So much mass death: The insurgency we refuse to see
By: John Stoehr (Raw Story - Celebrating Years of Independent Journalism)
I dont agree with every word of this article, but I think it is on the right track.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
There was another mass shooting last night, this one in a Chesapeake Bay-area Walmart. Using a pistol, the gunman shot dead six people, wounded five more, then killed himself. Police say the suspect was an employee at the store. They say the shooting began in a break room.
We don't know the shooter's identity yet, but we do know last night marked the seventh mass shooting in seven days, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit group that tracks and makes available information on gun-related violence. Investigators are still determining a motive for the violence. Honestly, it doesn't matter.
The gunman's motive doesn't matter because whatever it is in detail, the urge to murder expressed itself from inside a political context that's already highly tolerant of spectacular rates of political violence. The Gun Violence Archive reports an estimated 600 gun-related incidents of mass death so far this year. That's nearly two daily.
Whether, over 20 years, the bodies piled skyward came from criminals shattering the peace or from police officers "keeping the peace" - one way or another, it's political violence. No matter the Walmart shooter's goals, his actions are political violence, too.
Yet we pretend it isn't.
Why?
"Commonsense" is senseless
In any other time and place, in any other part of the world, seven mass shootings in seven days, nearly two every day of the current year, would not be called "senseless," "insane" and "barbaric." Why?
Because in any other time and place, in any other part of the world, seven mass shootings in seven days, nearly two every day of the current year, would be seen as acts of political violence demanding a political solution. We don't do that, though. We say it's "senseless."
We say the solution is "commonsense."
No, "commonsense" is senseless.
Because political violence is never senseless! It has an objective! If we stopped denying what's in front of our eyes for a moment, we'd see why there's so much mass death in such short periods of time.
This is an insurgency.
Rule of law as the enemy
One way or the other, mass death is a consequence of liberal democracy head-banging with the hierarchies of white power that have constituted the political order of America since the start.
Democratic politics, which never stops pressing forward, triggers a reaction from the status quo, which never stops defending itself. One kind of politics irritates another kind. Occasionally, they collide. Political violence is the outcome. Mass death is one variety of it.
Precisely, the Republicans favored democratic politics as long as democratic politics was in line with "the natural order of things." Then democratic politics produced a Black president. That was it.
Not only has the GOP retreated since then from democratic norms and democratic institutions. They have retreated from the rule of law. They permitted guns to deluge communities. The sheer volume empowered white men to take the law into their own hands. Equal treatment under law was no longer an ideal. It was the enemy.
Soft targets
Since 2008, but especially since 2012 (with Barack Obama's reelection), the paramilitary wing of the Republican Party has continued to grow, as has the political culture around it that allows men of any color to solve their personal problems with a gun.
No matter the shooter's identity, his actions are political violence arising from a political context in which people seek political goals. The main one is weakening the perceived grip liberal democracy has on the United States for the purpose of "taking their country back."
This paramilitary insurgency - which, by the way, operates inside and outside the ranks of law enforcement; which, by the way, includes freelancers unrelated to the GOP - cannot succeed, ie, would fail fantastically, if viewed as an armed internal threat.
In that case, GOP guerrillas would risk open warfare with the government, a confrontation they'd lose and never recover from.
So these partizans hit soft targets - schools, churches, nightclubs, Walmarts - anything that can't fight back. They foment anarchy. Spread chaos. Create an air of insanity. Such is the status quo upheld by establishing an atmosphere of fear that's designed to prevent reformers from using democratic politics to reform the status quo.
The problem is obvious
As I said, in any other time and place, in any other part of the world, the paramilitary wing of the Republican Party would be seen for what it is - an armed faction that can't get what it wants democratically and instead uses violence to bring back political conditions in which democratic politics is again in line with "the natural order of things."
Why don't most Americans see that?
That's obvious.
Most of us are white.
White power serves white Americans such that a paramilitary insurgency can't possibly exist. Something like that happens in South America or Asia, not these United States! There must be another reason - any reason! - that does not call on us white Americans to rethink our political advantages or, God forbid, be responsible for choices we make that altogether uphold the white-power order.
