Bipartisan gag-fest week for Obama

And I mean "gag" both in the sense of "joke" and "about to throw up" senses.

All five living Presidents are getting together today to honor war criminal and torture perpetrator George W. Bush at the opening of his Presidential library. This is one of those occasions where the President's dual role as head of state and head of government present a dilemma. At least it should. I don't object to the former Presidents attending this event, one of which is his father.

But Obama's presence is another reminder of his shameful unwillingness to do his legal and moral duty to prosecute perpetrators of torture. The Cheney-Bush torture program was a real blow to the rule of law. And Obama's unwillingness to prosecute the torture perpetrators means that such abuses will continue. We saw just this month how many Republicans were eager to declare the one suspect in custody over the Boston Marathon bombing an "enemy combatant" so that he could be taken out of the normal legal system and tortured at will and imprisoned indefinitely without ever having charges brought against him. The Administration's decision not to do that was a good thing. But Obama's decision not to prosecute known torture perpetrators, including Bush and Dick Cheney, puts his own stamp of approval on their crimes.

Ordering torture and invading a country for no good reason should never have been treated like business-as-usual.

And this Saturday, we have the 2013 "Nerd Prom," aka, the White House Correspondents' Dinner. The Nerd Prom is the living annual celebration of the merger of governmental power, the Establishment press and Hollywood celebrity. You can see one of many examples of this in the advance coverage, this one from The Hollywood Reporter, White House Correspondents' Association Cracks Down on Oscar-Style Gift Lounge by Erin Carlson 04/23/2013.

Jerry Brown in his 2011 Inaugural Address as California Governor said (from the prepared text):

With so many people out of work and so many families losing their homes in foreclosure it is not surprising that voters tell us they are worried and believe that California is on the wrong track. Yet, in the face of huge budget deficits year after year and the worst credit rating among the 50 states, our two political parties can’t come close to agreeing on the right path forward. They remain in their respective comfort zones, rehearsing and rehashing old political positions.

Perhaps this is the reason why the public holds the state government in such low esteem. And that’s a profound problem, not just for those of us who are elected, but for our whole system of self-government. Without the trust of the people, politics degenerates into mere spectacle; and democracy declines, leaving demagoguery and cynicism to fill the void. [my emphasis]

The Nerd Prom is a grotesque manifestation of that very process where "politics degenerates into mere spectacle" and promotes conditions in which "democracy declines, leaving demagoguery and cynicism to fill the void."

The President is expected to play stand-up comedian, cracking jokes about issues of the day at the event. George W. Bush hit the record low point so far at the 2004 dinner when he joked about those missing "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq that he used to justify the war and which weren't there. Ha, ha, lots of dead people because of a cynical lie! The distinguished correspondents laughed right along with the joke.

This presentation of Obama's to a bunch of wealthy Democratic donors encapsulates so much of what is wrong with Obama's Presidency and Party leadership (Josh Lederman, Obama: Republican Outreach Will Continue Even If Democrats 'Think I'm A Sap' Huffington Post/AP 04/24/13):

About 60 donors paid between $10,000 to $32,000 per ticket, said a Democratic official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss party finances. Hosting the event was Naomi Aberly, a major Obama fundraiser and prominent supporter of Planned Parenthood who credited Obama for working to protect women's reproductive rights. Former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, who was Obama's first-term U.S trade representative, also attended.

"Occasionally I may make some of you angry, because I am going to reach out to Republicans. I am going to keep on doing it, even if some of you guys think I'm a sap," Obama said. "But what I also believe in is that when Democrats have the opportunity to set the agenda and we don't have a country where just a few are doing really, really well, we have a country where everybody has a chance to do well." [my emphasis]

This is the Democratic President once again bragging about how he's upsetting his own Party's voting base by things like his austerity economics including proposed cuts to benefits for Social Security and Medicare. So what are donors buying with those $32K donations? A Democratic President who is cautiously liberal on issues like same-sex marriage and immigration and conservative on economic policy issues. An advocate for the "left" version of what most of the world calls "neoliberalism," the deregulation/privatization/financialization/globalization/IMF/Washington Consensus. Mostly the same as conservatives on actual economic policy but with superficial modifications, coupled with a more tolerant attitude on social issues.

Colin Crouch points out that even within a relatively narrow consensus on issues of business regulation and the desirability of privatizing public services, "The realm of values is ... a fragmented and contested one, with few groups in a position to impose orthodoxy. This provides the opening for a large range of interests beyond those favoured by state, market or firm to gain access." (The Strange Non-Death of Neoliberalism, 2011, p. 151) Thus there is room to engage in substantive fights over an issue like birth control without endangering the larger deregulation/free-market consensus. However, the recent fight over gun regulations shows how economic interests, the firearms industry in this case, can win out over even a staggering 9-to-1 consensus in favor of a measure like the timid background checks bill the Senate stopped last week.

This clip of The Young Turks' Cenk Uygur from July of last year just after the Aurora mass murder is especially interesting to see in light of Obama's recent failure to get even the Senate to pass a mild background-check federal gun law, Michael Moore's Question For President Obama After Colorado Shooting The Young Turks YouTube date 07/26/2012:

I discussed Obama's Urban League speech dealing, the topic of that report, in a post at the time:

But I show that whole section of the speech above because it gives a good look at what is so disheartening about Obama for progressives. For one thing, Obama spent Friday through Tuesday as Pastor-in-Chief on the Aurora killings, the White House even saying that Obama would be concentrating on enforcing existing laws. Meanwhile, FOX News and Republican hate radio and the extremist gun lobbies have been saying since before Obama was inaugurated that Obama and the UN had a secret plan to confiscate everyone's huntin' rifles, and will keep saying it no matter what Obama proposes or does. ...

There's an argument to be made that the NRA's political clout is vastly over-rated among Democrats who use it as a reason not to advocate even very popular restrictions on automatic weapons and gun shows. But they're bitter opponents of Obama even though he hasn't pushed any kind of serious "gun control" legislation, and has clearly wanted to avoid even talking about it. Yet he's reluctant to use these issues to win votes of independents among whom they are popular and at the same time hasn't (so far as I can see) used the occasion of the Aurora mass gun murder to stigmatize the conspiracy theories that the Republicans and the gun lobby flog endlessly to use against him.

Obama is willing to defy an overwhelming consensus against cuts in benefits to Social Security and Medicare because there is big money to be made by private financial institutions by cutting or doing away with those programs - at a serious cost to public health and well-being. Leading that fight increases his prospects of big financial rewards at the end of his Presidential term. For similar reasons, he carefully avoided challenging the firearms industry lobby, the NRA, over an issue like gun regulation which is not only popular but in the interest of general public safety and even the War On Terror.

His switch after the Sandy Hook shooting may have been driven by his emotional response to the mass killing of children. But I'm sure he didn't ignore the political value of at least appearing to make a serious stand on a popular issue of which liberals are even more inclined to favor than the general public at a time when he was offering up benefit cuts in Social Security and Medicare.

