back to work fulltime to help pay the rent -- for his father. Eventually, over several years and with thousands of dollars of debt, he earned a degree online. During that time, he spent years doing low paying service jobs and, as he gained education, contract tech work. Finally, with expensive online degree in hand and years of good, although insecure and inadequately paid, experience under his belt, he landed a great job with a fast growing company in a cutting edge field and is rising rapidly through the ranks. He's now taking advantage of Stanford's free online classes both to expand his skills and just for the pleasure of experiencing education at a level he never before could afford to access.

In the context of the struggle of young people like these, Mr. Romney's remark comes across as flip and clueless.

For young people working to rise into the middle class, much less into real affluence and ownership, this economy is full of pitfalls and traps. And those who do make it pay a high price -- in debt, in years of health and income insecurity, in lesser time and resources to prepare for retirement, start a family, gain personal assets.

The fact is, young people trying to escape poverty, and, increasingly, for many sons and daughters of the middle class too, especially in an economy that has destroyed or devalued so many of the sources of middle class security (secure employment, housing values, pensions, savings and investments) do not have family resources, not even meager ones, to rely on as they plan and work for their future. For them, low interest college loans, generous grant programs, more affordable and accessible public colleges and universities, higher entry level wages, more work flexibility, more affordable health insurance and health care, are what is needed -- along with political acknowledgment of their own existence and value.

But today all of those things are either under attack by Romney and his party, or, non-existent.

A postscript: For the first few years of our business my husband and I could not afford the high premiums for individual health insurance. At one point we were paying off a supplier who had offered us an opportunity to buy him out -- it was a good opportunity, but making those payments meant another 6 months to a year without health insurance. During that time my husband developed a small lump on his neck. We tried to tell ourselves it was just a cyst, but at heart we both knew it was something more serious -- yet, my husband was afraid to go to the doctor and be diagnosed with a "pre-existing condition" that would be a reason for denying coverage. As soon as we had discharged our debt to the former supplier, we started paying premiums for insurance. My husband was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Thankfully, thyroid cancer is a slow growing cancer. After a delicate, 7-hour surgery, he was fine.

If Romney was a little more familiar with this kind of reality, and these sorts of “risks,” he wouldn't speak so glibly about what it takes to start a business, especially for those not born in circumstances like his.

In the race for attention, Breitbart chose to go nuclear

Thu, 1 Mar 2012 13:03:07 -0500

In the arms race of outrage required to gain attention and be successful in the modern arena of political commentary, Breitbart time and time again chose the nuclear option.

Today my sympathy is for his family -- but, in fact, I always felt sad for him. He was so painful to watch -- his rage so extreme and his sputtering hatred of others, whether forced or real, was so over-the-top that he was obviously harming himself, as well as the public discourse. Perhaps the most respectful way anyone, of any political ideology, can meet his passing is to honestly acknowledge how destructive the personal animosity, ginned up outrage, and full throated desire to destroy others that dominates our politics is -- to ourselves as well as others we count as enemies -- and stop feeding it with our attention, and rewarding it with wealth.

Santorum demonstrates the bigotry JFK spoke against

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 10:02:20 -0500

"If this election is decided on the basis that 40 million Americans lost their chance of being president on the day they were baptized, then it is the whole nation that will be the loser." JFK

When John F. Kennedy spoke those words in the last century could he have imagined that in the next it would be a Catholic slandering a political opponent with the ugly assertion that he embraced a "phony theology?" Or arguing for a new test for the presidency; the abandonment of our greatest protection of religious liberty, the separation of church and state?

In 1960, when JFK made that speech defending the right of people of ALL faiths to participate in our democracy and asserting the responsibility of office holders to serve constituents equally, regardless of their differing religious views, anti-Catholic bigotry was still very alive and well and pretty mainstream.

Just 5 years before Kennedy's speech, my own family had experienced the hatred embodied and the threat implied in that bigotry; our home had been surrounded by an armed mob of men, openly brandishing their weapons, shining the harsh headlights of their cars and pickups into the windows of our bedrooms and livingroom, while my father, silently, for what seemed to 7 year old me, endless terrifying hours, paced the hallway with a rifle of his own. We had just arrived in the little Georgia town where this took place a few days before. The inspiration for this "visit" was my mother's innocent inquiry at the post office earlier that day, "Where is the nearest Catholic church?"

30 years before that incident, my Mother, at much the same age, had experienced cross burnings and intimidating shows of force by hooded strangers in the immigrant, mostly Catholic, neighborhood, in the small town on the banks of the Delaware river where she grew up.

The irony is this; Santorum, in his intolerance, in his refusal to recognize the breadth and depth and diversity of belief (and non-belief) that is our religious heritage, his insistence not just that his faith inform him and his actions in the public square, but, that it also inform all the rest of us, even under duress, is living up to the worse fears, the worse calumnies, the worse stereotypes, those bigots believed and asserted about Catholics a half century ago.

As someone raised in both a deeply religious and an exuberantly political Catholic family, by people who valued faith and democracy and freedom -- and saw no conflict between them -- I am deeply ashamed of Santorum. He is turning public perception of American Catholics into something no better than those bullying men with their guns.