Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[Winstonm]

The minority dissent isn’t quite accurate: the loss is the protection of the first Amendment against the establishment of a religion.

[Chas_P]

Yes, criminals should be punished. But as Benjamin Franklin said in 1736:

 

 

Punishing the shooters doesn't bring victims back to life.

 

Agreed wholeheartedly. And if we can come up with a way to take firearms out of the hands of the criminally insane I'm all for it. But I just don't think the NRA is complicit in the current wave of gun violence which was Winston's assertion.

[y66]

https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=56&emc=edit_cn_20220624&instance_id=64999&nl=on-politics&productCode=CN&regi_id=59211987&segment_id=96756&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2Fc92c3fdb-671c-56a1-aec5-0b41362277a1&user_id=2d8b72dd84a9ff194896ed87b2d9c72a

 

Few can imagine it today, but on the eve of the Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973, more Republicans than Democrats supported decriminalizing abortion.

 

That nugget comes from a fascinating new work of historical, legal and political analysis published recently in The Yale Law Journal by Linda Greenhouse, a former Supreme Court correspondent for The New York Times and frequent contributing Opinion writer who now teaches at Yale Law School.

 

The paper, which Greenhouse wrote with Reva B. Siegel, a law professor and colleague in New Haven, draws upon and updates the second edition of their book on the same subject.

 

Greenhouse and Siegel tell the story of how G.O.P. strategists in the early 1970s decided that the party could attract new Republican voters by making a play to Catholics and evangelicals centered on abortion.

 

It took about 10 years for this new political coalition to coalesce along with the rise of Ronald Reagan, they write — powered by the emerging alliance between evangelical Christians and Catholics.

 

In one especially revealing passage, they point out how George Gallup, the pioneering pollster, noted in a column published in The Washington Post on Aug. 25, 1972 — nearly five months before the court published its ruling in the Roe case — that 64 percent of Americans, and 56 percent of Catholics, agreed with the statement “the decision to have an abortion should be made solely by a woman and her physician.”

 

At 68 percent, a greater proportion of Republicans agreed with that statement than did Democrats, at 59 percent, Gallup added.

 

Today, those figures look very different. According to Gallup Organization polling released early this month: 58 percent of Republicans supported overturning Roe, a record high, versus 15 percent of Democrats.

 

Greenhouse stumbled across a clipping of George Gallup’s column among Justice Harry Blackmun’s court papers while working on a series for The Times, which later became the basis for a biography she wrote on the liberal judge’s life and influence on the bench.

 

Blackmun, of course, was the primary author of the Roe decision, the fall of which on Friday set off political shock waves.

 

Greenhouse said she didn’t know why Blackmun’s papers contained the poll.

 

“But what I assume it underscored for him at that time,” she said, “was that abortion was not a supercharged issue.”

 

“Every Republican president since Reagan has run on a platform of choosing those judges and justices who would vote to overturn Roe,” Greenhouse said.

[y66]

WASHINGTON — In the most important case of his 17-year tenure, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. found himself entirely alone.

 

He had worked for seven months to persuade his colleagues to join him in merely chipping away at Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion. But he was outflanked by the five justices to his right, who instead reduced Roe to rubble.

 

In the process, they humiliated the nominal leader of the court and rejected major elements of his jurisprudence.

 

The moment was a turning point for the chief justice. Just two years ago, after the retirement of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy made him the new swing justice, he commanded a kind of influence that sent experts hunting for historical comparisons. Not since 1937 had the chief justice also been the court’s fulcrum, able to cast the decisive vote in closely divided cases.

 

Chief Justice Roberts mostly used that power to nudge the court to the right in measured steps, understanding himself to be the custodian of the court’s prestige and authority. He avoided what he called jolts to the legal system, and he tried to decide cases narrowly.

 

But that was before a crucial switch. When Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative appointed by President Donald J. Trump, succeeded Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the liberal icon, after her death in 2020, Chief Justice Roberts’s power fizzled.

 

“This is no longer John Roberts’s court,” Mary Ziegler, a law professor and historian at the University of California, Davis, said on Friday.

 

The chief justice is now in many ways a marginal figure. The five other conservatives are impatient and ambitious, and they do not need his vote to achieve their goals. Voting with the court’s three liberals cannot be a particularly appealing alternative for the chief justice, not least because it generally means losing.

