By Henry
Giroux
Passing Thoughts on the willingness of the politicians and
merchants of death who allow the unimaginable to become imaginable, allow
financial gain to prevail over the lives of innocent children, and are more
willing to protect guns at the expense of the lives of children.
President Trump listened today to the impassioned testimony
of parents and children who have seen their children and friends killed in gun
shootings. He responded by advocating that teachers be armed and trained to
have concealed weapons.
Instead of getting to the root of violence in
America, he followed the NRA line of addressing the issue of mass violence,
shootings, and the ongoing carnage with a call to arm more people, putting more
guns into play, and stating that violence can be met with more violence.
This logic is breathtaking in its
insanity,moral depravity, refusal to get to the root of the problem, and even
advocate minor reforms such as banning assault rifles and high-capacity
ammunition magazines and expanding background checks.
There are 300 million guns in the United States
and since the mass murder of 20 young children and 6 teachers, 11,000 more
children have died of gun violence. There is no defense for putting the
policies of the NRA ahead of the lives of children.
Criminal acts often pass for legislative
policies. How else to explain the Florida legislature voting to even debate
outlawing assault weapons while students from Majory Stoneman Douglas High
School sat in the galleys and watched this wretched and irresponsible act take
place. How else to explain that the House of Representatives--reduced to an
adjunct of the NRA-voted to pass the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act (H.R.38)
which would allow individuals to carry concealed weapons across state
lines.
These are the people who have the blood of
thousands on their hands. The power of money in politics has morphed into a
form of barbarism in which financial gain and power have become more important
than protecting the lives of America's children.
Children no longer have a safe space in
America, a country saturated in violence as a spectacle, sport, and deadly act
of domestic terrorism. Any defense for the proliferation of guns, especially
those designed for war, is criminal.
This is the discourse of political corruption,
a government in the hands of the gun lobbies, and a country that trades in
violence at every turn in order to accrue profits at the expense of the lives
of innocent children.
This debate is not simply about gun violence,
it is about the rule of capital and how the architects of violence accrue
enough power to turn machineries of death and destruction into profits while
selling violence as a commodity.
Violence is both a source of profits and a
cherished national ideal.
It is also the defining feature of a toxic
masculinity.
Gun reform is no substitute for real justice
and the necessary abolition of a death-dealing and cruel economic and political
system that is the antithesis of democracy. What are we to make of a society in
which young children have a greater sense of moral courage and social
responsibility than the zombie adults who make the laws that fail to invest in
and protect the lives of present and future generations.
First step, expose their lies, make their faces
public, use the new media to organize across state lines, and work like hell to
vote them out of office in 2018. Hold these ruthless walking dead responsible
and then banish them to the gutter where they belong.
At the same time, imagine and fight for not a
reform of American society but a restructuring along the lines of a democratic
socialist order.
