When people talk about genetically engineered babies I think first of
Gattaca, then of the rational implications, when people talk about predicting who will commit crimes I think first of
Minority Report. I feel a little ashamed that I think of
Minority Report because it is a terrible movie, but it pops to mind every time. How can a world where we incarcerate people before they commit a crime be more free than a world where we limit access to the most deadly weapons? Eventually, rational thought kicks in, and I am immediately concerned about other aspects about talking about violent video games, the depressed, anger, and the likelihood that a young man will become a killer.
I played violent video games as a teen. In my opinion they are not as fun as Nintendo's Mario Kart, but I cannot deny that many of them are fun. Some industry spokesman suggested that people try playing video games before they condemn them, and I have to agree. There were days, as a confused and often angry teen I would come home from a bad day and see how many Soviets I could kill in Golden Eye before succumbing to their gunfire. A few levels I became so good at I could do this indefinitely. It was not as fun as playing Mario Kart with my brother, but my brother was at college, and most of the time I felt alone.
Feeling alone is another warning sign, supposedly. Whenever I hear statistics about a percentage of people who admit to having felt, at some point in their life, alone, or having thought about suicide, I think what I am hearing is actually a statistic about how comfortable people feel about being honest. If a study reports that 70% of people report that they have felt utterly alone at some point in their life, what the statistic is really saying is that 30% of people surveyed were liars. The question is why are there so many liars?
I think the answer to that is simple. Listen to a single news report about depression, a single one, particularly in the wake of tragedies, and you know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that you cannot ever admit to any of those thoughts, to anyone. On the PBS News Hour psychologists and researchers refer to those who are suffering depression as "those people." I understand that it is convenient to separate those who are depressed from those who are not, but if one is wallowing in self-hatred is it really attractive to be one of them, rather than one of us? One interviewee stated that what perpetrators of mass shootings want most of all is to belong to a community, but continued to talk about them as outsiders. Psychological experts talk about removing the stigma of mental illness, then talk about how "these people" have "defective" brains. Imagine the gasps if a neurosurgeon told reporters that we need to remove the social stigma of cripples! That surgeon would be censured (as they should!), but psychologists continue to bash away at people who feel alone, depressed, or chronically sad.
I fully support paying taxes to fund public health, including mental health. I fully support removing the stigma of mental illness. With every interview I hear, (recently an interviewer on the News Hour implied that teens who are depressed are on their way to becoming psychopaths) I feel like we are farther from where we need to be. In fact, I find it not unlike the psychology's labeling of homosexuality as a mental illness, both treatable and curable. We are still fighting that utterly ridiculous, fear-based, hate-filled "diagnosis." The difference here is that depression is treatable, but when the diagnosis can cost you jobs, livelihood, and success, is it really treatable?
The problem is that after a tragedy like Newtown, we do not want to be like the perpetrator. To much fanfare, a very brave woman published a blog entitled "
I am Adam Lanza's Mother." She has some sound perspectives, and her child does sound quite troubled and in need of help. However, she also does not keep weapons (including sharp objects) in the house. So, in some ways, she is not Adam Lanza's mother. Furthermore, how do you separate the kids who have anger management issues from the mentally ill? In this child's case, it seems reasonably obvious that he does need help, and prison is not the help he needs. For many children, if violent outbursts (which I would guess almost every youngest sibling has had) are cause to be ostracized from the community, how many mothers will protect their children, rather than ask brave questions?
Beyond mothers protecting their children from being labelled monsters, society does not want to be like the monsters. After the Nuremberg Trials people began asking questions about how such atrocities could be committed. No one wanted to be like the leaders, the officers, or those who perpetrated these crimes against humanity. In subsequent scientific research, we found out that we were actually quite like the Nazis. Most of us had never been ordered to murder anyone, but if we were, we would probably do it. No one wants to be like Adam Lanza, and no one wants to be Adam Lanza's mother. Truth be told, we all probably could be, and that is the stigma with mental health.
We stigmatize mental health because we see ourselves in the symptoms of every diagnosis.
This American Life did an episode about the psychopathy test. Included in the episode was each member of the staff being assessed by a licensed test administrator. The cast talked about who they thought would rate the highest on the psychopathy test, where the higher the score, the more psychopathic. They even worried that some of them may actually be psychopaths. After the drum role and the suspense, not a single member of the staff scored a single point on the psychopathy test. Yet these people, who had been researching the psychopathy test and psychopaths, were legitimately worried that they were psychopaths.
We stigmatize mental health, rather than embracing the help it could probably provide everyone, because we fear ourselves. I think for this very reason, mental health acceptance is no closer than (additional) effective weapons control. We know from American examples, and from comparisons with other nations that eliminating firearms does reduce firearms deaths, yet many Americans vehemently argue against this. With no disrespect intended toward anyone, nor especially to the person who discussed weapons control with me, but the more weapons argument is an argument of fear.
Weapons control advocates are often accused of being afraid, and I suppose we are. I suppose my arguments are based on the fear that there are a class of weapons so common, cheap, and available as to be called "Saturday night specials." I worry what a world will look like where the wealthiest nation continues to proliferate the most weapons. I fear a world where people who claim the be "Constitutionalists" disregard the pursuit of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in favor of weapons for all. Yet, I think these fears pale in comparison to the fear that grips people who are weapons advocates. I do not go to a restaurant worried that I will be shot by a stranger before I leave. The concealed carry advocates say that it is not fear, but a desire to save lives. But if it is about saving lives, why not carry an AED? Heart disease kills more people in the United States than any other cause of death. While I think there is a lot of argument about what really stops a man with a gun, but effective use of an AED is the only thing that will restart a heart.
