The Republican Party Is A Terrorist Organization
Shootings at UNC and in Jacksonville should remind us that the GOP has one policy objective: spreading fear. The party's cynical embrace of universal gun ownership is part of that program.
I wasn’t going to post today, but the UNC shooting, following up on the racist massacre in Jacksonville, requires a response. And if you are inclined to do so, please:
The screen shot above, from today’s print edition of the University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill’s Daily Tarheel—probably could have been written anywhere. Jacksonville, Florida. DuPage County, Illinois. Richmond, Virginia. Allen, Texas. Buffalo, New York. And those are only five of the 478 mass shootings that have occurred in the United States this year, putting 2023 on track to be the deadliest year ever in the United States for innocent Americans doing something normal and non-violent like going to school, a party, or a shopping mall.
During a mass shooting, between one and a dozen people usually dies. Several dozen people are usually wounded, suffering reconstructive and life-saving surgeries, lingering pain, and disability. And all survivors of mass shooting, whether they were on the scene and escape with their lives or family members who are bereaved and were forced to wait for hours to see whether their loved ones were safe, suffer lingering trauma.
And it is this last fact that should cause you to re-read the image above, because it is direct evidence of the fear that those on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus suffered yesterday afternoon. Last summer, Wallis spoke to two researchers—Sandro Galea, dean of the Boston University School of Public Health, and psychologist Sarah Lowe, assistant professor of public health at Yale University—who synthesized 49 studies of those who survived mass shootings and believe that the ripple effect of terror from these violent events is significant. Surviving a mass shooting event can create a range of psychological disorders, tip individuals into substance abuse, and create physical symptoms like headaches and stomachaches. People with pre-existing psychological disorders are likely to experience an intensification of symptoms. Mass shooting events also create non-specific psychological disorders that the researchers describe as a pervasive sense of “fear and unease.”
Even those of us who do not directly experience these events, but merely watch them on television or social media, suffer negative emotional impacts from mass shooting events. Furthermore, the safety drills that 96% of secondary school students now practice are worse than useless. “A survey published in the Journal of Adolescent Health in 2020 found that 60 percent of young people polled reported feeling unsafe, scared, helpless or sad as a result of such drills,” Galea and Lowe report:
A quarter said that they did not believe that drills improved safety because they suspected that students would panic when confronted with an actual threat—and because the drills could inform potential shooters.
A 2021 analysis of social media posts made by students after they engaged in such drills indicated that anxiety, stress and depression increased by 39 percent to 42 percent following the drills.
Which leads me to believe that what Republicans are always advocating—arming teachers—would not make students feel better. Experts also project a series of other negative consequences: teachers leaving the profession if they were required to carry weapons, which would intensify the teacher shortage; and teachers shooting students by mistake, since even highly trained police officers and military personnel have extremely low accuracy in a live-fire environment.
But extract your mind from the horror for just a moment, and try to answer this question: why are the Republicans forcing all of these guns on a nation that wants to restrict gun ownership? And they are: according to a 2021 report by the Pew Research Center, 48% of Americans believe that gun violence is a “very big problem” and 24% believe that it is a “moderately big problem.” That is 72% of the population that would feel safer and more secure with restrictions on guns.
And yet, Republicans continue to deregulate gun ownership, callously and cynically asking for “thoughts and prayers” when what we need from them is either political leadership or for them to get the fuck out of the way. They lead a vocal minority on the right that, under the tutelage of the NRA, believes that the Second Amendment of the Constitution (written at a time when guns were so weak that musket balls fired from a distance often just bounced off their intended targets) requires the complete deregulation of all weapons. I have had pro-2A activists tell me that, constitutionally, they can drive down the street in a tank or carry a bazooka into a shopping mall.
Needless to say, this fanatical 28% is not to be sneezed at in a party that is so ineffective and dysfunctional that it is poised to nominate a former president charged with 91 felonies who cannot possibly command the majority of independent voters he needs to win a national election. In yet another (seemingly futile) attempt to run to Trump’s right, on July 1, presidential candidate and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed what is called a “permitless carry” law, which means that anyone older than 21 who has not committed a felony can buy and conceal a weapon on their person without a permit, a license, or any training. Yes, there are restrictions on where weapons can be carried—but one definition of being a criminal, psychologically deranged, a conspiracy theorist, or a domestic terrorist is that restrictions are for chumps.
