Cesca on cynicism

What is the difference between gloomy and cynical? It is never fun to be accused of cynicism, we are supposed to be the "Shiny, Happy People" REM sang about all those years ago. A few definitions to help explain.
Cynicism: An attitude of scornful or jaded negativity, especially a general distrust of the integrity or professed motives of others. Also: the holding or expressing of opinions that reveal disbelief and sometimes disdain for commonly held human values and virtues.
Pessimism - the feeling that things will turn out badly 1. A tendency to stress the negative or unfavorable or to take the gloomiest possible view.
2. The doctrine or belief that this is the worst of all possible worlds and that all things ultimately tend toward evil.
3. The doctrine or belief that the evil in the world outweighs the good.
A healthy dose of skepticism or even cynicism is a very important tool when venturing into the public venue of politics. After all, people do lie. People also cheat and manipulate others. But not all and it takes a special kind of sociopath to lie, cheat, and manipulate you one-on-one or in a small group.

For the purposes of this blog, cynicism is the active understanding of the negative in human nature and using it for selfish purposes. Gloominess is the passive understanding of these features and the almost complete lack of power to do anything about it. However, being gloomy also means expecting the worst to prevent disappointment.

Nobody jujitsu's this sort of lowered expectations better than Bob Cesca. He recently nailed Mitt Romney's ultimate cynicism championship title in a way that makes my eyes water. If I live a thousand years I could never equal this zinging indictment.

Americans shrug off the political process under the assumption that politicians are liars and scam artists with little regard for their personal struggles and pet issues. So that’s what voters expect when election days grow larger in the window. Consequently, they either ignore the process or make thoughtless, dart-board choices based on an insufferable “lesser of two evils” brand of pessimism.
But it takes a particularly cynical politician to literally build a campaign around this negative expectation.
Mitt Romney is doing exactly that.

That is the cynicism I am trying to get at. Just as the hedge fund monkeys flinging their worthless mortgage-backed feces at mouth-breathing investors, or the whole trail of hot-potato passing vermin who built the damn housing bubble in the first place. "We know it's crap, but everyone is in on the game."

Romney is easily the most jaded, cynical presidential politician since Richard Nixon. He operates with the hubristic attitude that voters expect him to be shifty, and therefore he’s allowed to be shifty. The expectation gives him permission to be that caricature. For example, he accused President Obama of being an elitist because he attended Harvard even though anyone with a cursory knowledge of Romney’s history knows he also attended Harvard. But none of that matters. He’s smart and calculating enough to know for certain that a chunk of Republican voters will accept the claim at face value and not investigate the contradictions and hypocrisy, and the rest of the Republican voters expect him to say whatever it takes to win, so who cares if it’s bullshit?

And here we have it. The money shot.

BTW, I knew it would only be a matter of time before someone in the reality-based community found some redeeming quality in george w. bush's presidency. Yes, he had core values... They all sucked rotten eggs, but he did have some. But he had to lie constantly to disguise how rotten they were.

After absorbing the awesome in that post, check out what Cesca has to say about Social Security and the rottenness of pilfering morons wishing to steal it from you.

NBPP? Never heard of them.

Oh the things I miss reading boring history books. Shortly after the election of Barack Obama to the presidency, I was informed about his incredible menace to democracy called the New Black Panther Party. The breathless way in which this threat was discussed made me think there must be something to it right? Well, after sifting through some google hits, I found out that there were two guys standing in front of a polling place in Pennsylvania and one of them had a baton or something. People walked in and out without any problems. Then there were no actual complaints about voter intimidation during the nonevent. But, of course on fox news where big, scary black men are always about to break into your home and rape your wife, this was a big deal.
Now, I am not convinced that these two chuckleheads aren't on fox's payroll or some other scam, but they resurfaced with $10,000 to bounty george zimmerman's capture after Treyvon Martin was murdered. Which was good, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson can only scare the only mostly-true believers so far. There needed to be a good new black boogieman to scare quiverfull children with.

Anyway, the NBPP should be on fox news' payroll if the amount of coverage they get on that propaganda masquerading as news channel is any indication. Google it for yourself, these two dorks may have big mouths but nothing can rile up both the fear factor and self-righteousness glands in right-wing authoritarian followers like scary looking black guys. The rest of us are left wondering what all the fuss is about.