What does fear taken to extremes look like? Hate. Racism is rooted in fear. Homophobia is rooted in fear. People so overcome with fear that they begin to hate retreat into a safe group, or so it seems to me. They may retreat to clubs or gangs. They seek irrational solutions. The Black Panthers advocated gun rights before the NRA took up its current call. Both groups seem driven by extreme fear. Today's fear driven lunacy is causing people to retreat into extremist enclaves in this country.
My brother jokingly said about my post, "The Hipsters Grow Up" that like my car-free ideal city, there was a group of the right wing who wanted to build a fortified city in Idaho, and he didn't think they would have cars either. I looked it up. It seems to be an offshoot of a group of people called the 3 Percenters who argue, based on the American Revolution, it requires only three percent of the population to over throw a government. The 3% crowd seems to not realize that the American Revolution was supported by the French Government, and was one of the few successful revolutions the British were fighting at about the same time (admittedly I do not know what percent of the Indian population were fighting the British). They also seem to have forgotten that the American militias had swords, muskets, and cannons, much like the British, and forget that today's 3% would probably not have missiles, fighter jets, etc. Can you fight a war with IEDs that no one really wins? It seems that the Taliban have proven this. Can you win a modern revolution with 3% of the population? I doubt it, but why would you want to? It seems like most Western governments are pretty fair most of the time, and are generally getting better. Will violent revolution come again, I imagine, but no need to rush it.
Regardless of the practicalities of winning a modern revolution (see my post "Defining Tyranny" for more discussion of this), this offshoot of the 3% want to build AR-15 style weapons in a fortified city in Idaho. I am not kidding about this. Apparently this group, led largely by a convicted fraudster, wants you to send them money to help create a gun toting mecca of a Constitution-less America.
Their website, complete with a fear driven ad reading, "Get an AR before its too late," talks about the benefits of living life in a medieval-style walled, extremist city. The fraudster proponent, being a convicted felon, cannot legally own a firearm (perhaps that is where all the rhetoric of following "Constitutional laws" comes from), but is advocating a city where everyone over age 13 would be required to carry a firearm at all times. There is quite a bit of fun to be had on their website. The 13 rules (anti-freedoms?) outlined in the "Patriot Agreement" include provisions to forcibly eject people from their poured concrete homes if they fail to be able to shoot a human shaped target with a rifle and a handgun, stockpile sufficient ammunition, and, by my reading, fail to have at least three members of the household over the age of thirteen at all times. Again, I am not kidding about this, this is all on their website. They have an artist's impression of what the city might look like, and my brother is correct, there does not appear to be room for roads. The artist also thought completely walling off the school from the town (a solid wall without a gate or door surrounds the school) would be a good way to avoid the "indoctrination" that children currently receive from the school system. They suggest that marxists, socialists, liberals, and republicans would be uncomfortable living in the city, though presumably they would be allowed to so long as they follow the Patriot Agreement.
I accuse this group of wanting a Constitution-less America, which I am sure they would get rather angry about. Yet, the word constitution does not appear on their homepage, so even they are more interested in "Rightful Liberty" than an America governed by the Constitution. My evidence is not simply that they do not talk about the Constitution very much, but that they actually eschew it. If you look through the history books of extremist communities in the United States you will find that the American weapons love affair peaked not in the "Wild West" where strict weapons control was a common method to preserve order, but in modern times. In our modern craze, Americans have actually tried to make it a legal requirement to own a firearm. If my memory serves correctly, Reserve, NM tried this (I was stranded there once owing to a breakdown, the cafe did not have vegan options), and just like all the other times this has been tried, it was rejected by the courts as unconstitutional. So how will the 3%'s Citadel get around the constitution allowing one to
not carry a weapon? The whole city will be private property belonging to the arms factory, and no one will be allowed to own their home. This will work for them because, as they point out, on private property you can make all the anti-freedoms you want, just like Disneyland.
Imagining that this actually turns out to be real, happens, and 7,000 families move to a private walled city in Idaho where everyone over 13 is always armed. What would have brought those people together? They want to be surrounded by like minded people. What is interesting about this group of people is that what is alike about them is not that they like anything in particular, but rather that they are afraid. Admittedly, they do seem to like weapons, but reading their website, they fear the government, fear economic collapse, fear the collapse of civilization, fear the indoctrination of their children, fear the seizure of their weapons, the list of what they fear goes on and on. They do not fear a frost-free growing season that they say is 60 days long interfering with agriculture in their entirely self-sufficient city/arms factory.
I think my fundamental concern with this movement is not their desire to create an extremist ghetto in Idaho, satirically I embrace the idea of extremists moving out of mainstream America and into self-made ghettos. What I find disconcerting is that they are so full of fear that the biggest holiday of this Anti-Constitutionland will be April 19. For those who thought it would be a Christian holy day or the Fourth of July who have no idea what is special about April 19, it is the anniversary of the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. These people fear the government so much that they are celebrating the murder of 168 people, including 19 children under the age of 6. This is not fear of the government any more, it is pure hatred of America and Americans.
This is, of course, why America needs weapons control. Most of the people who like the idea of the Citadel are probably mostly law abiding citizens (saving the felon leader). Most of the people who like the idea of the Citadel are not mentally ill. Most of the people who like the idea of the Citadel probably do not have a history of violence. Most of the people who like the idea of the Citadel are the type of people who can legally buy, own, use, and sell firearms. Yet all of the people who like the idea of the Citadel are willing to celebrate and condone murdering children.
