Debate about Gun Control

[Bob Butler 54]

(05-22-2017, 10:28 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Calling it "hatred" or "vilification" is a way of dismissing the value of what I or anyone says. No, it's a substantive opinion based on acute observation. I have watched what has happened to our country, and I know that the right-wing takeover of 1980 is the reason for the decline and reversal of progressive movement in our society. You have observed this too. Reagan is to blame only in that he was an electable candidate who propagated the movement. No, I don't see any value in the red memes, beyond the fact that there are grains of truth in them, but on the whole they are all quite wrong. There is no saving grace in the Republican ideologies. It's true, condemnation doesn't work on them. What needs to happen is people need to wake up from these delusions. I am not going to wake up Galen, Dew, Classic Xer. It's up to them to see the error of their opinions. All I can do is point out the errors as best I can. Perhaps someone might listen, sometime. No, I don't think I'm right on everything all the time. There is much to learn on many topics. That's why I listen, and observe.

It does seem clear that from FDR's New Deal through LBJ's Great Society there was an period of liberal dominance when America was Great.  The GI's believed that with enough bodies on the ground working together, Big Government could do Big Things.  There was a sense that with hard work together, there was nothing America couldn't do.  There is a heck of a lot positive that one could say about the era.

There was a series of failures that destroyed the sense of all powerful destiny:  the fall of Saigon, the oil crisis, the hostage crisis, Watergate.  The Democratic embrace of the civil rights movement opened the door for Nixon's Southern Strategy.  The sense that the country should end poverty and share the wealth faded as racist elements tried to direct the money more selfishly.  In switching from the gold standard to a floating currency, the economic managers for a time didn't know what they were doing.  Stagflation became endemic.  Carter spoke truthfully and accurately about a national malaise, encompassing all of the above and more.  The work ethic, the willingness to pay big taxes to do big things, the optimism and the energy of the era when America was Great, all went away.  Carter was correct, but his tone was more a pronouncement of failure than a call to revitalize.  He didn't have it in him to revive the dead ghost of what America had once been.

America entered an unraveling for a bunch of reasons other than generational alignments and a convincing actor.  The crisis values of working together for a common cause and the awakening values that found fault with a faulty nation could only take the nation so far.  The highest wave at the peak high tide receded.  No wave since has come close.

My own feeling is that had Carter had the vision and speaking abilities of Churchill, and if Reagan were not an impressive spokesmen, we would have had an unraveling anyway.  It was time.  People were no longer willing to tax and spend endless money for great projects, especially with the projects and the economy failing.  It is very possible to get a sense of why America headed in the direction it did.

Most of it wasn't evil.  Nixon's racist Southern Strategy, sure.  A lot of it was a nation that had just burned itself out.  One can only pay any price, bear any burden, support every friend, oppose any foe for so long.  Eventually, the mountain is just too tall, and it seems like time to take a break.

And, yes, we still have to shake ourselves out of the national malaise.  I see borrow and spend trickle down with the government being seen as the problem nigh on inevitable, but not a path towards greatness.  Eventually, perhaps, the problems that accumulate when a people decides to stop solving problems will force a swing back toward the typical crisis era working together towards the common good.  It better.  It has to.

So, it is possible for me to understand how the unraveling Republican era came to be while still wanting the unraveling memes to be submerged by more active and progressive mood and values.

A lot of this has nothing to do with the gun policy discussion.  There are some common themes.  Rural areas don't want the government messing with their life style.  They don't want policies designed for and by urban interests forced on them.  There is a rural pride in independence, self sufficiency, responsibility and freedom.  None of these are necessarily evil or wrong.  None of them seem hard to understand.

I don't know.  You perceive yourself as listening and observing.  It doesn't seem that you are doing these things well.

(05-22-2017, 10:28 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I have covered why guns are not good defense over and over here; doing it another time would not seem productive.

You have not done so in a way which seems at all convincing.  I am reminded of the old awakening picture of the pretty flower child hippy girl sticking a daisy in the barrel of a National Guardsman's rifle.  I am trying to picture you talking to a cop or a drug gang member, trying to convince them that guns can't be used to help one resolve a conflict in their favor.  You haven't said anything convincing.