Speaking of glands and their dysfunctions, there is a scary organization out there that constantly works with glassy-eyed fervor to make our society less safe. It is called the NRA. This merry band of vigilantes keeps racheting up fear to sell its merchandise, pull in donations and membership fees, and pays nothing in taxes for marketing murder. According to one site (cached) they take in $237 million a year but spend next to nothing to lobby government. The fear they peddle is enough to bring the faithful to the polls to defeat evil, gun-grabbers. Evidence to the contrary that no one is coming for their guns no matter how much we the people may plead for it. Really, when was the last time a Democratic candidate campaigned on gun control?

Fear is just cover for approved aggression in the minds of authoritarian followers. Isn't that what all the "castle doctines" and "stand your ground" laws are for in the end? Giving "responsible gun owners" permission to shoot any "suspicious and/or threatening" characters around them?

I take a lot of criticism for my extreme stance of, you know, not wanting to get shot. So, in order to deflect the coming screams of how "anti-gun" I am let me clarify. I do not hate guns, I hate people, the kind that think they get to be judge, jury, and executioner for stepping on their lawn or "acting suspicious."

While you chew on that, find any fox news article talking about zimmerman's arrest. Read through some of the comments. These are the people you are defending when you say it is perfectly reasonable to have these enabling laws on the books. These are the people holding the gun. And if you are not 100% "one of them" (and believe me, they come up with reasons to disqualify people more and more frequently) you will be staring down the barrel. You will live or die based on these highly reasonable and respectable "responsible gun owners'" feelings that day.

Good Luck Folks!

Goldstein Lives!

There is no surrender.
Liberals like myself long ago gave up the fight for justice and equality in America. We have instead been trying desperately to drive away the vultures and hyenas that have been picking away at the liberal state's corpse.

We plead "uncle, uncle, uncle" for the thugs to stop beating us. But all they hear is "unc, unc, unc" and "cul, cul, cul" because in a perverse way... they need us... if only as a boogieman to scare their quiverfull children.

Right-wingers can only be happy if they have an enemy. They are naturally aggressive and need a target for their aggression. The Twentieth Century can be seen in some ways as a winnowing of these enemies progressively toward the center. It was uncontroversial that the US was a liberal society at the turn of the century, liberal in a classical sense. This meant the right of individuals to vote for their representatives, to be secure in their personal liberty and property, and pursue happiness in their own way. But at the same time, corruption in government and business was rife, voter fraud and vote-buying was rampant; and "let the buyer beware" was the only protection from everything from fly by night insurance, patent medicine, mystery meat, and bank failures. Sounds like a right-wing paradise right? Wrong. While big government, feminists, and homosexuals had yet to come on the scene in a big way to oppress innocent white men, there were uppity Negroes to lynch, Catholics and Jews to oppress, Freemasons, immigrants, etc. Oh yes, there was that moral crusade against demon rum too.

There were genuine radicals in America at that time too. Anarchists and Socialists and even Communists had small niches in American politics. Emma Goldman and Eugene Debs would die laughing if they heard the paroxysms of horror coming from our current right wingers about "socialism" and "Marxism." A couple of red scares later, the rise and fall of the new KKK, and a couple world wars rendered genuine radicalism a fringe element in American politics. Realistic, pragmatic, and mature liberals instead built a society where some freedom to harm others was restricted, other forms of fraud and abuse regulated, and generally placing watchmen between workers, consumers, and those who would do them harm. The other side of the coin was a public commitment to assisting those who needed help. It worked pretty well for over a generation. Americans enjoyed the highest standard of living in the world and our government managed to protect not only this country from totalitarian communism, but a great many allies as well.

So what the hell happened? The same government and spirit of public service that built that standard of living and protection from external attack is itself under attack from so many people who benefited greatly from the very thing they now despise. Having driven real radicals from the scene long ago, today's occupiers can barely hold a candle to bomb-throwing anarchists of a the previous age, right wing authoritarians now attack... teachers?

Tina Dupuy recently wrote how the right needs an enemy, if a real one cannot be found, one can be invented. Perhaps she is right that this time they screwed up, but to the faithful, it just does not matter. Wind them up and point them toward what ever the masters feel like attacking, away they will go pitchforks in hand. There just seems no disconnect between attacking the people we entrust to teach our children as overpaid and a burden on society in some fantasy land, and the reality. There are shadowy "teacher's unions" and "birth-control pushing feminazis" to send the posse after. And away they go. Victory is never complete. No matter how many "moral" transgressions their leaders are guilty of, no matter how badly right wing politicians screw up the system on purpose, no matter if you actually benefited from a program now targetted as "immoral" or how low your taxes actually are. The right is always on the march.

