Number One with a Bullet

There we were, thinking that abortion would be the issue that drives the mid-term elections. Surprise! It just might be gun control.

We are in the middle of civil wars on multiple fronts. The bloody battles of the original Civil War took the names of otherwise ordinary American towns and turned them into historical symbols: Antietam, Chancellorsville, Shiloh, Gettysburg. Now, mass shootings have given us Uvalde, Parkland, Newtown, and Littleton.

We all understand what needs to be done here. As far as I know, average citizens are not allowed to drive a tank to work or launch ballistic missiles from their backyards, so why do they need functioning military-grade assault rifles? Why should background checks not apply to gun shows? Couldn’t there be a universal red flag law to stop attacks before they happen? Remember after 9/11 when the mantra was, “If you see something, say something?” The police would then have to take that “something” seriously. Police, by the way, can’t be everywhere, and social media companies obviously can’t catch every wacko-in-development. They need users’ help.

None of these steps, of course, is foolproof. Bad guys can always find prohibited weapons. Talented psychopaths flagged before a gun purchase can convince a shrink they are perfectly sane. But if simple, reasonable measures slow down repeats of Uvalde, that would be an accomplishment.

All roads lead to the same place: it’s not about legislatION, but legislatORS. We can wail on about how lobbies are too strong and how it’s impossible to change the Senate filibuster or other elements of the status quo. We CAN hang lawmakers’ refusal to address the gun issue around their necks and turn them out of office if they don’t act. Yeah, that’s the slow, hard part, but there is realistically no other solution.

Culture doesn’t change overnight. Tobacco is no longer cool, but it has taken the better part of 400 years to get there.  It may take decades to end the American love affair with guns, which, like it or not, is part of our history. But since these long journeys begin with a single step, as the saying goes, we might as well put one foot in front of the other and start walking. There is no free ride.

 

 

 

Waking the Sleeping Giant

The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, was considered a great surprise victory for Japan, but its architect, Admiral Yamamoto, wrote in his diary hat the attack may simply have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve. The next day, the US declared war on Japan, whose expansionist intentions in the Pacific had long been known, but the attack turned it into reality for a previously neutral America.

Last night, a reported draft opinion of the US Supreme Court majority to overturn Roe v. Wade, the half-century-old ruling legalizing abortion, was leaked to the news media – something that has never happened in the history of the court. A final decision was not expected until June, but the shocking leak made it a present reality.

Who leaked the draft, and why? If it were a lawyer working at the court, that individual could be disbarred, falling on their career sword. Could it be that the leak was done deliberately at the start of primary season? A buzzing alarm clock for the sleeping giant?

Now that the Supreme Court has a conservative majority, the likely overturning of Roe may seem like a great victory for the right wing, the latest domino to fall in the culture war. And how many times have we heard on cable news that the Republicans will take over both the House and Senate later this year, simply because a party reversal always happens in midterm elections.

The fact is, it will happen only if it’s allowed to. Democrats have long known the odds are against them this year, but they seem to have done relatively little about it. Essentially, the Supreme Court majority is not considering outlawing abortion, but simply returning the question to the states, many of which are controlled by Republican-dominated legislatures. There is only one way the Democrats, allied with sympathetic Republicans, can change the course of this river, and that is by changing the math: winning elections at all levels, which means winning enough votes to put legal abortion into state and federal law. The right seems to have put many obstacles in the way, but these will have to be viewed as challenges, not excuses for failure.

The left is now worried that the country is about to full-on enter The Handmaid’s Tale. That is indeed how this story will end, if the giant hears the alarm, but rolls over and goes back to sleep.