[Dialogue] 2/07/13, Spong: Gun Control, Immigration and Senator Hagel: The Manifestations of Cultural Paranoia in our Current Political Debate

Thu Feb 7 12:43:46 PST 2013

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	Gun Control, Immigration and Senator Hagel: The Manifestations of Cultural Paranoia in our Current Political Debate
	There are times when listening to the political debate in this country that I am absolutely astonished. Many of the participants in the current struggles regarding the proposed limitation on assault weapons, or making background checks for gun ownership universal, appear to be responding to a world that I do not believe exists. The debate on a proposed immigration bill seems to me to reveal little more than massive xenophobia. The Senate hearings on the confirmation of Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense seem to want to rewrite the history of the second Iraq war. Am I the only one who is out of touch with reality or is something else operating in this nation, but below the level of consciousness? Do people, for example, really believe that they need military assault guns that will fire 100 bullets without reloading to protect themselves from the Federal Government? Did the framers of the second amendment really believe that the constitution guarantees to individuals the right to possess a military arsenal sufficient to defend our homes against a frontal assault by a battalion of armed criminals? Can a nation made up of immigrants really close its doors to others of the world’s “huddled masses, who yearn to be free” and who otherwise qualify? In the Hagel debate have our leaders, including Senator John McCain, forgotten that the reason we were told the Iraq war was necessary did not exist or that the “surge” was required not to win that war, but to pacify a country that was about to fall into a religious civil war between the Sunnis and the Shia? Political debate is certainly a legitimate and a vital part of our democracy, but does it not have to be connected with reality to be effective? Let me examine briefly the evidence that disturbs me.
	The United States is a far more violent society than any of the developed nations of the Western world. Our murder rate is off the charts when compared with Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Scandinavia or Germany. From where in our national character does this killing violence emerge? The mass killings that have occurred recently in schools, theaters, worshiping communities and even at public political rallies, have become so regular that, while we are still horrified, the fact is that no one is any longer surprised. Many of these episodes appear time after time to be the work of a mentally disturbed person, but we still debate whether background checks should be required for all gun owners and whether mentally ill people or those with criminal records can be ruled out as gun owners. The Newtown, Connecticut slaughter was directed against defenseless women and children. The bodies of the youngest victims in that tragedy were not just killed; they were riddled with as many as eleven bullets each. We are faced as a society with increasing levels of fear. We cannot go to our places of worship, take our children to an elementary school, venture out to a theater, or meet with our congresswoman in a public place without facing the threat of being murdered and yet these realities are not judged to be of sufficient importance to cause us to temper by law the passions of our gun culture. The representatives of the National Rifle Association want to counter these sources of fear by posting armed guards in public places and by having our children taught by “pistol-packing” teachers in our public schools. They are opposed to universal background checks, because “they won’t work,” that is, no criminal, they say, will submit to a background check. That argument makes as much sense to me as suggesting that since bank robbers will not obey the law we ought to have no laws against robbing banks. Am I missing something?
	Are assault weapons with magazines that fire 100 bullets needed for any purpose other than mass murder? If we as a nation can ban the civilian possession of napalm, machine guns, bazookas, missile launchers, tanks and nuclear weapons without violating the 2nd Amendment, why can we not ban military assault weapons from individual ownership without that measure constituting “an assault on our second amendment rights?” If one child in one school can be saved by such legislation, is it not worth it? Because in a free society no one will ever be 100% safe, should we do nothing to make some of us safer? Because this argument seems so strange to me I begin to suspect that there must be other agendas operating in this debate, agendas that are hidden from view, perhaps even hidden from those who offer these out of touch arguments.
	The immigration debate has similar irrationalities connected with it. First please note that this debate focuses primarily on immigration coming from the nations of our Southern hemisphere. I have heard of no one who wants to build a protective wall along the thousands of miles of common boundary that we share with Canada to stop illegal entry. Is our perception of the skin colors of Canadians and Mexicans a factor in our fear? Is this an expression of our unrecognized racism at work? Who are Mexicans? They are the descendants of those we once called “Indians,” the first settlers in the Western hemisphere who appear to have migrated from Siberia some 15,000 to 25,000 years ago. In 1846 we went to war against Mexico and in our victory annexed about half of what was then the nation of Mexico. Our present states of Texas, Nevada, California and Utah, as well as significant parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming were once areas claimed by Mexico. Are we afraid that those we once conquered might through “illegal” migration reclaim their former homeland? We close our eyes to the fact that American businesses and American citizens regularly hire those we call “illegal immigrants” to harvest our crops, to work in our hotels and restaurants, to tend our yards and homes, and always at a pay scale below that required by law in the United States and with no concerns for either the health care of these workers or for their retirement savings. These employers also do not report these worker’s wages for tax purposes. Are we cognizant of the fact that without this source of cheap labor, the price of our food among other things would skyrocket? Is not the real reason that immigration reform cannot get through the Congress of the United States is that powerful vested interests do not want it to pass? So these vested interests fan the xenophobia of the masses and it is this fear that is mined by our politicians to build the political pressure that makes a legal attempt to put an end to this chaotic and illegal system all but impossible.
	The charges against Senator Hagel, fueled as they are by massive amounts of money from right wing sources, fit into the same picture. When Chuck Hagel was the Republican senator from Nebraska, a conservative mid-western state, he did not “buy” the propaganda campaigns of the war hawks in his party as they attempted to legitimize the war of choice that this nation unleashed against Iraq. These war hawks, most of whom had never served in this nation’s armed forces, justified this war after the fact by asserting that Saddam Hussein was evil and the world was better off without him. That may well be true, but the fact is that this nation has refused to go to war to unseat other evil regimes in North Korea, Syria, Serbia, Cambodia and a variety of countries in Africa. There has to be more to the anti-Hagel campaign than this. Senator Hagel’s apparent “sin” was that he saw through the war hawks’ propaganda and opposed that war even as he exposed the darker side of that chapter in our history and that he was right. Do we need to be reminded yet again that the weapons of mass destruction that were used to justify this war were not there and that the “surge” was required to prevent an Iraqi civil war that none of those who planned this war saw coming? To demand a “yes” or “no” answer to the “success” of “the surge” outside the context in which it was ordered is very revealing.
	Let me suggest that the real reason for the incredible hostility that marks each of these debates is that they all reflect a change in consciousness that threatens the power of the established order that has held political power in this land from the very beginning of our history. The world is changing. Power is shifting. America is no longer the unchallenged preserve of white males of European ancestry. That fact has raised fears in this nation to new historic levels. That is why the gun debate, the immigration debate and the Senate hearings on Senator Hagel are so irrational. That is also why in the last election the attempt was made to suppress minority votes in those states where a Republican governor and Republican legislators had the power to do so. That is why the discussion of manipulating the Electoral College by changing it from states to congressional districts is being entertained. That is why a campaign to delegitimize the first African-American President to be elected in this country has been systematically conducted, giving rise to such bizarre things as the legitimacy of his birth certificate, the claims that he is really a Muslim, a communist, a fascist, or at least that he is not “one of us.” The fact that he has won twice by significant majorities has only heightened the paranoia. That is why demographic shifts in this nation create such fears. That is why we have witnessed a systematic attack on women, including attempts not only to roll back Roe v. Wade, but also to challenge a woman’s right to comprehensive health care, including contraception. The controlling power of the white males of European background is receding. Women, young people, black voters, Hispanic voters and Asian voters are growing in political power. The gridlock that has tied up the Congress since 2010 grows out of that fact. These efforts will ultimately fail, but they are capable of doing massive harm to this nation and to its economy before that failure is fully recognized. One step forward is to raise these underlying fears to consciousness. That is what this column seeks to do. America needs two functioning political parties. Those parties, however, need to be grounded in reality. At this moment that is not true of both of them.
	~John Shelby Spong