Orwell depicted Emmanuel Goldstein as just such a shadow threat to the glorious Ingsoc system of Oceania. Did he or Big Brother ever actually exist? The two minutes hate must continue regardless of reality.

I am tired of surrendering to these jackasses. They will never stop coming for all the things you value, if their violent rhetoric is to be believed, soon they will be coming for you as well. It does not matter if you really are a liberal or not. The right wing nuts who cheer death, cheer injustice, cheer misery to others must be stopped. If the NRA's rant on the supposed Goldsteins coming for "your" guns did not convince you, look around. They are everywhere and horribly afraid that you might pursue happiness in a way they don't like. If Goldstein does not exist, he must be invented. Therefore, we will never be safe. To the barricades! Stop hiding! Stop hoping they will get tired of hitting you or come to some sense of civilized reason. It is time to fight back!

I should have become a plumber

From Alternet:

Deciphering Right-Wing Code: What Conservatives Are Really Saying When They Seem to Spew Nonsense
 Did Rick Santorum just declare the next right-wing crusade?

April 4, 2012  |  


Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore




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Progressive commentators have been piling on Rick Santorum for a weirdly incoherent statement he made about the state of American history classes in America's colleges. Here's what he said:

"I was just reading something last night from the state of California. And the state of California universities -- I think it's seven or eight of the California system of universities -- don't even teach an American history course. It's not even available to be taught. Just to tell you how bad it's gotten in this country, where we're trying to disconnect the people from the root of who we are...."

The derision Santorum has received is well-deserved. He messed up the facts badly: 10 of the 11 UC campuses do teach US history (the only exception is UC San Francisco, which is exclusively a graduate-level health sciences campus and offers no humanities classes at all).

It also misses the point. It's not news when a conservative says something that was flat-out wrong, or when liberals take smug satisfaction in demonstrating that they are (as usual) factually right. But there was something else Santorum said in that statement that was newsworthy and important -- and in our zeal to debunk the facts, many progressives are completely missing it.

It's Not About the Facts

The thing to remember is this: Even though right-wing narratives are often factually wrong, they are absolutely never content-free. Stories like this are always about something. And the weirder and more factually challenged they sound to liberal ears, the more important it probably is for us to know what that something is. Too often, our obsession with the gobsmacking wrongness of these statements deafens us to clues to the right's current motives and intentions that are frequently lurking in these strange declarations.

I'm a native-born speaker of right-wing code. And what I heard in Santorum's ramble was, frankly, hair-raising. To my ears, it was a very loud and clear tip-off that conservatives are gearing up an all-out frontal assault on funding for America's public universities.

The Story Beneath the Story

Santorum's brief comment, incoherent as it seemed, communicated a great deal to his audience by artfully triggering a vast universe of essential right-wing memes. Consider what got communicated here.

The University of California may have 11 campuses, but in the right-wing mind, "UC" is code for just one of them -- UC Berkeley, the first and still-flagship campus, which holds a mythic position as Ground Zero for all of Dirty Hippiedom in the conservative imagination. If Satan is alive on earth, there is no doubt that his zip code is 94720. Everything conservatives loathe about the Evil 1960s is epitomized by the very word, "Berkeley."

Oblique as this already is, invoking UC and Berkeley also calls forth the ghost of Ronald Reagan -- always a good thing in conservative stories. Let it never be forgotten that Our Hero made his political bones by standing up to those Dirty Hippie brats while he was governor of California. He punished them by abolishing UC's free tuition -- which is still remembered by the faithful as the first historic salvo in the long war to defund all public services.

Furthermore: picking on UC was telling in another way. When conservatives seriously gather themselves to go after somebody, they always attack frontally, at their intended victim's point of greatest strength. (See also: swiftboating.)  The University of California system has long been regarded as the best public university system in America, and Berkeley as the best single public university in the country. Santorum's story's focus on this particular system -- the biggest, baddest exemplar of its type -- is no random accident. It draws a bead on the strongest target on the field. This is almost always a clear sign that conservatives are lining up their artillery -- in this case, for an open assault on America's public colleges and universities.

The Crusade Begins

When wingnuts say stuff like this, it is never, ever offhand. This narrative is making the rounds on the right because somebody is laying the groundwork for an imminent, planned political action. Santorum's screed is the first stage of this campaign. It's a story that justifies the coming action, and puts the issue on the public table for discussion. It explains to right-wing followers that public universities, already well-understood as havens for liberal (!) public employees (!!) who exist only to corrupt the youth (!!!), are now also so blatantly unpatriotic (!!!!) that they no longer deserve taxpayer support.