But after four years of responding to mass-casualty events involving gun violence, even the attempted assassination of a Democratic Congresswoman, by evading the issue of gun regulation and by not even trying to tie extremist and hate-mongering rhetoric by Republican leaders and media outlets to the climate of violence, it's pretty clear he prefers to avoid this issue like the plague. He now has a talking point that he tried to get background checks passed and the Republicans blocked it. But I will be very much surprised if we see him seriously take on gun regulation against during his Presidency. Even though recent experience tells us that we can expect several more mass-casualty events involving guns and bombs over the remainder of his term. The firearms industry is making money on those semi-automatic assault weapons, so the Great God Free Market is happy.

Tags: aurora shooting, austerity economics, barack obama, grand bargain, gun control, medicare, social security

The new telenovela "Rostro de la Venganza" and the Aurora shooting

I don't know if the timing has anything to do with the Aurora shooting. But the Spanish-language channel Telemundo started on Monday (July 30) running a new mystery/suspense telenovela, El Rostro de la Venganza (The Face of Revenge), at 10:30 seemingly without their usual buildup. It looks like it was meant to replace Corazón Valiente, which is finishing up soon.

If the first two hours are any indication, the series is likely to deal with a number of issues related to the mass murders that the United States has in practice accepted as routine occurrences and the established rituals around them: bullying, domestic violence, bloodthirsty calls for revenge even from those who are unfamiliar with details of the crime, vigilante justice, charging children as adults for violent crimes, stigmatizing of ex-prisoners.

Telemundo is good about making their novela episodes easily accessible at their website the day after they have their first run. They have also placed the first halves of the first two episodes of Rostro on YouTube (both Spanish with no subtitles) but they want to send you to the Telemundo website for the second half. This is Part 1 of 2 from the first episode, "Volver a nacer":

It has as its main protagonist Diego Carrasco Mercader (Maritza Rodríguez), seen above with the Rubik's cube puzzle, was sent to prison for killing seven kids at his exclusive school at around age 8. ("El rostro de la venganza" se estrena el 30 de julio México Espectáculos 25.07.2012) As of the second episode, we've seen his flashbacks to a fire at the school and also video of him at the time with a gun at the school.

Known in the press as the Niño Monstruo (Boy Monster), in the first episode he is released from prison after 12 years. He lives under the name Martín Méndez and is struggling to adjust to life as a free adult in New York City. His psychiatrist, Antonia Villarroel, is helping him to adjust, supported by a wealthy businessman, Ezequiel Alvarado (Saúl Lisazo), though his reasons for helping are not yet clear. Ezequiel is engaged to a much younger Mariana San Lucas (Elizabeth Gutierrez), who is diddling Ezequiel's adult son Luciano. Ezequiel has taken the seemingly unlikely step of hiring Martín as Mariana's bodyguard, whose real role is to spy on her for Ezequiel, a fact of which both Mariana and Luciano are aware.

It turns out that a well-known TV newscaster is the sister of the one of the students killed, and she not only hates the Niño Monstruo, she wants him dead. I'm tempted to say that her journalistic investigation of him with the support of her station is a bit improbable, since she's obviously heavily personally invested in the case. But our mainstream media still considers Judith Miller a respected journalist, so I guess it's not that improbable at all. And the father of one of students killed is a powerful and shady character who Antonia calls a "mafioso".

There is actually a mystery about what happened in the case. Martín remembers the events only in fragmentary snatches. Only one student who was there at the school on the day of the deaths, Marcela Llanos (Yina Vélez), testified about the events at the time. The parents blocked the rest from testifying. Two of the students have since disappeared.

The actress who plays Martín's sister Diana Mercader (Cynthia Olavarría) has more than a passing resemblance to Law and Order SVU's Mariska Hargitay:

Although that didn't strike me before in seeing her as more of a comic-relief character who eventually turns out to be a borderline-personality whacko in the novela Alguien te mira (2010), which was also a mystery/suspense series.

Tags: alguien te mira, aurora shooting, rostro de la venganza

The Aurora shooting and possible roots of violence in the US

The problem of violence was one much discussed in the 1960s in the United States, often in connection with urban riots, rising violent crime, police brutality, violent police and vigilante actions in the South against civil rights protesters, political assassinations and a rise in militant groups advocating some form of violence or armed self-defense.

Historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., gave an address at Columbia University shortly after the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968. That was an eventful year at Columbia because of the now-legendary student strike and occupation there. It was also the year of urban riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.; if one wants to call those riots a kind of spontaneous uprising, it was the largest of its kind in American history. (The Confederate States of America represented the largest armed rebellion.) It was published in edited form under the title "Existential Politics and the Cult of Violence" in Sept 1968 Phi Delta Kappan.

The world today is asking a terrible question - a question which every citizen of this republic should be putting to himself: What sort of people are we, we Americans?

And the answer which much of the world is bound to return is that we are today the most frightening people on this planet.

We are a frightening people because for three years we have been devastating a small country on the other side of the world in a war which bears no rational relationship to our national security or our national interest.

Those paragraphs are the kind that conservative culture warriors like to call Blame American First talk. And the stigmatizing of such observations has been effective in discouraging many Democrats from pointing to ways in which America's actions as perceived by the rest of the world produce sometimes bad impressions and unpleasant consequences. After the 09/11/2001 terrorist attack, "Why do they hate us?" was a favorite question for many people. Conservatives only wanted to answer that "they hate us for our freedoms."

Popular or not, Schlesinger's advice is still worth remembering: "We can not take the easy course and blame everyone but ourselves for the things we do."

Since the 1968 Presidential campaign, though, Democrats came to consider it toxic for them to talk about any kind of larger sociological causes for any kind of violence. The United States began a long period of treating crime and violence in a "law and order" framework, eventually developing a practice Jonathan Simon describes as "governing through crime," i.e., using the fear of crime as a central organizing principle of daily governance. Simon at his blog (also called Governing Through Crime) posted on President Obama's speech in Aurora after the shootings there earlier this month, Full Force of our Justice System? 07/23/2012. He was struck by the sentences Obama used in a presentation that was otherwise in his Pastor-in-Chief mode, "In the end, after he has felt the full force of our justice system, what will be remembered are the good people who were impacted by this tragedy." Simon characterized that statement this way:

It is an unsettling reminder that even (or especially) at a time of unending national economic woes, retribution and especially capital punishment remain esssential [sic] to our national political culture (for why, see [Simon's book] Governing through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear). The President, after all, has nothing to say legally about what kind of punishment (full force, or otherwise), the killer (if that is who is in custody) will face. He does get to execute people by direct order through drone strikes, of course, as well as deport tens of thousands of others, some to death or worst; and make no mistake, this President has done so with relish and he wants you to know that. While he probably can't do either to James Holmes right now, nobody could miss the parallel with President W's promise to the 9/11 terrorist that they would "hear from you" soon. The President as vengeance-seeker. Why bother with a written Constitution, we should just rule by Icelandic Sagas.