It must be the Republicans' fault! It's all those guns!
No, the problem is us.
We just won't see it.
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I do think there are some flaws in this analysis, for example it seems to be assigning blame for almost all mass shootings to the far right. I dont think that is the correct viewpoint.
But the overall view of this article, that white grievance and racism is at the core of white "insurgency" , is correct.
This article is complete and total political Marxist propaganda. There's not one true fact anywhere in it. It reframes what actually happens so ridiculously that it's a wonder even you can't see it. According to this guy regardless of the motive of the shooter, whether it is gang activity, disgruntled employee, disaffected youth, robbery gone wrong or any other reason, it's all politically motivated, somehow, and to make it even better, it's orchestrated by the GOP in some manner he doesn't explain. If the GOP could actually do that, you, my friend, would likely be in prison or worse.
Even a second's thought debunks this ridiculously ludicrous claim. We're supposed to believe, what? That back in the 40's and 50's, when white people had all the power they could want, they just decided to let the civil rights struggle just happen in the 60's, let it continue into the present day to get to the insanity we have now just so we can, and get this, do an insurgency on the system you claim we already control? How do you do an insurgency on yourself?
In reality, the insurgency is coming from the Marxist left, who have for years been controlling the education system, both public schools and universities, where they have been slowly but surely degrading our children's education. In the public schools, they've been training kids to believe that they are the center of existence. That their feelings and thoughts are to be validated as "their truth" at the expense of teaching critical thinking skills. Teaching them that they are entitled to what they want simply because they are alive.
And then, when they get to college, the real training begins. There, they are told what it is they really want and who is preventing them from getting it. Critical Race Theory is actually a form of political Marxism, except instead of seeing everything through the lens of politics, it's seen through the lens of race. Or feminism. Or sexuality. Or identity. And since they are already trained in the framework, they'll easily drop into political Marxism in the future.
But for all this to work, you need an enemy for them to fight against. And that's where people such as yourself are so useful. You help spread the word on just who that is. White people. It doesn't matter that it's all bullshit, because in Marxism, the end justifies the means. It doesn't matter that what you call white grievance is actually objections to insanity like men can have babies, gender being whatever you want it to be, only white people can be racist, everyone has their truth and the rest of that crap. Basically, anyone who stands up to what the Left is doing is white, even if they're black, brown red or yellow. We, and by we I don't mean just white people, but anyone who can see the truth and stand by it, know what you're doing. We're not going to listen to your lies. You aren't fooling us.
So, yeah, there's definitely a flaw in the analysis.
There has never been, even one year, a time in America when there was not widespread racism. To say that racism is not an integral part of American history, and the present, is utter nonsense.
I like the way people like you always fall back on "Marxism". Racism was widespread in America before Marx was born.
There has never been, even one year, a time in the world when there was not widespread racism.
Um, yeah. So, explain how racism, historically, means that what is currently going on isn't due to neo-Marxism and postmodernism. You see, you guys are doing what every Marxist does when starting out. You frame everything as a struggle within the framework of X and then tell enough lies often enough that people start believing it. Then, you get those idiots who believe it to pressure others to believe it too, or bad things will happen to you. Like cancelling and the like. Getting the President in on it helps, telling us that half the country are extremists, terrorists, traitors and threats to democracy. All misdirection.
Just like your comment here.
That might be true of some fringe groups of far right radicals, but not for the GOP as a whole.
The Walmart shooter, Andre Bing, was a Black man. Wonder what his politics were?
If they were conservative politics, would they have not put the obligatory "Uncle Tom" before his name?
Seems as if some liberals believe in free speech, just as long as it meets with their approval.
In other words, if you tweet like a liberal sycophant, you're good.
Not my circus, not my monkeys!
Probably a race to show their "woke" bona fides!
The Colorado gay club shooter is non-binary and uses they and them pronouns. Not exactly a conservative prospect
The writer appears to have hit the holiday eggnog extra early this year.
Typical leftist liberal BS of "It's all the Republican's fault!"
I am hoping the writer is drunk or higher than a kite.
I hate to think a human being thought this crap up while completely sober.
..... college students sleeping in their rooms.
Now there is a soft target.