Further inquiry bore this suspicion out. It turns out that Santorum's weird claims about UC's history departments were a garbled rendering of an op-ed that appeared last week in the Wall Street Journal. (The article is behind a paywall; but the report it referenced, from the conservative Hoover Institution, is not.) The WSJ piece deplored UC's history programs thusly:

This decline in the quality of education coincides with a profound transformation of the college curriculum. None of the nine general campuses in the UC system requires students to study the history and institutions of the United States. None requires students to study Western civilization, and on seven of the nine UC campuses, including Berkeley, a survey course in Western civilization is not even offered. In several English departments one can graduate without taking a course in Shakespeare. In many political science departments majors need not take a course in American politics.

The report goes on to point out that university faculties skew decidedly liberal (perhaps because the facts have a well-known liberal bias), and that nothing but partisan education happens behind those ivy walls.

You can kind of squint sideways and see how Santorum got from here to there.

For the record: it is true that a single "survey course on Western Civilization" isn't offered at most UC campuses. That's because Western Civilization courses are more typically offered in a multi-part series, because the professors don't think it's possible to effectively teach 3,000 years of history in a mere 10 weeks. So all of UC's undergrad campuses offer plenty of courses in both US and Western history, and a lot of students take them to fulfill their general education requirements. However, it's also true that many students choose to broaden their horizons by taking something they didn't already cover in both elementary and high school -- say, Asian or African history -- instead.

Given how fast and loose the WSJ played with this point, it's probably not wise to credit it with much accuracy on the other claims, either.

But the content of this Hoover report isn't as important as the fact of its provenance, its existence, and its publication on the pages of the WSJ. Right-wing crusades almost always start with think-tank reports; and are issuized on the pages of conservative magazines and newspapers. From there, the ideas are picked up and disseminated by Fox, politicians, conservative ministers, and right-wing bloggers. If all goes well, within weeks, legislators will be paying attention, and lobbyists will be presenting them with ready-written legislation to propose to deal with this manufactured "problem."

This is the path we're on now. Santorum was setting the stage. He warned us, very clearly: Following the War on Public Employees and the War on Women, this will be the summer of the War on Public Universities. Whether the proposals will be to revoke their charters, close campuses, or sell off their facilities to for-profit colleges, you can bet that ALEC already has the bills in the can, and will be introducing them in state legislatures presently. 

We can waste our time and energy marveling at Mr. Santorum's lack of facticity -- or we can hear the clear warning of real danger just ahead, and start getting ready to defend our public universities.



Sara Robinson, MS, APF is a social futurist and the editor of AlterNet's Vision page. Follow her on Twitter, or subscribe to AlterNet's Vision newsletter for weekly updates.

More evidence that it is Democrats that are the real conservatives in this country. Republicans and their fellow travelers really are the authoritarians in America. Whatever flavor you want to ascribe to them: fascists, theocrats, corporatists, radical reactionaries, etc. Take whatever case you want, from the Wisconsin uprising to my wife's library getting attacked for daring to serve patrons the theocrats find icky, liberals are increasingly besieged and put on defense for what used to be taken for granted. The Democratic Party has few new ideas, if their platform has any ideas at all they tend to be watered-down and slightly more humane ways to privatize and deregulate the public sphere. All we have seen in the last decade is rear-guard actions to hold on to those good and just aspects of the New Deal system that is just abhorrent to the authoritarian mind.
So, I was laid off again and again in manufacturing, finally finding something I want to do with my life just in time for the fascist pigs to set their sights on universities... Greeeaaaattt.