Simon notes, obviously not in approval, that our Nobel Peace Prize President "has never missed an opportunity to dip his robes in the symbolic blood of capital punishment."

Schlesinger's speech in 1968 focused on his criticism of Frankfurt School philosopher Herbert Marcuse's social theory, and his essay Repressive Tolerance in particular. Maybe I'll deal with Schlesinger's comments on that in a later post. Here I'll just note that he shows a fundamental misunderstanding of Marcuse's viewpoint in calling it a kind of "existential politics" that "springs much more from Sorel than from Kierkegaard." Whatever existential elements may have been in Marcuse's politics, it didn't stem for Sorel or very much from Kierkegaard. Fourier and Hegel would have been closer to the mark.

But what is striking about Schlesinger's discussion of violence is that he straightforwardly names the Vietnam War as a likely source:

The causes of student insurgency vary from college to college, and from country to country. It would seem likely that the primary incitement in our own nation has been the war in Vietnam - a war which has tempted our government into its course of appalling and insensate destruction, a war which, through the draft, has demanded that young Americans kill and die where they can see no rational relationship between personal sacrifice and national interest. But the cause is also more than the Vietnam war. For that war has come for many to prefigure a larger incomprehensibility, a larger absurdity, even a larger wickedness, in our official society. For some it has come to seem, not an aberration, but the inevitable result of the irremediable corruption of the American system.

I cannot share the belief that there was something foreordained and ineluctable about the war in Vietnam - that the nature of American society would have compelled any set of men in Washington to pursue the same course of folly. This really seems determinist nonsense. [Schlesinger is referring there to some of the more simplistic theories of imperialism popular at the time.] One can still understand, though, why the contradictions of our society weigh so heavily on the young - the contradictions between the righteousness of a Secretary of State and the ruthlessness of a B-52; between the notion that violence is fine against simple folk ten thousand miles away and shocking against injustice in our own land; between the equality demanded by our constitutional structure and the equality denied by our social structure; even between the accepted habits of one generation and the emerging habits of the next, as when a parent tipsy on his fourth martini begins a tirade against marijuana. [my emphasis]

As advocates of domestic arms proliferation have been quick to point out since the mass gun murders in Aurora, violent crime has declined in the United States in recent years. Not having looked closely at the statistics lately, I would assume that the aging of the population has been a major factor. If there is any causal relationship between the proliferation of guns and the reduction in violent crime, I haven't seen it documented. There is a correlation, but there's also a correlation between the reduction of violent crime in the US and the growth of population in India. Correlation doesn't equal causation.

But there are violent crimes going on and enough mass murders that our political elites and mass media have essentially accepted them as routine parts of American life, more worthy of coverage than jaywalking or burglary, but not much worthy of special concern.

I've pretty much always been very skeptical about violence in movies, TV or even comic books somehow being a significant cause of real-life violence. (Schlesinger around that time was also pointing to such sources as likely causes.) People over the age of around six can tell the difference between stories and real life.

Military violence, and the mass reverence for it in American society, are very much real life. So is capital punishment. And the fact that it's now considered perfectly acceptable to fantasize out loud about slaughtering military foes, assassinating even American citizens from the air without an indictment much less a trial, and putting convicted criminals to death must be having some kind of real-world effect in changing standards toward violence.

Forensic psychologist Karen Franklin offered some very helpful reminders after the Aurora shooting about jumping to conclusions or looking for simple explanations for such events or easy solutions for the problem, Aurora massacre: To speak or not to speak? In The News 07/22/2012.

In the longer term, though, it's well worth considering what role the psychological militarization of American political discussion, and the long-term effects of the military preparedness rhetoric Cold War which has now morphed into the Long War has on incidents of violence and mass murder in the United States.

Tags: arthur schlesinger jr, aurora shooting, vietnam war

Cenk Uygur weighs in on Obama's Urban League speech on violence

Yesterday, I discussed Obama's Urban League speech dealing with urban violence and guns.

Cenk Uygur did a segment on the same topic, Michael Moore's Question For President Obama After Colorado Shooting The Young Turks YouTube date 07/26/2012:

Tags: aurora shooting, barack obama, gun control

Obama speaks on firearms restrictions

President Obama finally stepped out of his Pastor-in-Chief role over the Aurora shooting, in a speech to the National Urban League in New Orleans on Wednesday (Remarks by the President at the National Urban League Convention 07/25/2012).

He actually talked the problem of violence at some length, and I'm quoting that whole section here:

Now, I've got to say that I recognize we are in political season. But the Urban League understands that your mission transcends politics. Good jobs, quality schools, affordable health care, affordable housing -- these are all the pillars upon which communities are built. And yet, we've been reminded recently that all this matters little if these young people can't walk the streets of their neighborhood safely; if we can't send our kids to school without worrying they might get shot; if they can't go to the movies without fear of violence lurking in the shadows. (Applause.)

Our hearts break for the victims of the massacre in Aurora. (Applause.) We pray for those who were lost and we pray for those who loved them. We pray for those who are recovering with courage and with hope. And we also pray for those who succumb to the less-publicized acts of violence that plague our communities in so many cities across the country every single day. (Applause.) We can't forget about that.

Every day -- in fact, every day and a half, the number of young people we lose to violence is about the same as the number of people we lost in that movie theater. For every Columbine or Virginia Tech, there are dozens gunned down on the streets of Chicago and Atlanta, and here in New Orleans. For every Tucson or Aurora, there is daily heartbreak over young Americans shot in Milwaukee or Cleveland. Violence plagues the biggest cities, but it also plagues the smallest towns. It claims the lives of Americans of different ages and different races, and it’s tied together by the fact that these young people had dreams and had futures that were cut tragically short.

And when there is an extraordinarily heartbreaking tragedy like the one we saw, there's always an outcry immediately after for action. And there's talk of new reforms, and there's talk of new legislation. And too often, those efforts are defeated by politics and by lobbying and eventually by the pull of our collective attention elsewhere.

But what I said in the wake of Tucson was we were going to stay on this, persistently. So we’ve been able to take some actions on our own, recognizing that it’s not always easy to get things through Congress these days. The background checks conducted on those looking to purchase firearms are now more thorough and more complete. Instead of just throwing more money at the problem of violence, the federal government is now in the trenches with communities and schools and law enforcement and faith-based institutions, with outstanding mayors like Mayor Nutter and Mayor Landrieu -- recognizing that we are stronger when we work together.