 

Chief Justice Roberts’s concurring opinion in Friday’s decision, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, illustrated his present and perhaps future unhappy lot. He had tried for seven months to persuade a single colleague to join his incremental approach in the case, starting with carefully planned questioning when the case was argued in December. He failed utterly.

[y66]

Throwing out a precedent overnight that the country has relied upon for half a century is not conservative. It is a sudden and radical jolt to the country that will lead to political chaos, anger and a further loss of confidence in our government.

[PeterAlan]

But I just don't think the NRA is complicit in the current wave of gun violence.

That's exactly what they are: they've lobbied for, encouraged and enabled an almost unchecked proliferation of weapons that are designed to kill people, as opposed to being primarily for hunting game etc, a proliferation that has been the fuel of the gun violence.

[hrothgar]

But I just don't think

 

Fixed your post

[kenberg]

The NYT article cited in post 19978 is of great interest, historical and otherwise. Take this part:

"In one especially revealing passage, they point out how George Gallup, the pioneering pollster, noted in a column published in The Washington Post on Aug. 25, 1972 — nearly five months before the court published its ruling in the Roe case — that 64 percent of Americans, and 56 percent of Catholics, agreed with the statement “the decision to have an abortion should be made solely by a woman and her physician". At 68 percent, a greater proportion of Republicans agreed with that statement than did Democrats, at 59 percent, Gallup added.”

How could that be, you might ask. I went through adolescence in the 50s and young adulthood in the 60s. Nearly everyone knew someone who had to deal in one way or another with unplanned pregnancy. Solutions varied. Me, I am adopted and it worked out well, at least for me. But many people could welcome Roe and the obvious solution of an early and safe abortion. Practicality was the order of the day.

My first serious run-in with religious zealotry was when I was 14. My father had had a stroke, he was learning to read and write again, and he didn't much have time for church. Same with my mother. So the minister took me aside to explain that I had to get my parents to get back to regular church attendance so that they would not burn in the fires of Hell. I had to deal with that and I did. I do not try to convince the religious that they are wrong, but I do want them to butt the eff out of my personal life. When my father died, this was when I was in my 30s, I arranged for a minister to speak at his funeral. But I interviewed him first. I had recently been to a funeral where the minister went on at length about how lucky the deceased was to be dead and in the arms of Jesus. I was prepared to yank my chosen minister off the stage if he went in that direction. He didn't.

So "68 percent, a greater proportion of Republicans agreed with that statement". And 64% of Americans. And 56% of Catholics. A much saner time.

[Winstonm]

Senator Susan Collins said:

 

Throwing out a precedent overnight that the country has relied upon for half a century is not conservative. It is a sudden and radical jolt to the country that will lead to political chaos, anger and a further loss of confidence in our government.

 

Or, another way to say it: it is a win for Putin.

[Winstonm]

That's exactly what they are: they've lobbied for, encouraged and enabled an almost unchecked proliferation of weapons that are designed to kill people, as opposed to being primarily for hunting game etc, a proliferation that has been the fuel of the gun violence.

 

Don't you know that when they drop the 9 under your ace it's always singleton?

[y66]

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-24-2022?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

 

Friday June 24 -- At yesterday's hearing of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, we heard overwhelming proof that former president Trump and his congressional supporters tried to overturn the will of the voters in the 2020 presidential election and steal control of our country to keep a minority in power.

 

Today, thanks to three justices nominated by Trump, the Supreme Court stripped a constitutional right from the American people, a right we have enjoyed for almost 50 years, a right that is considered a fundamental human right in most liberal democracies, and a right they indicated they would protect because it was settled law. Today’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that recognized a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy. For the first time in our history, rather than conveying rights, the court has explicitly taken a constitutional right away from the American people.

 

These two extraordinary events are related. The current-day Republican Party has abandoned the idea of a democracy in which a majority of the people elect their government. Instead, its members have embraced minority rule.

 

The Dobbs decision marks the end of an era: the period in American history stretching from 1933 to 1981, the era in which the U.S. government worked to promote democracy. It tried to level the economic playing field between the rich and the poor by regulating business and working conditions. It provided a basic social safety net through programs like Social Security and Medicare and, later, through food and housing security programs. It promoted infrastructure like electricity and highways, and clean air and water, to try to maintain a basic standard of living for Americans. And it protected civil rights by using the Fourteenth Amendment, added to the U.S. Constitution in 1868, to stop states from denying their citizens the equal protection of the laws.

