The Crazy People and Their Flag

   Last week, Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, in the wake of the massacre at the church in Charleston, decided to remove the Confederate battle flag from where it had waved near the State Capitol ever since civil rights progress in the 1950’s inspired southerners to raise it as a symbol of their perpetual dedication to racism and oppression.  Subsequently, a lot of other states and corporations decided that it was no longer expedient to fly the flag as emblematic of their state or to sell as merchandise to the sort of people who embraced that emblem. Dylann Roof, the demented monster who murdered nine decent people in the practice of their religious devotions, loved that flag and identified strongly with it.  So did James Earl Ray.  So did the Duke boys.  But for now, that flag seems to be laden with historical burdens no one wants to deal with, and so, at long, embarrassing last, it’s being got rid of.

   I grew up in Texas and attended Robert E. Lee High School.  So did a whole lot of other people in the south, where Robert E. Lee is the most popular school name throughout the region.  There was a life size copy of a famous portrait of Lee on prominent display just inside the entry to the school.  I always thought it somewhat odd that such honor should be paid to a man who, for all his undoubted personal appeal, was by any standard a traitor to the United States of America who fought our bloodiest war in an attempt to disassemble what Washington, Jefferson, Adams and Franklin (and, of course, many others) had fought so nobly to create.  I similarly thought it slightly bizarre that the school’s girls’ drill team wore confederate army grey uniforms (with little short, grey skirts, grey kepis, and boots).  But I can’t say I gave it much thought.  Until my senior year, my school was segregated, drinking fountains about town were labelled “white” and “colored”.  My mother used to enjoy telling a story of my disappointment when, as a small (but literate) child, I discovered that the water labelled “colored” was not colored at all, but ordinary, clear drinking water.  I never had a personal relationship with a black person until I went to college.  The college was the University of Texas at Austin, a football school whose football team did not integrate until 1967 – the year after Michigan State University tied Notre Dame for the national championship with a team boasting a number of black All-Americans from Texas.  Many Texans are racists, but for most, that’s just a hobby.  Football, by contrast, is a religion.

   The other day on a Slate podcast called “Political Gabfest” a group of intelligent, well-spoken, knowledgeable commentators were discussing the phenomenon of the sudden downfall of the stars and bars, as well as the seemingly inexplicable fact of its longstanding popularity in the south.  It was suggested that the flag had been cherished as an expression of freedom, of defiance of the Federal government’s imposition of integration and minority rights.  Odd that It was thought that the flag was a symbol of freedom when its original significance was in leading the fight for slavery.  It was also suggested that the flag’s popularity might be less about the Civil War and slavery than an instinctive need to identify with one’s cultural history.  I thought about this for a time and realized that there was some truth – some really horrible, tragic truth in this notion. 

   There remain a few vocal lunatics in the south who voice the view that slavery was a good thing – good for the agricultural south, good even for the slaves, who were spared a miserable existence in the war-ravaged wilds of tribal Africa.  But I doubt that very many people, even in the lowest depths of the deepest south, regard slavery as a just and moral institution, whatever its practical uses may have been.  However, the idea of having lost is a hard pill to swallow, and I believe that many southerners, in the erroneous belief that the south had ever been a very grand thing, liked to think that they hadn’t really been whipped, that the glory to which they were entitled had been criminally stripped from them by envious Yankees, and that “the South shall rise again”.  Part and parcel of this fantasy is the idea that the old south had been a preserve of cultured gentility that the Yankees of the industrial north could not appreciate and were determined to destroy.  And thus there arose in the post-war south, a shared mythology of that golden epoch in which the south (happily assisted by choirs of grateful Negroes) had flourished, a bastion of everything good and worthwhile.  And it has been with this glowing picture of the prewar south that southerners have long identified and which has enabled them to nurse their lingering resentment of the Federal Republic and of the unworthy and disloyal blacks for whose sake the damned Yankees had uprooted their imagined Eden.

   Whatever one may think of the south and its “peculiar institution”, there is no doubt that losing a war they believed their innate superiority destined them to win, as well as the lifestyle they fought to sustain, constituted for the south what (for an individual) a psychologist (myself) would call a serious narcissistic injury – a blow to  their own self-identity.  Such blows are by nature extremely painful, and narcissistic individuals (and, apparently, societies) will do just about anything to salve the hurt.  Denial is a popular anodyne; so are drugs; so is anger; and so is victimizing someone else as a means of sustaining one’s faith in one’s superiority.  Most bullies have suffered what they experienced as bullying.  The southern response to their particular “owie” has bundled all of these into an unsavory broth they found comforting.  Unfortunately, like a patient who starts on oxycodone due to a serious injury but gets hooked because they become unable to give up the drug, the south has clung to its special home brew long after the initial healing should have been completed.  And the label for this drug has been the confederate battle flag.

   Like any organism addicted to an unwholesome drug, the result has been that the south as a whole has failed to live up to its apparent potential.  It has frittered away much of its positive energy in villainous but doomed opposition to social progress.  It has remained heavily invested in small agriculture, and in consequence has become dependent on Federal subsidies.  It has failed to take a constructive approach to eliminating poverty, and thus receives a disproportionate amount of Federal welfare funds.  It is as though, having failed to defeat its great Enemy, it has become a parasite on it, pretending each gulp of Federal blood is a step on the road to winning the war they couldn’t win in the 1860’s.  Of the confederate states, only Texas has truly thrived.  And it is tempting to suggest that part of the reason for this is that Texas, unlike the rest of the confederacy, has its own more or less proud and more or less independent history to celebrate.  Texas fought its own war of independence, defeated the alien state that had held it subject, and voluntarily joined the Union on terms decidedly favorable to itself.  Moreover, Texas had not been dependent upon the plantation economics the rest of the south counted on, and hence the abolition of slavery was more a theoretical than a real issue.  Certainly, Texans have been racist and done terrible things in oppression of its black citizens.  But this has lacked the bitter animus familiar to the rest of the south.  Instead, Texas has gotten on with developing its resources, and dedicated to state higher education an endowment larger than any university except Harvard (which has been at it longer).