	Read the essay online here.

	Question & Answer
	John Riingen, from San Diego, California, writes:

	Question:
	I write to request your comment on the words of Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard to the Muslim immigrants in Australia, as the latter want “to live under Islamic Sharia law…” In a more – it seems – conciliatory, but firm assertion, the Prime Minister said, “Most Australians believe in God. This is not some Christian, right wing, political push, but a fact, because Christian men and women, on Christian principles founded this nation and this is clearly documented…..We will accept your beliefs and will not question why. All we ask is that you accept ours and live in harmony and peaceful enjoyment with us. This is our country, our land, and our lifestyle, and we will allow you every opportunity to enjoy all this. But once you are done complaining, whining and griping about our Flag, our Pledge, our Christian beliefs, our way of life, I highly encourage you to take advantage of one other great Australian freedom, “The Right to Leave.” If you aren’t happy here then LEAVE. We didn’t force you to come here. You asked to be here. So accept the country you accepted.”

	Answer:
	Dear John,
	I have been to Australia some nine times and find it a very exciting, young and vibrant nation. I have also studied its politics and watched the Liberal Party (which strangely enough is the Conservative party of Australia) under former Prime Minister John Howard who ruled that country for many years. He was replaced by Kevin Rudd as the first Labor (read Liberal) Party Prime Minister, who then faced a revolt within his party that brought Ms. Gillard to power. One of the issues in all of these governments was immigration, complicated by the relationship of the predominantly European background Australians to the Aborigine population. There is great anxiety in Australia about being “overrun by Asians.” The land mass of Australia is slightly bigger than that of the United States, but the land capable of supporting a large population is limited to the coastal areas. The cities around the coast of Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Cairns and Darwin make up about 90% of the Australian population. Canberra, its capital city was, like Washington, built from the ground up to be the center of the government and Alice Springs, a beautiful oasis literally in the middle of nowhere, are the best known cities that are not on the coast. Australia’s population is about 25 million people.
	The primary immigrants to Australia today are Pacific Island people, Chinese and South East Asians. The European Australians appear to be worried that as a European island in an Asian sea, they might be overrun and become strangers in their own land. I believe that fear is what motivated Ms. Gillard’s words.
	Her words, however, make little rational sense since historically the Europeans immigrated to Australia and destroyed the culture of the original inhabitants. Now they want to protect themselves from having someone else do to them what they did to the Aboriginal people.
	Xenophobia, the fear of those who are different, is a common human trait. Xenophobic fears are expressed in the immigration anxieties that infect all nations. The fact is that nation states are all blending around the edges. In the United States Miami is a majority Hispanic city. The border with Mexico is so porous that the Mexican population in the United States is rising from California to Florida and is rapidly spreading into the nation’s heartland. Asian settlers have changed the face of such west coast cities as San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, Portland and Seattle. The north east of the United States is a veritable United Nations. People will always be drawn to the countries that have a higher standard of living. Resisting immigration on the part of those already settled is both inevitable as well as being doomed to failure.
	Ms. Gillard’s appeal to the Christian religion and her acknowledgement of the Christian nature of Australia is of note. My sense is that Ms. Gillard is known as a totally non-religious woman. She is, however, appealing to some of human beings deepest fears and politicians who mine human fears are dangerous.
	All of us are immigrants if one goes back far enough in human history. No one should, however, move to another country with the ambition of changing that country to suit the immigrant’s standards. That makes about as much sense as marrying your spouse because you hope to change him or her. A better way forward is to recognize our common humanity and then look at every person’s individual gifts. Ms. Gillard’s comments lead me to believe that she does not quite understand how to do that.
	~John Shelby Spong

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