 

Now the Republicans are engaged in the process of dismantling that government. For forty years, the current Republican Party has worked to slash business regulations and the taxes that support social welfare programs, to privatize infrastructure projects, and to end the federal protection of civil rights by arguing for judicial “originalism” that claims to honor the original version of the Constitution rather than permitting the courts to protect rights through the Fourteenth Amendment.

[Winstonm]

A highly-regarded attorney with whom I’m familiar says there is no precedent for “originalism” or “textualism”, that both are only BS excuses for justices to do what they want.

[mikeh]

While (as an outsider observing from Canada) I am very sorry that the SCOTUS overturned Roe v Wade, there is (I’ve read the decision) at least ‘some’ logical legal reasoning underlying the decision. Roe was founded on a very convoluted set of factors. The court in that case seems (to me) to have done pretty much what the majority in Dobbs is said to have done: they knew where they wanted to go and they justified the decision as best they could.

 

That’s a problem with the court system, and it’s hardly unique to the US or to SCOTUS. I’ve long told aspiring litigators that ‘judges want to do the morally correct thing’. There are instances where the law is so clear that the court can’t wiggle around it….but there’s truth in the old legal adage that hard facts make bad law…..faced with what seems to be very unfair, judges look for ways around legal precedents that would, on the surface, seem to require an unfair outcome. Thus in some cases the outcome depends on getting the court to see the morality your way…then the court can often find a way to that end. Here, of course, everyone knew (including Collins and Manchin, despite their whining now) that Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett were appointed for the express purpose of reversing Roe, so it was a slam dunk that they’d see doing so as the morally correct thing.

 

The real problem, and what I think distinguishes the US from most developed countries, is that in the latter the right to access abortion is the result of legislation, not judicial pronouncement.

 

In the US the political reality has been that there has never been and still isn’t sufficient support in Congress to make enabling abortion access the statutory law of the realm. That left pro choice advocates nowhere to go other than SCOTUS. It worked 50 years ago, but because the reasoning in Roe was, at best, arguably a huge stretch, it created this opportunity.

 

Now, I’m no believer in ‘originalism’.

 

Nor, based on what I’ve read over the years, are some of those Justices who claim they are….they seem quite happy to ignore basic elements of the ‘original language’ in some parts of the constitution, as in the often omitted (by gun nuts) language in the second amendment making it clear (imo) that the right to bear arms was in relation to a well regulated militia…not assholes with a fetish for semi automatic weapons.

 

The conservatives claim that the court shouldn’t create new rights…leave it to the states or the federal government. This was a nice sentiment in a small country, with relatively few states and a small political class….and far fewer citizens than today. The ability to enact a constitutional amendment is close to non-existent today, as one example. More importantly it seems to me and many others that it is absurd to think that the ideas held by the drafters of the constitution, and it’s amendments, should be seen as valid today, in terms of ‘rights’.

 

When Alito refers to abortion in historical terms, he is describing values held at a time when women were chattels…when women were in essence ‘owned’ firstly by their fathers and then, if they were ‘normal’, by their husbands.

 

So he argues, without apparently recognizing this, that abortion access cannot be a right…that women have no right to control their reproductive status….because historically women had essentially no rights as we would understand them today.

 

He can’t actually take away ‘all’ rights of women…the right to vote being one…because some rights were eventually set out in amendments, but he and his concurring conservatives are quite content with relegating women into second class citizens, with only those rights expressly set out in the amended constitution.

 

That’s why Thomas has made it clear that he intends, should opportunity arise, to reverse other decisions such as the right to gay marriage. The odd and ironic part of his reasoning is that it appears to me to apply with equal force to the Love decision, that legitimized interracial marriage….he of course is married to a white woman.

 

I’d pay good money to watch him deal with an attack on that decision….after all there is nothing in the Constitution that expressly allows or even refers directly to interracial marriage and it is absolutely clear that such marriages were considered abhorrent back in the 19th century…his time of reference for access to abortion.