Day One

It is quite understandable if you are not finished grieving today. Public education in West Bend was dealt a very serious blow with the election of Vinney Pheng to the school board. Take a few days, put politics out of your mind, it is really okay. When you're ready, the challenges will still be here. We certainly have our work cut out for us, but that is no reason to give up. As Noam Chomsky likes to say, the US is really an organizer's dream because there is great discontent out there along with great energy, it would take only the effort of sincere organizers to turn that discontent into positive, progressive change. Polls consistently show attitudes among the majority to be Social Democratic, people are willing to hear a message of progress and commonwealth. But American individualism, lack of social cohesion, and the atomization that accompanies everything from air conditioning to television means many people hold attitudes of cooperation in isolation. This tendency is reinforced by our economic makeup, while we arguably have never been more interconnected and dependent on each other, specialization and division of labor make it ever harder to relate to others.
The separation between people caused by all of these factors is one major reason why public schooling is so vital to American society. If we put aside the more sinister ideas about public schools from people like John Taylor Gatto and concentrate on what schools actually do, the reasons why authoritarian right-wingers desire so badly to destroy public education become rather obvious. Broadly speaking, public school systems are a covenant within a community. Public funds are pooled to build classrooms, hire and compensate qualified teachers, maintain the standards accepted by the majority in that community along with standards respecting the entire nation, and enlighten and protect our great treasures; our children. All students are brought together to learn not just reading, writing, and arithmetic; but social interaction under practical supervision.
Sure it is not perfect, but public schools are under public control. Theoretically, we can work together to improve the quality of education our children receive. But as Mr. Pheng proved, demagogues can manipulate voters by playing on their emotions and fears. They misdirecti real concerns into unfounded fears, and manufacture problems to present destructive and harmful "solutions." Suddenly, inclusion and pluralism are destructive ideas, creativity and exploration are harmful, and of course we simultaneously are paying too much in taxes and cannot afford education. Compartmentalized thinking, egged on by demagogues, separates the public services we all want from the costs and funding necessary to maintain them. Taxes have been made into a dirty word, while in an earlier age Justice Louis Brandeis could reason that "taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society" today government allegedly functions by magic.
Trying to argue on those terms will always be a losing proposition. In the coming days, weeks, months our ideas should always be presented in terms of commonwealth. There will always be people who simply reject the idea of community on principle, in the story we construct for our side these are the villains. As Drew Westen argued, politics is a story and there have to be good guys and bad guys, as we make our case for commonwealth and community the selfish citizens who want the benefits of civilization but want others to pay for it are the enemy. It is very important to keep our ideas alive between elections, providing an alternative story for people who believe in community but in the absence of a progressive storyline may fall into isolation again or worse, fall for the next Vinney Pheng. We are here to stay and will not give up.
This is a fight we can win, truth, justice, and the American way are on our side. But it will take work, when you are ready to join the campaign we will be here. And remember, we all have different talents and capacities, doing something is much better than doing nothing. From each according to their gifts, to each according to their need. West Bend is badly in need of your energy and talents, and every little bit makes a difference. Today is simply Day One of the effort.

Despair or discouragement

A little more than 5,000 people in West Bend proved that they cannot make an intelligent voting decision yesterday. Vinney Pheng made no attempt to hide what a lunatic he is, but snuck onto the school board anyway. I don't have the stomach to watch video of him ranting about how horrible schools are or what harm he plans to do to the public school system. But it is clear he belongs far from any position of power or authority.
There have been quite a few rumblings of despair today from people who care about educating our children, even from some who, gasp, have no direct involvement. For what it is worth, today we grieve, tomorrow we start working to bring sanity back to local government. Feel discouragement, but not despair. Loonies sneak onto school boards all the time, despair won't stop the next one. Only organization and getting the word out can do that. There are a few reasons not to give up.
First of all, and I may be overstating the effect, but outside events can and do contribute to local elections. Before elaborating, it should be said that West Bend is not a complete freakshow, they just have a slightly higher number of freaks per-capita than usual for Wisconsin. There are quite a few, maybe even a majority, of nice, decent people who don't deserve to be shackled to lunatics controlling schools or other public systems. This is a good enough reason for me to keep trying. All politics may be local, but the fox news crowd certainly had a reason to show up yesterday. Much more than people motivated to renominate the president. But there is no way to know how much of an impact that had.
I suspect it was quite a lot, therefore I found it encouraging that only 600 votes separated the child of light from the child of darkness. Not landslides to be sure. Maybe if mittens romney had the nomination sewn up by now there would have been less motivation for the right wingers to show up.
The Democratic Party of Washington County has been reinvigorated recently. A new office, new members, new energy, and a new climate of can-do optimism. People that value education and other public services could just sit back and wait for the buyer's remorse to set in. After all, our soon-to-be-ex-governor has already done quite a bit of damage to education at all levels. Pheng can only marginally add to that harm. His rhetoric is sure to turn off lots of normal people. No, the Dems tried hard, organized, communicated, researched, and reached out to present a different vision than that of the right wing. I couldn't vote there because I don't live in West Bend. Next time we will be that much more prepared, one setback is not the end of the world. A continuous presence and continual effort can really keep progressive values activated in people that have every reason to focus on their own lives and own situation. But we need to articulate why working together can produce commonwealth, making all of our lives better.
This is short term discouragement, not despair. And coming from a gloomy historian, that should mean something :)

