Tue, 18. December 2012
The State of America - 2
The US is different to most western nations in several respects, including gun policy. Despite the horrendous school massacre last week, many leading figures in the US have come out with statements in favour of escalating the arms held by civilians, instead of bringing in gun controls that other western countries take for granted.
Rather than move towards a new era of arms reduction, they say that school principals should be given semi-automatic assault rifles, with instructions to engage in a shoot-out with any potential assassin entering school premises.
The entrenched dependance on guns; the willingness to tolerate public massacres of large numbers of men, women and children in order to preserve the right of Americans to build their own weapon stockpiles; and the irrational high level of support for gun escalation are all early signs of a government losing control to the mob.
America - once the undisputed world leader in military power, science and technology, space exploration and more - has an obsession with guns which they are unable to face up to. It's the gun-toting wild, wild, West and they will not give it up. I read recently that already over 94,000 American civilians have been killed by guns this year alone. If true, that is an astonishing tragedy and only the mentally ill would argue for escalation.
Other signs that I see coming out of America are depressing too. THeir policy of retaining the death penalty is worrying. Most other civilised countries dropped capital punishment half a century ago. This obsession with barbaric punishment puts America among the top nations who kill their own citizens, along with China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Yemen, North Korea & Somalia. The willingness to permit the torture of terrorist supects is also concerning.
Finally there is America's growing obsession with fundamental christianity. Whilst the US Constitution wisely separates church and state, the Republican Party, the Tea Party and some Democrats are busy knocking that wall down. The fundamentalists are busy putting the bible and the ten commandments right out there in public affairs, in schools and offices and government agencies. They are spending millions to assemble a "replica" of Noah's ark and their anti-science push is permitting the fantasy of creationism to be taught to US children. Intolerance of homosexuals, atheists and other religions is commonplace, along with a pre-occupation for stopping US women from controlling their own bodies.
Add them all up: gun culture, inhumane killing of criminals, torturing of prisoners-of-war, the anti-science teaching stance, intolerance of alternate life-styles, hatred of non-conforming free-thinkers, anti-abortionists, the push for christian supremacy and government control at all levels. I suspect they may be all linked.
They are worrying trends and America is at a turning point. If they don't change, their country will polarise and confrontation will spiral out of control. Just as I would not want dictatorships in Iran or North Korea to get their hands on nuclear arms, I would not want the crazy fundamentalists controlling America's military machine - including its nuclear weapons stash.