[Winstonm]

While (as an outsider observing from Canada) I am very sorry that the SCOTUS overturned Roe v Wade, there is (I've read the decision) at least 'some' logical legal reasoning underlying the decision. Roe was founded on a very convoluted set of factors. The court in that case seems (to me) to have done pretty much what the majority in Dobbs is said to have done: they knew where they wanted to go and they justified the decision as best they could.

 

That's a problem with the court system, and it's hardly unique to the US or to SCOTUS. I've long told aspiring litigators that 'judges want to do the morally correct thing'. There are instances where the law is so clear that the court can't wiggle around it….but there's truth in the old legal adage that hard facts make bad law…..faced with what seems to be very unfair, judges look for ways around legal precedents that would, on the surface, seem to require an unfair outcome. Thus in some cases the outcome depends on getting the court to see the morality your way…then the court can often find a way to that end. Here, of course, everyone knew (including Collins and Manchin, despite their whining now) that Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett were appointed for the express purpose of reversing Roe, so it was a slam dunk that they'd see doing so as the morally correct thing.

 

The real problem, and what I think distinguishes the US from most developed countries, is that in the latter the right to access abortion is the result of legislation, not judicial pronouncement.

 

In the US the political reality has been that there has never been and still isn't sufficient support in Congress to make enabling abortion access the statutory law of the realm. That left pro choice advocates nowhere to go other than SCOTUS. It worked 50 years ago, but because the reasoning in Roe was, at best, arguably a huge stretch, it created this opportunity.

 

Now, I'm no believer in 'originalism'.

 

Nor, based on what I've read over the years, are some of those Justices who claim they are….they seem quite happy to ignore basic elements of the 'original language' in some parts of the constitution, as in the often omitted (by gun nuts) language in the second amendment making it clear (imo) that the right to bear arms was in relation to a well regulated militia…not assholes with a fetish for semi automatic weapons.

 

The conservatives claim that the court shouldn't create new rights…leave it to the states or the federal government. This was a nice sentiment in a small country, with relatively few states and a small political class….and far fewer citizens than today. The ability to enact a constitutional amendment is close to non-existent today, as one example. More importantly it seems to me and many others that it is absurd to think that the ideas held by the drafters of the constitution, and it's amendments, should be seen as valid today, in terms of 'rights'.

 

When Alito refers to abortion in historical terms, he is describing values held at a time when women were chattels…when women were in essence 'owned' firstly by their fathers and then, if they were 'normal', by their husbands.

 

So he argues, without apparently recognizing this, that abortion access cannot be a right…that women have no right to control their reproductive status….because historically women had essentially no rights as we would understand them today.

 

He can't actually take away 'all' rights of women…the right to vote being one…because some rights were eventually set out in amendments, but he and his concurring conservatives are quite content with relegating women into second class citizens, with only those rights expressly set out in the amended constitution.

 

That's why Thomas has made it clear that he intends, should opportunity arise, to reverse other decisions such as the right to gay marriage. The odd and ironic part of his reasoning is that it appears to me to apply with equal force to the Love decision, that legitimized interracial marriage….he of course is married to a white woman.

 

I'd pay good money to watch him deal with an attack on that decision….after all there is nothing in the Constitution that expressly allows or even refers directly to interracial marriage and it is absolutely clear that such marriages were considered abhorrent back in the 19th century…his time of reference for access to abortion.

 

Mike, first of all thank you for adding your lawyerly insight for us, the non-lawyers. What do you think of the argument I saw recently that privacy, although not enumerated specifically in the U.S. Constitution but as I understand it the basis of Roe v Wade, must be an implied premise of the 4th Amendment rights to be secure in persons and papers?

[mikeh]

I’m not a constitutional lawyer even with respect to Canada, so I claim no particular insight into US constitutional issues. However, my take is that the majority felt that one ought not to recognize/create rights not found expressly within the constitution unless, as a fundamental pre-condition, one could show that the right was deeply rooted in history.

 

That sounds ok…until one recognizes that law is all about morality. One’s moral code won’t usually map perfectly onto the great web of statutory and to (nowadays a small factor) common law. And statutory law tends to lag behind public views: opinions can change quite quickly but it takes considerable time (usually) for such to lead to new legislation. Also, of course, views of morality can and do differ from social group to social group and also on an individual basis. With those caveats, legislation governing the behaviour of humans should reflect that society’s view of morally acceptable behaviour.

