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Getting used to being a hostage yet? [1]
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Date: 2023-05-10
debt ceiling “negotiations”, where the full faith and credit of the United States is under threat
“wrong place” murders—a Russian-roulette society
multiple mass shootings, with no time in between to grieve
This is a state of siege.
For authoritarians, this is a slipping of the leash, a form of freedom in the form of imposing control on others. At the same time, on the flip, that same act is meant to cow the rest of us. We’re meant to meekly enter submission.
When Uvalde happened, Republicans trotted out such “solutions” as barricaded doors and stationing armed guards inside public schools (even offering state funding to retired military and law enforcement officers to man these posts). The response seemed not just inadequate but wholly inappropriate as serious ideas to solve the crisis, which clearly appears to be means—the hardware, the guns. No, the solutions the GOP suggested were all meant to increase the militarization of public schools, inside and out.
Texas lawmakers, a handful of them, were celebrating getting a bill to raise the age of gun purchase—out of committee. To them, just this small lift to them seemed monumental. (It’s already failed, after just two days of movement, despite Texas seeing two mass shootings in one week.)
Right-wing advocates believe guns should be in the public square, with stand your ground and self-deputizing going on all around us.
Houses of worship. Grocery stores. Schools. Nightclubs. Malls. Public venues of every type have become sites for massacres. Can’t ask a neighbor to stop shooting his gun at night, or he’ll come over and shoot your family. Can’t use a leafblower to maintain your own yard, or someone will come over and blast you to death. Your yard. Your leafblower.
They shoot—they feel strength, they see others below them. They swagger.
On the other hand, what are we to feel?
The Rational National has it: “This isn’t freedom. This is being trapped by an extremist fringe.”
When the FBI releases a video showing civilians how to survive a mass shooting, we’re no longer living in freedom. We’re hostages.
When we ask—when we demand—that guns get under control so that children don’t die, Republicans guffaw. We’ve shown our hand. They know they have everyone’s children under threat. It’s a hostage situation.
And the grim equation is: the more kids die, the more willing we should be to let them take what they will, to build the society they envision. They want it all, and their revolution is bloody.
Already they are committed to seeing this through. It’s not that they want a polite society. They want a conditioned society.
So what does this do to the survivors of this threat? We get PTSD, we go on edge, become hypervigilant. We learn to identify with the aggressor.
It’s a defensive maneuver. It’s completely human nature. In the face of danger, we need a retreat, and sometimes the only retreat is in the mind. This is what the right wing means to induce in us, by taking us hostage.
Some call it Stockholm syndrome. It’s a form of relief, a form of indoctrination.
“Once I came to accept in my own mind the stark reality of my new life... the racking turmoil within me subsided. My everyday life became somewhat easier. All I had to do was to go along with them and that became easier day by day.”
That was Patty Hearst, talking about her transition into her new identity in the Symbionese Liberation Army. She was raped, dehumanized, degraded, kept in a closet for more than forty days. When she accepted her fate, she could function again. When she accepted the new environment of madness, she regained some measure of control.
The worst of those who get too close to panic will acquiesce, learn to accept the new subordinate position, learn to love Big Brother as he puts his boot in our face and begins to lean into it forever, until we no longer have a face.
This is their fantasy; it makes them giddy.
The way to defeat this is to keep living our lives, and to do so with boldness. We cannot let them take the square. We cannot change the day-by-day way we live because we fear what the next guy with a gun will do at whim.
I know it’s asking a lot, to keep going out in public as though there were no risk of dying in a hail of bullets. But is it a lot to ask? Should any of us even have to ask?
The other side is bonding in their alpha-maleness. What do we do in response? Live our best lives. A bully gets a true high when their victim bargains or pleads for mercy. We don’t want to shrink away. We want to be able to walk without this constant sense of needing to look over our shoulder or around the corner.
Absolutely we keep demanding that the means of violence get curbed or curtailed. But we’re not going to slump our shoulders and give in, no matter how much blood and gore they threaten.
I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. They’ve begun the bloodletting, and things will worsen before they improve. But they’ve started to kill the hostages. That never goes unnoticed.
The right wingers are betting this wave of fear will swing them into power, that they can pull the ladder up behind them and remain in power forever. But the more maniacal they become, the more the electorate will notice.
In the meantime, the rest of us need to band together. We must say, “No farther.” We need to promise each other that we will beat back this terrible wave, that it will not be us who will bend but rather the violence that breaks and dissipates. We need to join metaphorical hands and remember that we’re all in this together. We just need to make it through.
And the fever will break. As we stiffen our backs and stand as a bulwark for each other, we’ll prevail.
Just remember: we don’t negotiate with terrorists.
[END]
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