Of the Nitwits, by the Nitwits, for the Nitwits

Last week in Connecticut a young psychopath committed a horrific sequence of murders at a school. Opportunistic politicians are rushing in to demand new laws and regulations and calling the event a political game changer. Yet to those who think about political questions in terms of principles, this event or any other single event is irrelevant to the issues of gun control. The reasons for a thoughtful person to be for gun rights or for gun control have not changed since last Friday. The right of the citizens to arm themselves for self defense has not changed. The fact that guns are dangerous weapons has not changed. The danger of widespread availability of firearms making it easier for criminals or psychopaths to get weapons has not changed.  The desire of much of the political class to rule a disarmed populace has not changed. The function of an armed citizenry as a bulwark against tyranny has not changed.

In a world of principled and scrupulous politicians and thoughtful citizens, nothing in the debate would have changed, because great political controversies  would not be driven by the emotions of the moment or affected by emotional reactions to single events.  That of course is not the world of reality. In the real world we have large numbers of voters who decide who should be president on the basis of photo ops after a  hurricane  and posturing, yahoo politicians who cater  to such people -  acting as though they never before considered the possibility that nuts could get guns and commit crimes.  In the real world we have disgusting politicians and their cheerleaders in the traditional media capitalizing on people’s grief and shock over a crime and ghoulishly dancing on the graves of the victims  to push their agendas while nerves are raw. (An observer could fairly ask the Michael Bloombergs of the world “have you no shame?”, and could follow up by asking them  whether their opinion of the intelligence of the public is really as low as their behavior makes it seem.) In the real world, we have logrolling and  tub thumping – as with creating the TSA after September 11^th and now with a president who seems to promise he can prevent any psychopaths from committing crimes in the future. In the real world we have Governor Le Petomane and the boys deciding they had better pretend to do something about the problems in Rock Ridge because their phony baloney jobs are at stake.

It is easy to be contemptuous of the politicians for all the sick shows they put on, but we should not stop with that. After all, politicians wouldn’t be doing this sort of thing if they didn’t think it would sell.