 

In terms of abortion, it’s silly (imo) to argue that there was no right to abortion in eras in which women were far from equal before the law (or in society) and that therefore the right to abortion lacks the necessary historical underpinning….the fact that women are now legally equal to men seems to have been ignored.

 

It’s as if I argued that it was not a waste of electricity to keep all of my lights on during a very bright day because I was unable to read with them off during the night.

 

Women, who were chattels and who suffered from many legal and real world barriers, were denied access to abortion by the white males who ran/owned the country. It’s worth noting that Alito looks at the history of abortion in the US dating back to the time that slavery was a thriving, legal institution.

 

Now, he’d no doubt argue that slavery would still be lawful if it hadn’t been abolished by constitutional amendment. I wonder what he would have decided had he been judging Lincoln’s emanicipations during the Civil War. I think his reasoning in Dobbs would require him to rule them of no force and effect, since there as no constitutional right for blacks to be free and definitely no historical basis for saying slavery should be prohibited.

 

Imo, while looking at history can be useful, it’s critical to look at history as a whole. Look then at how context has changed over that history.

 

Women are still, in the real world, a long way from enjoying equal status in much of society, but they have attained significant, if often ignored or worked around, legal equality in many areas.

 

The women who had no historical right to abortion are not, legally or socially, the women being denied now…or the women provided that access by Roe.

 

Recent history is still history, but I admit it is a stretch to say that the attitudes reflected in Roe have since become ‘deeply’ rooted in US history, starting in 1972.

 

Of course, imo, the underlying issue is the Alito has been a harsh critic of Roe for decades, Barrett is or was a member of an ultra-right catholic sect that requires that women subordinate themselves, in many important social and family roles, to the dominant male within their family. K and G were also known critics of Roe and so, too, was Roberts.

 

I have no doubt that Alito could and would have written a plausible decision preserving Roe had he wanted to achieve that end. But to the extent that the court should analyze an issue within its very narrow, specific history, then I think his decision is correct in law. I want to stress that as a non-constitutional, non American, retired lawyer with no relevant legal experience, I think that deliberately donning blinders in order to ignore context is intellectually dishonest. I think that viewed in the context of many incremental changes in legal status for women, there is indeed a reasonable argument that as of now there is a deeply rooted right to access to abortion. That such right is possibly founded on an erroneous earlier decision need not, imo, be determinative

 

Roe was argued and decided during, as Alito notes, an ongoing movement across many States towards decriminalizing and even legalizing abortion. Roe stopped that trend by preempting the issue, but it seems reasonable to infer that, absent Roe, the right to access abortion would have slowly spread further….the US tends to be very parochial but one can look at countries such as Catholic Ireland to see that this is a global trend…not everywhere, of course.

 

Place that trend, which predates Roe and thus has a better claim to being deep rooted, within the much longer history of the recognition or creation of rights for women, and I think the ‘deeply rooted’ argument, as articulated by Alito, becomes seen for what it is: a means to the long-desired personal goal of outlawing abortion to the extent that he can.

[y66]

From Requiem for the Supreme Court by Linda Greenhouse:

 

What the court delivered on Friday is a requiem for the right to abortion. As Chief Justice John Roberts, who declined to join Justice Alito’s opinion, may well suspect, it is also a requiem for the Supreme Court.

 

Consider the implication of Justice Alito’s declaration that Roe v. Wade was “egregiously wrong” from the start. Five of the seven justices in the Roe majority — all except William O. Douglas and Thurgood Marshall — were appointed by Republican presidents. The votes necessary to preserve the right to abortion 19 years later in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Roe follow-up decision that the court also overturned on Friday, came from five Republican-appointed justices.

 

In asserting that these justices led the court into grave error from which it must now be rescued, Justice Alito and his majority are necessarily saying that these predecessors, joining the court over a period of four decades, didn’t know enough, or care enough, to use the right methodology and reach the right decision. The arrogance and unapologetic nature of the opinion are breathtaking. (Of the justices who decided Casey in 1992, the only member of the court still serving is Justice Clarence Thomas, a dissenter then, who wrote in a concurring opinion on Friday that now that the court has overturned the right to abortion, it should also reconsider its precedents on contraception, L.G.B.T.Q. rights and same-sex marriage.)