So in cities like New Orleans, we’re partnering with local officials to reduce crime, using best practices. And in places like Boston and Chicago, we’ve been able to help connect more young people to summer jobs so that they spend less time on the streets. In cities like Detroit and Salinas, we’re helping communities set up youth prevention and intervention programs that steer young people away from a life of gang violence, and towards the safety and promise of a classroom.

But even though we’ve taken these actions, they’re not enough. Other steps to reduce violence have been met with opposition in Congress. This has been true for some time -- particularly when it touches on the issues of guns. And I, like most Americans, believe that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual the right to bear arms. And we recognize the traditions of gun ownership that passed on from generation to generation -– that hunting and shooting are part of a cherished national heritage.

But I also believe that a lot of gun owners would agree that AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers, not in the hands of criminals -- (applause) -- that they belong on the battlefield of war, not on the streets of our cities. I believe the majority of gun owners would agree that we should do everything possible to prevent criminals and fugitives from purchasing weapons; that we should check someone’s criminal record before they can check out a gun seller; that a mentally unbalanced individual should not be able to get his hands on a gun so easily. (Applause.) These steps shouldn't be controversial. They should be common sense.

So I’m going to continue to work with members of both parties, and with religious groups and with civic organizations, to arrive at a consensus around violence reduction -- not just of gun violence, but violence at every level, on every step, looking at everything we can do to reduce violence and keep our children safe -– from improving mental health services for troubled youth -- (applause) -- to instituting more effective community policing strategies. We should leave no stone unturned, and recognize that we have no greater mission as a country than keeping our young people safe. (Applause.)

And as we do so, as we convene these conversations, let’s be clear: Even as we debate government’s role, we have to understand that when a child opens fire on another child, there’s a hole in that child’s heart that government alone can't fill. (Applause.) It’s up to us, as parents and as neighbors and as teachers and as mentors, to make sure our young people don’t have that void inside them.

It's up to us to spend more time with them, to pay more attention to them, to show them more love so that they learn to love themselves -- (applause) -- so that they learn to love one another, so that they grow up knowing what it is to walk a mile in somebody else's shoes and to view the world through somebody else’s eyes. It's up to us to provide the path toward a life worth living; toward a future that holds greater possibility than taking offense because somebody stepped on your sneakers. [my emphasis]

The full paragraph I bolded above was the position Obama took in the 2008 campaign. Then as now, it made sense as policy and was popular. The phrase "gun control" may poll poorly, but the items he mentions in that paragraph are polled-tested, safe positions. Democratic critics had complained that he wasn't using the opportunity to state positions like this, so this has to count as a win for them. Here's Cenk Uygur reporting on Obama's previous positions on gun and ammunition regulations, Obama Used To Be A Vocal Advocate Of Gun Control The Young Turks YouTube date 07/24/2012:

But I show that whole section of the speech above because it gives a good look at what is so disheartening about Obama for progressives. For one thing, Obama spent Friday through Tuesday as Pastor-in-Chief on the Aurora killings, the White House even saying that Obama would be concentrating on enforcing existing laws. Meanwhile, FOX News and Republican hate radio and the extremist gun lobbies have been saying since before Obama was inaugurated that Obama and the UN had a secret plan to confiscate everyone's huntin' rifles, and will keep saying it no matter what Obama proposes or does. For instance, LaPierre's [sic] scares Congress with gun control conspiracy theories that work The War Room (current TV) YouTube date 07/25/2012:

There's an argument to be made that the NRA's political clout is vastly over-rated among Democrats who use it as a reason not to advocate even very popular restrictions on automatic weapons and gun shows. But they're bitter opponents of Obama even though he hasn't pushed any kind of serious "gun control" legislation, and has clearly wanted to avoid even talking about it. Yet he's reluctant to use these issues to win votes of independents among whom they are popular and at the same time hasn't (so far as I can see) used the occasion of the Aurora mass gun murder to stigmatize the conspiracy theories that the Republicans and the gun lobby flog endlessly to use against him.

Better late than never, but it would certainly have given those positions a much higher profile if he had stated them this past weekend when the Aurora shooting was the biggest news story nationally and drawing a lot of intense attention. I suspect his desire to pose as the postpartisan conciliator made it an almost unavoidable temptation to him to take the Pastor-in-Chief route.

The part about the efforts his Administration has made working with local officials to reduce everyday violence in cities is also good. I wonder why he hasn't been using in his statements since last Friday when the Aurora shooting happened.

But, unfortunately typical for Obama, he pepper-sprays his own message, right in the same speech, by framing the issue in conservative terms. Most notably in saying, "I, like most Americans, believe that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual the right to bear arms." That interpretation of the 2nd Amendment is actually an innovation of the Roberts Court during Obama's first run for the Presidency in 2008. As Adam Liptak reported for the New York Times in Justices Extend Firearm Rights in 5-to-4 Ruling 06/28/2010:

The Second Amendment’s guarantee of an individual right to bear arms applies to state and local gun control laws, the Supreme Court ruled Monday in a 5-to-4 decision.

The ruling came almost exactly two years after the court first ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own guns in District of Columbia v. Heller, another 5-to-4 decision. [my emphasis]

Antonin Scalia wrote the narrow majority opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), writing, "The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home." That despite the wording of the Amendment itself: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

It was a major act of conservative judicial activism, overturning a large body of judicial precedent saying that the 2nd Amendment applied only to state militias. Justice Stevens recounted some of that history in his dissent in the Heller case:

Whether [the 2nd Amendment] also protects the right to possess and use guns for nonmilitary purposes like hunting and personal self-defense is the question presented by this case. The text of the Amendment, its history, and our decision in United States v. Miller, 307 U. S. 174 (1939), provide a clear answer to that question.

The Second Amendment was adopted to protect the right of the people of each of the several States to maintain a well-regulated militia. It was a response to concerns raised during the ratification of the Constitution that the power of Congress to disarm the state militias and create a national standing army posed an intolerable threat to the sovereignty of the several States. Neither the text of the Amendment nor the arguments advanced by its proponents evidenced the slightest interest in limiting any legislature’s authority to regulate private civilian uses of firearms. Specifically, there is no indication that the Framers of the Amendment intended to enshrine the common-law right of self-defense in the Constitution.

Justice Breyer also dissented as follows:

The majority’s conclusion is wrong for two independent reasons. The first reason is that set forth by Justice Stevens—namely, that the Second Amendment protects militia-related, not self-defense-related, interests. These two interests are sometimes intertwined. To assure 18th-century citizens that they could keep arms for militia purposes would necessarily have allowed them to keep arms that they could have used for self-defense as well. But self-defense alone, detached from any militia-related objective, is not the Amendment’s concern.

The second independent reason is that the protection the Amendment provides is not absolute. The Amendment permits government to regulate the interests that it serves. Thus, irrespective of what those interests are—whether they do or do not include an independent interest in self-defense—the majority’s view cannot be correct unless it can show that the District's regulation is unreasonable or inappropriate in Second Amendment terms. This the majority cannot do.