And Republicans know this. Otherwise, why would they imagine that the only answer to gun violence is for more Americans—the good Americans, you understand, like the New York man who shot a high school girl who came to the wrong house, or the Kansas City QAnon guy who did the same thing—to own guns. And Americans have responded by doing just that. As gun ownership was on the rise in 2019, a Gallup survey reported that 63% of Americans who had a weapon in the home had acquired it for “personal safety.”
So, we now have a country of frightened, anxious, angry people who are arming themselves, being encouraged to arm themselves by politicians, and people who are, in some places, now allowed to carry those weapons anywhere they go. Worse, we have whole states that are mass-supplying guns that are owned and carried illegally in states that do have gun control. In New York, I-95 has been nicknamed “the Iron Pipeline” by authorities for its role in funneling weapons into a state that has the fourth strictest gun control laws in the nation. California, New Jersey, and Connecticut are stricter: Massachusetts, where I live, is behind Hawaii at #6.
The supplier states? Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Almost 20% of the illegal guns seized in New York City alone in 2022 came from Virginia alone. How many came from New York state?
None.
Does the GOP actually put weapons in the hands of extremists and people who cannot and should not be trusted with a firearm? No. But they don’t have to: by creating fear and anxiety, by making these weapons broadly available, by discouraging or eliminating regulations that could filter out people who are most likely to commit violence, and by riding white supremacy, conspiracy theories, and populist anger into office, they don’t have to.
So, it’s hard not to conclude that Republicans want us to live in fear, and that gun policies are part of that plan. And until the GOP is willing to imagine political campaigns and public policies that genuinely center the welfare of human beings, we need to treat that party like the terrorist organization that it is.
This week’s presidential campaign news:
Miami mayor Francis Suarez is out, and according to polling from the Trump campaign, tech bro Vivek Ramaswamy and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley are now tied with Governor Ron DeSantis in New Hampshire.
But also: a DeSantis internal poll claims a 7-point bounce for their guy in Iowa. Former President Donald Trump is down one point, which still leaves him with a commanding 41%-21% lead in that state. Halley bounced from 3% to 11%, and Iowa basically hates everyone else.
Short takes:
The federal civil service is one of the pillars of modern American democracy, and a bulwark against corruption. So of course, Republican extremists want to get rid of it. “Antagonism toward the administrative state—and particularly the regulatory and public assistance programs it implements—has been an article of faith among conservatives for decades. Former Trump aide-de-camp Steve Bannon perhaps best captured this sentiment in February 2017 when he professed his desire to bring about the administrative state’s `deconstruction,’” policy analyst James Goodwin writes at The New Republic. This is why the Biden administration has launched a public information campaign to illuminate Americans about what the administrative state does and “quietly instituted several reforms that would help bring the administrative state even closer to its full democratic potential.” (August 30, 2023)
Things are not going well at The American Conservative Union (ACU), the organization that runs the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC.) There is the ongoing mystery around whether chairman Matt Schlapp has or has not offered a low, six-figure sum to settle allegations by a political consultant that Schlapp grabbed his private parts during a car ride. And, according to Daily Beast reporter Roger Sollenberger, although two more guys who say they got schlapped have come forward, handsy Matt has blocked any initiative for an internal investigation by the ACU board. Now, a former Schlapp ally, ACU vice president Charlie Gerow, has resigned from the organization and “called on the organization to conduct an `independent forensic audit of the organization’s finances,’ secure `a written opinion of counsel that the organization is in full compliance with its own bylaws and all applicable law,’ and `thoroughly review’ the exit interviews of `the large number of staff who have recently left.’” (August 29, 2023)
At The New Republic, historian Kim Phillips-Fein reflects on the histories of America’s failed wars on poverty. Although great strides were made in the 1960s, those programs have been either ended or put out of reach of most working poor. “Recent decades have seen the social safety net hollowed out in countless ways, with time limits and work requirements imposed on programs that were already means-tested—like food stamps,” Phillips-Fein notes. “More than a million American schoolchildren are homeless. Almost two million American households lack running water.” (August 28, 2023)
I share Potters distaste for what passes for the Republican Party in 2023, and I can do that without resorting to cheap, sensationalized quips like the “party is a terrorist organization”. That’s just silly and in reality counterproductive. The % of people that headline will attract or appeal to I less than the % of Republican voters supporting the Orange God King.
I keep waiting for someone, anyone to ask a candidate the same question posed to Dukakis in 1988, albeit using their kids or grandkids as the victim of gun violence instead of a spouse. Their reaction may mirror that of Joe the Plumber, but it would be embarrassing to say the least for them to admit that the 2nd Amendment is more important than their children’s or grandkids lives.