 

The dissenting justices wrote on Friday, “The majority’s refusal even to consider the life-altering consequences of reversing Roe and Casey is a stunning indictment of its decision.” They observed, “The majority has overruled Roe and Casey for one and only one reason: because it has always despised them, and now it has the votes to discard them. The majority thereby substitutes a rule by judges for the rule of law.”

[Chas_P]

That's exactly what they are: they've lobbied for, encouraged and enabled an almost unchecked proliferation of weapons that are designed to kill people, as opposed to being primarily for hunting game etc, a proliferation that has been the fuel of the gun violence.

I graciously acknowledge your opinion. I don't share it. But I do acknowledge it. Fare thee well pilgrim.

[kenberg]

I graciously acknowledge your opinion. I don't share it. But I do acknowledge it. Fare thee well pilgrim.

 

The NRA definitely encourages people to buy guns. So far so good? The idea, at least implicitly, is that having a gun is useful for problems a person encounters in life. Still in agreement?

 

For me, the consequences of this are predictable and clear. Take me. I am not the strongest nor toughest guy in the world, nor am I the weakest. But what the hell, give me a gun and it doesn't matter. All I have to do is pull the trigger. So you get a lot of people thinking that way and then, maybe in the heat of the moment or maybe with planning, a lot of triggers get pulled.

 

I could tell various stories, some pretty personal, but I'll skip that. The consequences of widespread gun ownership, coupled with the idea that a gun can be a good solution to a problem, seem obvious enough. You speak a lot of the good guys and the bad guys. I have never thought it to be that simple. A good guy can suddenly do something stupid, something he would not do if he did not have a gun, and then he becomes a bad guy. Or he becomes a dead guy. Or both.

[Winstonm]

I find it interesting that a Florida synagogue has brought suit against the Florida anti-abortion law as unconstitutionally restricting religious practices. It seems that the Jewish faith requires women have access according to what I heard on television.

[mikeh]

I agree with Ken.

 

In addition, while I doubt that this plays a role in the mass shootings, I wonder if some of the ‘I got angry and had a gun so used it’ shootings are in some way the result of how US entertainment portrays the use of guns.

 

My wife generally prefers US shows such as NCIS, FBI, Law and Order etc to the British shows I prefer. She finds the latter too slow.

 

Vera, Midsummer Murders, The Fall (which is Irish I think) never feature shootouts. The cops are the good guys but they resort to firearms very rarely.

 

In US shows the good guys rarely get killed no matter how many shots are fired at them. About the only time a good guy (by this I mean a regular character) dies is when the actor has been fired or has quit. I understand the reasons this is so….having to hire and write for new actors every show or so would be disruptive and audiences might be annoyed when favourite characters ‘die’.

 

But it engenders this impression that good guys are pretty much invincible, combined with the idea that it’s a smart thing to shoot ‘bad guys’…in much of this form of US entertainment people resort to shooting other people every episode.

 

Using a gun is portrayed as ‘the’ way to deal with bad guys.

 

Also, the good guys never inadvertently hit innocent bystanders,..their accuracy is astounding. Indeed, Trump is said to have wanted police to shoot protesters….not to kill but ‘shoot them in the legs’. I think we all know where Trump got that idea from.

 

Nobody with any knowledge of how police and military are trained, nor with how accurate these weapons are (handgun or heavier) would for one moment think that it’s possible to shoot people in the legs or, as some shows would have it, shoot a bad guy in the hand to make him drop his gun.

 

Cops etc are trained to aim for ‘the centre of the visible mass’….ie the torso if the torso is visible.

 

This is partly because when one shoots, one wants most of all to immobilize the target..to neutralize the threat and partly because, for the non psychopaths amongst us, actually trying to shoot someone is an extremely stressful event, and most shooters become inaccurate. By aiming for the centre of the visible mass, one increases the chances of scoring a hit on the target…miss by 6 inches and you’ve still likely hit the person…aim for a limb and the shot may well go wide.

 

So entertainment sends numerous messages. Gun violence is ‘the’ appropriate response to many situations. Good guys (and we all think of ourselves as the good guys) are almost invulnerable. Good guys never mistakenly kill innocents because )we never miss’.