Aziz Huq in Justice Scalia's Dueling Opinions American Prospect Online 06/30/2008 discussed at the time what a radical ruling that was.

Although it is the current controlling Supreme Court ruling, Obama's position, which he also expressed in his first Presidential campaign, backs the conservative NRA position and endorses one of the most blatant acts of conservative judicial activism we've seen.

I don't mind his several "we pray" references. That's an appropriate and conventional way for a President to convey his concern and to recognize that the victims and their families may take comfort from their religious faith after an event like the mass gun murder of last Friday.

And with the phrase, "Instead of just throwing more money at the problem of violence," Obama was repeating a long-standing favorite piece of conservative framing. The Democratic President needs to be making the case for positive government that can accomplish important and constructive things, and in part he is doing that in his campaign. So why pepper-spray that message with a hack conservative phrase about "throwing more money at the problem"?

And, inevitably, we get, "I’m going to continue to work with members of both parties." But which Republicans in Congress are willing to work with him on new laws to accomplish the goals he at least suggested he holds in that bolded paragraph, restricting the sale of automatic weapons and better background checks?

Tags: aurora+shooting, barack obama, gun control

Media and political ritual for dealing with recurrent mass gun murders getting nuttier

The media and political ritual for dealing with these recurrent mass gun murders is getting kind of nuts itself. CNN's Anderson Cooper just tweeted, "I have no intention of saying #AuroraShooting suspect's name tonight. Don't want to give him more attention than needed." (http://bit.ly/MDZznz) This follows President Obama's similar comment in his press conference Sunday.

The President actually should be cautious about naming criminal suspects in situations like this. And I appreciate the concern about giving shooters like James Holmes is charged with being excessive attention.

But good grief, if CNN is going to be covering the story, they're just not going to mention the suspect's name? What's next, a national policy of referring to victims of mass gun murder only as "Martyrs and Heroes"? Or referring to them as victims of "Unspeakable Evil" and not even mention it was bullets that killed and injured them?

Maybe we should just declare an Annual Day Of Patriotic Remembrance And Prayer For Those Killed In Mass Gun Murders By Unspeakable Evil During The Previous Year. The President could go to a church and read from the Bible and play Pastor-in-Chief. He could give out Heroes and Martyrs medals to the survivors. And we could all agree that it would be "uncivil" to mention the names or the killers - much less try to understand their motives and ideologies! - or to talk about any kind of public policy issue whatsoever that might reasonably mitigate their recurrence.

There would obviously be the requisite words of praise for emergency responders, but of course it would be impolite to remind people that most of them are the same public employees being trashed relentlessly by one of the two major parties.

Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks thinks we're approaching some kind of tipping point with gun violence. Not just with the routine mass gun murders, but with the kinds of legally allowed murders taking place under the Stand Your Ground/Kill A Black Guy laws in several states. At some point, he thinks, we're going to start having showdowns at the O.K. Corral, not just between drug gangs but between ordinary citizens who are carrying guns they are very well qualified to using starting to blast away at each other.

It could easily have happened in Aurora. Michael O'Hare writes in 100-Round Magazine and the Armed Citizen Ten Miles Square 07/23/2012:

Colorado is a concealed-carry state, but the movie theater didn’t allow customers to pack heat. What if it had? What happened is terrifying in itself, but if you really want to lie awake nights, imagine a dark, smoky, crowded theater filled with screaming people, Holmes firing away, plus a half-dozen or so armed citizens blazing away at "the guy with the gun", meaning, assuredly, each other in addition to the perp with the big advantage of body armor, black clothes, and that 100-round AR-15. This kind of peacemaking takes place backstopped by people (including people in the next theater behind a wall), and even your best-trained vigilante's aim is much impeded by smoke, darkness, noise, and being bumped into by the terrified guy next to you, not to mention being shot first by Holmes who might be especially hostile to someone pointing a gun at him. Bad as this was, not having amateurs mixing in spared us a much worse tragedy, in which Holmes might have taken a hit or two to the bulletproof vest before he walked out, but a lot more patrons would have left in body bags.

Here's Cenk from the Current TV The Young Turks show from the day of the shooting:

Cenk on #TheaterShooting: 'We're being massacred out here' by gun laws written by gun [sic] 07/20/2012:

From his online show, Batman Premiere Shooting - 12 Killed, 59 Wounded in Aurora, Colorado 07/20/2012:

Also from the online show, Congressman Blames Shootings On Attack on Religious Beliefs 07/20/2012:

Tags: aurora shooting, christian right

Obama continues to lead as Pastor-in-Chief on the Aurora shooting aftermath

The more President Obama plays Pastor-in-Chief over the Aurora shooting, the most discouraged and disgusted I get. The disgust is over realizing in a way that never struck me this way before that our press and political parties have developed a reliable ritual for dealing with this kind of recurring incident of mass gun killings. And not an especially constructive one.

President Obama made his own contribution to the genre in the way of the attempted assassination of Democratic Congresswoman Gaby Giffords in 2011. Obama declined to use the occasion this very political violent act to stigmatize the hysterical rightwing hatemongering now magnified far beyond the mail-order tracts and White Citizens Council meetings where they were found in Lee Harvey Oswald's day thanks to FOX News, Rush Limbaugh and the rest of rightwing hate radio. Lord knows he didn't use it to promote any kind of better control of weapons and ammunition clips suited only for mass killing of the sort done in wartime. Instead, he gave us treacly bromides about the general need for "civility", which mainly served Republicans and liberal concern trolls to wag their fingers at Democratic progressive who were pushing back against the radical agenda of the new Republican House majority.

Now he picks up that same theme, disdaining as a political leader to do more than issue the required praise for local officials and police. And he uses his Pastor-in-Chief act to avoid addressing any needed changes in public policy

President Obama Speaks After Visiting Aurora, Colorado Hospital YouTube date 07/23/2012; speech 07/22/2012:



Transcript at this link. What the Democratic President gives us in that speech is the following:

• Boilerplate praise of local officials
• Pastoral reassurances complete with quotes from the Bible that are fine for a minister performing a funeral but inappropriate for a public official in a secular Republic
• Expressions of contempt for the suspect in the shooting and a reassurance that he will feel "the full force of our justice system"
• A Reader's Digest-type story about the assistance a young woman in the theater gave to another young woman wounded in the neck

The story he tells about Allie and Stephanie is indeed moving. But the President uses it explicitly to say that in thinking about this incident we should spend "most of our time reflecting on young Americans like Allie and Stephanie." In other words, looking for inspirational tales of uplift instead of asking about public policy implications of this mass murder.

I don't want to detract from the ability of anyone who needs to take comfort from such presentations as the President's to do so. So if hearing any criticism of what he left out is going to be distressing, I suggest you skip the rest of this post.

