The Sheep and the Wolves
“If American conscience were only half alive, if the American church and clergy were only half christianized, if American moral sensibility were not hardened by persistent infliction of outrage and crime against colored people…” Frederick Douglass, 1892 letter to Ida B. Wells
Every Republican who has supported the NRA’s steadfast, decades-long opposition to sensible firearm legislation has blood on his or her hands. Every Republican who has perverted the meaning of the Second Amendment in order to score political points also has blood on his or her hands. Gun makers who reflexively claim that guns don’t kill are up to their elbows in the blood of innocent people, the blood of women, children. When it comes to guns, America is an uncivilized madhouse. As a society, we agree that people must obtain a license to operate a motor vehicle, but when it comes to lethal, portable firearms, we require nothing at all. Semi-automatic pistols, military-style assault rifles, open carry laws, all of it, utter madness. Because of words written by mortal men in the 18th century we must protect the freedom to murder. Is no evolution possible? We tolerate one mass shooting after another and soon forget them. Columbine. Sandy Hook. Las Vegas. Mother Emanuel Church. El Paso. Atlanta. Buffalo. Over and over, rinse and repeat, thoughts and prayers, hand-wringing and solemn speeches, tears and sidewalk memorials.
Where will the next one happen, how many will perish, and will it also be racially motivated? America is sliding toward the trip wire.
Smug and self-satisfied charlatans like Tucker Carlson make bank spouting outrageous racist theories on right-wing propaganda networks. They cower behind faux patriotism and the Christian cross, and when their words inspire others to kill, shrug their shoulders and disavow responsibility. God, guns, and racism are part of America’s DNA. Violent abroad, violent at home, a nation that anchors in a cove of blood. We are ill to the marrow of our collective bones, ill in spirit. How many more heavily-armed and mentally poisoned young men are out there, staring at their screens, reading racist tracts and fantasizing about saving the white race from inferior black and brown folk?
We choke on our national mythologies, Fourth of July fables, all men are created equal, and all are equal before the law. Upon cursory inspection the myth collapses, like a sandcastle at high tide. Many are above the law, immune to the law, shielded from the law; wealthy and politically-connected men like Trump and Mark Meadows and Kevin McCarthy and Jeffrey Epstein and Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. That the law applies to all equally is one of the great American Shams. How many times do the same men (and it’s usually men) who write and administer the laws break or circumvent the very same? The real American crime wave doesn’t happen in the streets, it takes place in corporate boardrooms and the halls of Congress, in the White House. Is it any wonder the general public has no faith in our institutions? How can it be otherwise? The endless drip, drip, drip of inaction, posturing, empty promises, pandering and gaslighting gives the public no other choice.
Many decades ago an African-American woman named Nellie Burroughs, fed up with the Christian church because of its support of segregation and lynching, referred to America as “the most lawless and desperately wicked nation on the globe.”