 

Plus in most such shows the good guy shooter rarely exhibits even a passing emotional reaction to killing.

 

I had the experience of defending a police officer in a major lawsuit arising from a justified police shooting…a fatal one.

 

I learned a lot about police use of force. I also learned of how devastating it is for a true ‘good guy’ to be forced to shoot and kill. The officer in question was being attacked by a psychotic man armed with and waving metal pipes…running full tilt at the officer while yelling ‘kill me, kill me’

 

I can discuss some aspects only because they were made public at the seven week trial. He was so badly affected that he was unable to get back into the field for several years.

 

So US entertainment (including non law enforcement shows such as Yellowstone) teach all kinds of false crap about guns. They solve problems. Good guys are great shots. Bad guys, not so good. Killing someone rarely bothers the killers, be they good or bad guys. Innocents are only killed by bad guys.

 

Similar myths are displayed in allegedly historical shows…everything I’ve said applies to ‘westerns’ as well.

 

Video games are even more misleading.

 

I get it: portraying how gun violence affects the innocents and their friends and families, beyond the very short term, makes for depressing viewing. Showing that being a good guy doesn’t make one invulnerable would mean changing how these shows are written. Having good guys accidentally or intentionally (as happens especially to black civilians in the US) kill innocents won’t attract a lot of viewers. And so on.

 

The US is widely viewed as a sick society in terms of its gun fixation. Much of this is based on actual gun ownership and violence, but I wonder if there is not some form of feedback when one looks at popular culture. So much US entertainment relies upon the use of guns by both good and bad guys that I wonder whether that is both explained by and influences real world attitudes.

 

And, finally, there is the US attitude towards glorifying and distorting history, in particular the role of the gun in the development of the West. I think every society lies to itself about its history…I grew up in the aftermath of the loss of Empire in the UK and I was taught a lot of myths back then as well, so I think it’s pretty much universal. Unfortunately the US myths fetishize guns.

[kenberg]

Becky and I have read all the Vera books and seen all or most of the Vera tv shows. We have seen a lot of Midsummer Murders, a show with its own peculiarities. For a long time there were always exactly three killings in each show. We would try to guess which three it would be.

 

As far as the shoot-outs go in US entertainment it is impossible to overstate the sheer ridiculous nature of it. Maybe when I was 8 it was fine. We all played cops and robbers, but I think even at that age we were fairer about who got shot. In modern tv shows the bad guys couldn't hit an elephant standing five feet away, at least not if the elephant was the star of the show.

 

Back when I was 8, or whatever age I was when I went to cowboy movies, my mother explained to me that herding cattle was hard work involving more than riding along playing a guitar and singing. Maybe she could have let me have my fantasies for a while longer but we do have to grow up. I mentioned before that that was about my age when I saw Red River. Ok, it's John Wayne. But it's a step up in realism from Hopalong Cassidy.

[johnu]

I find it interesting that a Florida synagogue has brought suit against the Florida anti-abortion law as unconstitutionally restricting religious practices. It seems that the Jewish faith requires women have access according to what I heard on television.

The official state religion in QOP states does not allow for inferior (any religion other than the fake christian fundamentalist) religions. So, it doesn't seem likely that Florida courts will allow that suit to win.

[pilowsky]

I haven't watched movies or TV in years (I gave it up when a show called gogglebox appeared where I was supposed to watch people watching other people on television).

The fact the Trump was born on the day that John Logie Baird died was the nail in the coffin.

Something I recall distinctly is that in the shoot-em-up genre the villain in US productions is commonly a foreigner.

German, South African, Russian, English whatever.

Productions where a typical WASP defeats a typical WASP were rare.

Think of Die Hard, Lethal Weapon etc., Who are the villains?

In one of them they scored a twofer with Jeremy Irons playing a German.

 

[Gilithin]

Something I recall distinctly is that in the shoot-em-up genre the villain in US productions is commonly a foreigner.

German, South African, Russian, English whatever.

That's only true after it became socially unacceptable for the villains to be non-white Americans. A few more years of Trump's gang and perhaps we can all go back to that instead.

[pilowsky]

Is it time to take a vote on who the candidates will be in 2024 and who will win?