If I were a Pod Pundit on TV, I would probably be saying that it will boost Obama's stature politically to give a press conference like this because it will show, like Bill Clinton, he can "feel your pain". Whether the specific effect of this incident Obama's words on it can be precisely measured by pollsters is doubtful. But Colorado is seen by the Presidential campaigns as an important swing state, if you'll forgive for mentioning a consideration that doesn't fit with the pious tone of the President's approach.

The President said of his talks with the families of the victims of this particular incident of mass gun killing, "My main task was to serve as the representative of the entire country and let them know that we are thinking about them at this moment and will continue to think about them each and every day."

Please. A large portion of the country is thinking about the victims only long enough to reflect that there's been another mass gun killing that provides them reassurance that anyone is free to acquire automatic weapons and 100-round clips to murder large numbers of people whenever the spirit of the NRA's imaginary version of the Second Amendment moves them to do so.

What we didn't hear from Obama in this presentation, and are unlikely to hear from him or his surrogates:

• Any hint that the hostility toward government services and the demonizing of public employees by Republicans and all too many Democrats is severely limiting the availability of even police services in many communities
• Any criticism of the easy and legal availability of automatic weapons and ammo clips with dozens of rounds that are only useful for mass gun killing
• Any pushback against the paranoid, lying claims by the arms lobby and their rightwing followers who parrot them for free that Obama and the UN are plotting to seize ever'body's huntin' rifles, a claim that not only promotes gun sales but encourages panic on the part of gun nuts of both the political and apolitical sorts
• Any serious discussion of the larger social context of violence like the neglect of mental health issues, although the President did call on us to reflect on what we can do to address the causes of violence while we mainly repeat inspiring stories about acts of courage and heroism

Obama's approach surely has to do in no small part with his passion, obsession even, with appearing as the postpartisan uniter who transcends politics. And playing Pastor-in-Chief in a situation like this gives him a chance to do just that, avoiding any policy proposals that would prompt the Republicans to accuse him of "playing politics". Of course, the Republicans will just invent their own excuses to do so. And the conspiracy theories will keep coming. Alex Jones, who has a lot of credibility on the chain-e-mail circuit that is still an important transmission belt for conservatives, is already saying that the Aurora shooting was a UN-Obamunist plot.

It's worth noting the closing of his presentation:

I don't know how many people at any age would have the presence of mind that Stephanie did, or the courage that Allie showed. And so, as tragic as the circumstances of what we've seen today are, as heartbreaking as it is for the families, it's worth us spending most of our time reflecting on young Americans like Allie and Stephanie, because they represent what's best in us, and they assure us that out of this darkness a brighter day is going to come.

To the entire community of Aurora, the country is thinking of you. I know that there's going to be a vigil and an opportunity for everybody to come together. And I hope that all those who are in attendance understand that the entire country will be there in prayer and reflection today.

So thank you. God bless you. God bless all who helped to respond to this tragedy. And I hope that over the next several days, next several weeks, and next several months, we all reflect on how we can do something about some of the senseless violence that ends up marring this country, but also reflect on all the wonderful people who make this the greatest country on Earth. [my emphasis]

If I have said this in some earlier post, I should have: if the US is greatest country on Earth, we don't need to have our public officials constantly saying so. The very fact that our public officials feel that it's politically necessary to incessantly repeat what is self-evidently an arrogant, nationalistic claim is itself enough to make you wonder how many voters really believe that. If they did, they wouldn't need the constant reassurance. Or maybe it's more our politicians expressing they own self-importance.

But what's striking to me is that Obama is describing the randomly-chosen victims of a mass gun murder in almost identical terms to the rhetorical idolatry for soldiers that has become standard for American politicians: "they represent what's best in us" (which is what our super-patriots constantly say about the armed services); "the country is thinking of you"; "it's worth us spending most of our time reflecting on young Americans like Allie and Stephanie"; "all the wonderful people who make this the greatest country on Earth." The White House is probably already booking Allie and Stephanie for a seat of honor next to the First Lady at next January's State of the Union address.

A grisly mass gun murder now counts for all intents and purposes as a patriotic event complete with victims to be mourned as heroes and models and expresses of all our nationalistic American exceptional wonderfulness. There's something really, really wrong with this picture.

Tags: aurora shooting, barack obama

Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, video essay on "Living Under the Gun"

Bill Moyers and Michael Winship write about the context of violence and the more than ample supply of easily-obtained weaponry in the US, Lamenting the Dead, Not the Laws Consortium News 07/21/2102:

So why do we always act so surprised? Violence is our alter ego, wired into our Stone Age brains, so intrinsic its toxic eruptions no longer shock, except momentarily when we hear of a mass shooting like this latest in Colorado. But this, too, will pass as the nation of the short attention span quickly finds the next thing to divert us from the hard realities of America in 2012.

We are a country which began with the forced subjugation into slavery of millions of Africans and the reliance on arms against Native Americans for its westward expansion. In truth, more settlers traveling the Oregon Trail died from accidental, self-inflicted gunshots wounds than Indian attacks – we were not only bloodthirsty but also inept.

Nonetheless, we have become so gun loving, so gun crazy, so blasé about home-grown violence that far more Americans have been casualties of domestic gunfire than have died in all our wars combined. In Arizona last year, just days after the Gabby Giffords shooting, sales of the weapon used in the slaughter – a 9 millimeter Glock semi-automatic pistol – doubled.

We are fooling ourselves. Fooling ourselves that the law could allow even an inflamed lunatic to easily acquire murderous weapons and not expect murderous consequences. Fooling ourselves that the Second Amendment's guarantee of a "well-regulated militia" be construed as a God-given right to purchase and own just about any weapon of destruction you like, a license for murder and mayhem. [my emphasis]

The essay is a transcript of Moyers' video presentation, Living Under the Gun 07/20/2012:

Tags: aurora shooting

Fundis respond to the Aurora shootings: lots of blame for Satan and demons

As anyone reading my previous post probably guessed, I'm fed with that schmuck Rick Warren. But seeing his tweet encouraging his fundamentalist followers to blame the Aurora shootings on that thar evolution teaching by them socialist public school teachers makes me realize how the assumption by both parties that the President should act as the national Pastor-in-Chief when one of these almost-routine mass shootings like Aurora occurs, and to avoid pointing to any useful public policies that might address this exceptional American habit of recurring mass shootings by an endless succession of supposed "lone wolf" perpetrators, leaves the field wide open for irresponsible religious figures like Warren to promote all kinds of bigoted and fanatical nonsense.

It's a continuation of the deadly dynamic we've seen in accelerated form since Bush v. Gore in which the Republicans push the range of acceptable policy opinion further and further toward the authoritarian right while the Democrats not only refuse to challenge them in many cases, but all too often embrace the authoritarian positions.

Since the President and Willard Romney on Friday effectively announced in their respective speeches that they had not intention of proposing any useful public policy changes to address mass shooting incidents and defined the event as purely an occasion for treacly piety on the part of public officials, the Republican right is rushing in as always to define the event to their liking.