Dred Scott part 2

Many moons ago in a senior level Civil War course I was struck by the insight that southern fireaters (vehement defenders of slavery as a positive good) were very similar to contemporary gun fireaters. In their rhetoric, slaveowners presented the image of God's chosen people under attack from all sides and forced to go on the offensive. Defense and counterattack, the preferred disguise of aggressors everywhere. Succession and Civil War were rationalized as a counterrevolution to preserve the "pure" intent of the founding fathers against the radical abolitionist Abraham Lincoln. Then as now, I am always struck by the meekness of the Children of Light. Lincoln was anti-slavery for sure but no abolitionist, though fireaters saw his efforts to contain the spread of slavery to the new American lands of the west as the death of their "peculiar institution." Then as now, conspiracy theories were rife in America. Then as now, the real conspiracy of power sows seeds of outrage and discontent to those who should know better. The only defense for the slave power conspiracy was vigorous offense. And of course, then as now an activist, radical Supreme Court delivered a decision on behalf of power that threatened to change the American landscape forever.

Briefly, the Dred Scott decision involved a doctor who brought his slave servant with him to the North on business and died while in a free state. The servant, Dred Scott, argued through intermediaries (property couldn't bring lawsuits) that since his master died on free soil, he was now free. The case wound its way to the Supreme Court and the highest court in the land ruled that no, not only was Scott not free but that slaveowners could bring their property anywhere they wished without hinderance by local laws against it. Essentially this decision opened the door to the spread of American slavery anywhere the stars and stripes flew.

Now, just to be clear, I am not arguing that guns and slaves are equivalent. There is, however, similarity in methods of power using its influence to pass laws against the will of the majority. In this instance, after Trayvon Martin was murdered, the forces of darkness did not express remorse or try to rationalize a defense, they went on offense. From Thinkprogress:

"Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) and 28 other Senate Republicans on Tuesday introduced a bill that would allow people authorized to carry concealed weapons in their home state to do the same in other states that allow concealed carry, without requiring a federal permit.

The Respecting States’ Rights and Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, S. 2213, is meant to ensure that the Second Amendment rights of people are not infringed upon when they travel between states. But rather than set up a federal permitting process for concealed weapons, the bill would essentially require states with concealed-weapons permits to honor the permits of other states."

We can quibble about specifics, but for crying out loud, is Trayvon destined to be the Twenty-First Century's Dred Scott? Is every state destined to follow this graph?

justifiable-homicide-since-2005 from www.progressflorida.org

The nuts at nra sure are salivating over the possibility of this escalation of violence. '"Congress should recognize that the right to self-defense does not end at state lines," said Chris W. Cox, executive director for NRA's Institute for Legislative Action.  "The NRA has been successfully advocating in favor of strong right-to-carry laws for the past 25 years.  We take a backseat to no one when it comes to the right of law-abiding Americans to carry concealed handguns for self-defense."' As Tex Shelters at AddictingInfo.org puts it these "law-abiding American" gun nuts are "People that obsess over guns and see them as the main solution to disputes are fear-filled paranoids. They make life less safe for the rest of us and now have fewer legal restraints to stop them from killing those who scare them." Of course, this campaign of mass murder without repercussions is taking place in defiance of popular opinion.

Table 1 Public Support for Measures to Regulate Firearms, 2006
 

% for Prohibiting
 Gun Use When Under the Influence of Alcohol                             91 %
 for Limiting Sales of High Power/50-caliber Rifles                      85 %
 for Limiting Sales of Semi-automatic Assault Weapons              82 %
 for Criminal Background Checks for Private Gun Sales              80 %
 for Police Permits to Purchase Guns                                                79 %
 for Stricter Gun Control after Terrorist Attacks                            76 %
 for Illegal Gun Sales to be Punished More than Illegal Drugs    54%

Source: 2006 General Social Survey, n=1364

But at the same time, only 11% of people want to outright ban handguns. So nra and the children of darkness are on the warpath against a basically imaginary threat. But, Goldstein is out there somewhere, always threatening to disrupt Oceania's harmony. Somewhat new in the storyline is the destruction and defamation of Trayvon's character, as though his clothing or twitter posts somehow excuse his murder. So many "law-abiding Americans" have jumped on this bandwagon it is as though we just went back to some dark age when racism was perfectly cool again.