In another response by a major fundamentalist religious figure, the "New Calvinist" Brother Al Mohler, the leading theologian of today's Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), gives us his take on The Dark Night in Denver – Groping for Answers Christian Post 07/21/2012. Not surprisingly, he blames Adam and Eve. And if you pushed him, he'd probably tell you in some mealy-mouthed way that it was especially Eve's fault.

I'm not sure what sense this makes in terms of Christian theology, though: "We cannot afford to be shocked when humans commit grotesque moral evil. It tells us the truth about unbridled human sin." Say what?

He includes some elementary sociology about how human institutions of various kinds place restraints on bad behavior. And he puts in a theocratic pitch: "At the foundation of these restraints is the fear of God, which, even in an increasingly secular society, still retains a more powerful force than is often acknowledged."

Since even our Presidential candidates fall all over themselves acknowledging the importance of God and can't seem to give a single speech with calling on God to bless their audience and America, it seems that the role of the Creator actually is "often acknowledged."

Bro. Al makes an attempt at talking about theodicy, the theological problem of the existence of evil: "We also know that he allows evil to exist, and human beings to commit moral atrocities. We cannot allow the sovereignty of God to be denied and evil allowed its independent existence." His formulation probably has something to do with internal SBC debates over Calvinism, but it's likely to leave most churchgoers thinking, "well, it's a mystery." I don't mean to belittle the problem of thodicy. On the contrary, it's an important issue for present-day religious faith.But Bro. Al's theological explanations typically make me just want to groan.

He goes on to explain that the solution has something to do with God being the Supreme Judo Champion.

The Aurora shootings are the kind of event that people look to their ministers for some direction on how they should understand it in the context of their religious faith. And also for some comfort for the fears such events arouse. I'm no fan of Bro. Al's, his treatment of it is along the lines of what most American ministers will be providing their congregations this weekend: pray for the victims, trust that God is present in the lives of the faithful. Presumably some ministers will encourage reflections on the causes of violence and how we can address them individually and collectively. Some of those suggestions will be more worthwhile than others.

Obviously, religious services in the immediate Aurora area are likely to address concerns related to the event in a more intensive way. There are at least 12 funerals that will need to be performed.

Then there will stupid and unhelpful responses like this (quoted from James Holmes Went to Church Weeks Before Colo. Shooting? by Lillian Kwon Christian Post 07/20/2012):

Ultimately, the suspect is culpable for his own decision but Stier wants to also point the finger at Satan.

"I'm just ticked at Satan," he said, noting that Christians should know that there is a spiritual realm and "it's real, it's powerful, it's pervasive, it's perverted, and it's malicious."

"Was he (Holmes) demon-possessed? Was he influenced? We don't know. We can't see into the spiritual realm. But I would say at the very minimum, Satan was whispering in his ear if not fully controlling his heart," said Stier.

Until the end of days when "all evil will be sucked up in this bottomless pit," Christians have a battle to fight, he stressed. And they need to fight with prayer and love.

Or ones like this (quoted from Colorado Shooting: Christians Point to the Reality of Evil by Lillian Kwon Christian Post 07/21/2012):

While police are still investigating the motive behind Friday's shooting at a theater in Aurora, Colo., some Christians are convinced of the real source: evil.

"What happened up in Aurora ... was the product of pure evil. It was the result of a depraved individual taking his free will to the extreme," said Jim Daly, president of Focus on the Family, in a statement Friday.

Of course, Jim Daly doesn't know jack about the motivations of the accused killer, or whether even whether it was the work of a single individual. But he has his boilerplate.

Tags: aurora shooting

When political leaders try to be ministers instead of political leaders, it lets nasty rightwing ministers like Rick Warren play (theocratic) politics

Dan Froomkin's description of President Obama's response to the attempted assassination of Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords last year provided a model for the pious but empty speech he gave on Friday on the Aurora shooting. His Republican challenger Willard "Mitt" Romney was even more pious and even more vapid. Froomkin ('Batman' Shooting: Gun Lobby Counts On Short Attention Span Huffington Post 07/20/2012)

President Barack Obama called for a national dialogue, but didn't lead one. Gun-control Democrats proposed banning high-capacity clips, like the ones Giffords' shooter used, but their bills went nowhere.

The gunman who opened fire in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater Friday morning, shooting 71 people and killing 12, is said to have been armed with two handguns, a shotgun and an assault-style rifle, some of which were presumably equipped with high-capacity clips. "There were many, many rounds fired," Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates said at a Friday press conference. "We know there were a lot of rounds fired very rapidly."

The message here should be clear, said Kristen Rand, legislative director for the Violence Policy Center, a group opposed to gun violence. "You put a military level of firepower in the hands of civilians, and this is the natural result," she said. "The lesson that other countries have learned is that you have to restrict access to these instruments that allow people to inflict so much injury and death so quickly."

Specifically, Rand said that "high-capacity magazines, whether they're in a pistol or an assault rifle, are the common thread in every major mass shooting in the U.S. going back to the early '80s."

But many politicians are responding to the shooting with pieties rather than policy proposals.

California Gov. Jerry Brown posted the following simple comment: "We mourn for the victims of the Aurora tragedy and send our deepest condolences to the families and communities affected."

That strikes me as the right tone for a public official outside of Colorado to take on the Aurora shootings. I wish both President Obama and Mitt Romney had been about as simple and brief instead of competing to be national Pastor-in-Chief over that mass murder. Romney out-pastored Obama in his speech, which isn't surprising since he was once a bishop in the Mormon Church.

Jerry was a Jesuite novitiate for four years and knows more about Christian theology than most professional theologians - and is as skilled as any politician I know in talking about religion and public policy - but he didn't feel the need to play minister on this. After all, that's what we have ministers and psychologists for. Public officials have commitments enough with their own jobs.

Meanwhile, Rick Warren, the smarmy megachurch minister who lots of Democrats somehow convinced themselves is some kind of loving-minded Christian minister with social concerns that are other than identical to those of the most callous, bigoted rightwingers used the Aurora shootings to demonstrate once again how little reason there is for anyone to think that, as James McGrath at Exploring Our Matrix explains: Blaming Evolution for Tragedy 07/21/2012; Why Rick Warren Is Wrong Several Times Over to Blame the Aurora Shooting on Evolution 07/21/2012.

He's referring to Warren's tweet of 07/21/2012

Other than having a more smarmy style, I don't see that his views are notably different from any illiterate fanatic street-preacher. And that's surely unfair to illiterate fanatical street fanatic preachers.

I don't think we need public officials to be our ministers when something like the Aurora killings happen. But I keep forgetting we live in the Postsanity Era. Both Obama and Willard Romney gave much better Christian ministerial comments than Rev. Warren.The Reverend used it as the opportunity to pimp for fourth-rate Christian homeschooling operations who teach that the Loch News monster proves dinosaurs were created six thousand years ago. The man is an embarrassment to every honest form of Christianity.

His defenders could fairly say that he didn't specifically mention the Aurora shootings in that tweet. But anyone who views him as a religious leaders whose opinions count for something to them and who went to his Twitter account that day would surely have understood his comment tweeted late Friday morning as referring to the headline event of the day. So far he hasn't bothered to even tweet that excuse, though he did post some whining about people criticizing him. But that kind of you're-one-what-am-I posturing is typical of Warren's kind of smarminess. The guy has made millions by selling books promoting himself as a benign spiritual leader. It was be silly in the extreme to think he didn't know how his tweet would be read by his fundamentalist followers.

The second of the McGrath pieces linked above discusses how Warren's comment shows how little Warren actually cares about the Christian Bible actually says.

Amy Sullivan, professional Democratic concern troll and enabler of Christian Right smears against Democrats, tweeted back with characteristic cluelessness:

Duh!

That reminds me of how the pioneering blogger Steve Gilliard used to characterize Amy Sullivan, as he did for instance in Code Words The News Blog 04/13/2005. He was less generous the previous year in Abortion is a right 12/15/2004, where he wrote of her position on abortion, "People like Amy Sullivan sell their soul one day at a time. By the time they finish, it's gone and they don't even notice. ... I'm sick of her fake piety and calls for religous conformity."

Even after that slimy Rick Warren punked him over Obama's and McCain's appearances in his megachurch in 2008, Obama still invited this nasty airhead to give a public prayer at his Presidential inauguration. That wasn't turning the other cheek. That was Obama pandering for no good reason to people who hate his guts and who intended to do everything they could do block the mandate on which he was elected.

Tags: aurora shooting, christian right, rick warren

Romney out-pastors President Obama talking about the Aurora shooting

Here's Willard Romney's pastoral comments on the Colorado mass murder, Romney Speaks On The Shooting In Aurora TPM 07/20/2012.

He obviously shares President Obama's notion that the President also needs to act as national Pastor-in-Chief.

I would say Willard out-pastors the President there. He even gets in some King James English, "blessed by God who comforteth us in all our tribulations," and "heavy laden". Willard used to be a Mormon bishop, so he's had a bit more practice at the pastoral gig than Obama has.

Willard also calls it "unspeakable tragedy". But it's neither unspeakable nor a tragedy in the direct sense of the word. It was a crime, a mass murder, and there is going to be a lot than can be said about it. It's just that neither Willard nor Obama is going to want to say much of what can be said about it.

And if it should turn out that a Muslim, an Arab or a Persian (Iranian) should be involved somehow, Willard and his supporters will have no end of things to speak about it.

Tags: aurora shooting, romney

Mass murder in Aurora, CO

As we all know, the Founders wrote the Second Amendment to guarantee the freedom of everyone to obey the voices in their heads telling them to git their handguns and automatic weapons and explosives and go down and murder people at the movie theater. And ole Rush has done told us that this here Batman movie is one of them thar democrat-commie-kenyan-muslimist movies anyhow.

But part of the American post-mass-murder ritual involves talk show hosts and their callers saying in a tone suggesting they are the first ones who ever thought of it that if everyone else at the scene of the murder had been carrying their own loaded weapons, they could have taken care of it right away. I'm trying to picture how that would have worked in Aurora, if 10 or 20 other moviegoers had whipped out their handguns and sawed-off shotguns and started blasting away in a dark crowded theater full of panicky people running for the exit.

Ryan Parker et al in 12 killed, dozens wounded at Aurora movie theater Denver Post 07/20/2012 report on the shooting.

Charlie Pierce (The Aurora Shooting Esquire Politics Blog 07/20/2012) initially suggested that everyone should show a little restraint in reacting to the Aurora shooting: "I would like to recommend that, when an event like what happened in Aurora occurs, we all give ourselves a decent interval before wedging the bloodshed into the stifling cliches that pass for our current political dialogue."

But less than an hour later (The President Speaks Out), he recognized that it was hopeless. He links to a story that was one of the news items that made him realize his wish of a few minutes earlier was not going to be fulfilled: Tea Party Congressman [Lou Gohmert] Links Colorado Shooting To Attacks On Christianity Think Progress 07/20/2012.

Pierce also approved of President Obama's comments on the event After Shooting, Obama Calls for 'Day for Prayer and Reflection' PBS Newshour 07/20/2012:





Pierce comments on Obama's speech, "If Louie Gohmert wants to know how to talk about Christianity on a day like this, that's the way to do it."

I share Pierce's frustration that he expressed in the first post. He put it more eloquently than I did in the first two paragraphs above. But I was getting at the same thing, that public and punditocracy reactions to these mass murder events have fallen into a tiresome pattern that discouraging to see every time it plays out.

But it's not a matter of both-sides-do-it. Yes, advocates of gun control point out the obvious problems of the country being overflowing with small arms and ammunition. But, as is so often the case with those advocating pragmatic solutions to real problems, their appeals lack the tribal identification pull and melodrama of the gun nuts talking about how their cold dead fingers will hold on to their huntin' rifles. And our mass media culture has become too frivolous to frame the issue of gun violence in a way that allows for sensible reporting and discussion.

And while Pierce is right about Obama's comment being "how to talk about Christianity on a day like this", I actually don't feel entirely comfortable with the President talking about it like this. The President is head of a secular state and a secular government. He's not our Pastor-in-Chief.

All societies recognize that war against foreign enemies is a different matter than random murder, this particular not-out-Pastor-in-Chief says, "But while we will never know fully what causes somebody to take the life of another," yet staunchly defends his unprecedented claim to designate individuals, including American citizens never even indicted for a crime, for assassination by drone based on his Executive decision alone with no judicial process. Without even any official post-assassination explanation or, for that matter, any official acknowledgement of the assassination program itself even though the White House leaks information on it to show what a tough enemy of terrorism Obama is.

In his own way, Obama is preemptively framing the issue just like Michelle Malkin and the rest of the FOX brigade. Obama's framing may be more humane. But he also is discussing the Aurora shooting as though it were one of the tragedies of fate: "we may never understand what leads anybody to terrorize their fellow human beings like this. Such violence, such evil is senseless." This press release on the speech on the White House website is even called The Tragedy in Colorado.

But we don't yet what motivated the shooter(s) in Aurora. He may be nuts, he may have been out to shoot a former girlfriend who was at the movie with her new honey, he may have been a religious fanatic who heard that gays were going to be there, he may have been part of some terrorist group who wanted to commit an act of terror. But Obama - like the far right - wants to dismiss any kind of possible religious or political motive as quickly as possible. If it were to turn out there was a Muslim involved in the attack, I'm sure we'll hear something different from the President and from FOX News.

Tags: aurora shooting, barack obama