   In sum, the south has spent the last 150 or so years fighting a war of attrition against a “foe” whose resources are vastly greater, and whom the south would be vastly better off embracing,  working with a progressive Federal establishment which has long since gotten over its initial inclination to punish the south.  As it is, the south is like an orthodox Jew or observant Muslim who chooses to starve to death in the midst of plenty rather than eat pork.

   By an interesting confluence of events, I watched Judgment at Nuremberg the same day I heard the podcast, and in that podcast the thing that resonated most was Emily Bazelon observing that the postwar Germans acknowledged that they had brutally wronged millions of people, and promptly got on with the business of making a positive and prosperous society.  They are now the economic and political leaders of Europe.  The states of the former confederacy would do well to profit by their example.

   The south’s counterproductive attachment to the fantasy of a Golden Age in which they were a great and noble people has actually served to keep them mired in petty grievances which directly interfere with the real task of accepting that the heinous institution whose defense brought the south a well-earned disaster was a mistake.  If the south is to ever “rise again”, it will not be by serving the absurd prejudices of “white supremacists” (virtually all of whom have nothing superior about them, but rather tend to be the dregs of an abased society).  It will be by rejoining the nation which the civilized world generally acknowledges as its leader and being a positive part of what is truly great.  This will mean abandoning the Stars and Bars, and all the regressive, hateful, inhumane, passive-aggressive posturing that flag represents, and getting on with the real business of any human society, growing up to maturity to function and thrive in an evolving world.

Gay Marriage

   

In recent years the topic of Same Sex Marriage (hereafter SSM) has been much on people's minds.  It has been on the minds of gay people, because they believe they should be allowed to marry the consenting adult whom they love, same as straight people, and to enjoy thereby the many significant advantages (e.g. lower tax rates) that come with marriage in our nation.  It has also been on the minds of people who are against SSM.  In the 1990's. they were so afraid that the gay writing was on the marital wall that they attempted to freeze society in time, like a prehistoric bug entombed forever in amber, by passing the strangely named Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) which proposed to defend the institution of marriage by decreeing that certain classes of people must not participate in it.

     It is not clear to me why the people who concocted this bit of anachronistic nonsense did so, what they feared, why they feared it, and what they thought this "act" would actually accomplish.  Suffice it to say that it was signed into law by President William Jefferson Clinton, whose own marriage promptly went straight down the crapper, not to be heard from again until, probably, 2016, when there is every likelihood that the nation will elect its first female (also its first separated) president, Mr. Clinton's estranged wife, Hilary Rodham Clinton.  By that time, of course, there is an equal or better likelihood that the DOMA will have gone the way of the poll tax and the saber toothed tiger.

     At present, the issue of SSM is a lively one, and proponents and opponents are loud in their advocacy for their respective sides, so I thought (as the Indian Jackson says in the film Cat Ballou (immediately before entering into a free for all that is turning a barn dance upside down), "I have a right to share in the fun without regard to race, creed, or color according to the Fourteenth Amendment.") that I may as well attempt to record my vision of the doings for posterity, while it's still interesting.  I assume that in fifty years or less, children being informed that there was a time when same sex couples couldn't marry will respond with an incredulous, "really?" or "you cannot be serious" or whatever neologistic expressions of surprise are current at the time.

Support for SSM is pretty simple.  The Supreme Court has ruled that:

1) marriage is a fundamental right;

2) homosexuality is not a crime;

Therefore, it would seem to follow that

3)  homosexuality is not grounds for denying one the right to marry.

Since marriage is a contract founded on love and commitment, and since by their nature homosexuals can only enter into loving, committed relationships with members of the same sex, it follows that they should have the same right to marry the consenting adult whom they love that straight people enjoy.

     Opposition to this position would necessarily have to be on the ground that SSM does harm which trumps the rights of gay people to marry.  However, opponents of SSM have clung, with mind-boggling tenacity to a substantial handful of entirely predictable - and rather vacuous - arguments:

1) juvenile bathroom humor - It is hard to know exactly what weight opponents of SSM believe these jejune taunts lend to their cause, but this is one of the two most frequently encountered forms employed by SSM antagonists; the other is

2) threats of divine displeasure - Opponents of SSM frequently couch their opposition in terms that amount to: God hates homosexuality, and it says so in this, that or the other passage in the Bible.  Not that many of these antagonists articulate a belief that the laws of the nation must be made to comport with the arcane values to be found in the Bible, nor would they want them to be.  These people do not want to have to stop eating pork or anything containing blood or fat; they do not want to have to give up blended fabrics, and they certainly do not want to have to give up watching the NFL, most of whose games take place on the Sabbath.  And though some might willingly give up the society of menstruating women, they do not find it expedient to propose this prohibition.  But for SSM they are prepared to invoke an exception.  Homosexuality was an abomination to Bronze Age Hebrews, and it should be treated accordingly by 21st Century Americans.  These people declare solemnly that, when New York or New Jersey is ravaged by storms or California by earthquakes, this is a divine shot across our bows, evidence of God's coming wrath against liberal states sympathetic to gay rights.  When Oklahoma or Texas or Alabama or Arkansas or Missouri or any of the other staunchly conservative, god-fearing states is substantially demolished by tornadoes, that is a natural tragedy and could happen to anyone.

3) "slippery slope" arguments - These claim, in effect, that if SSM is made legal, this will lead by inexorable logic to a state of things in which small children will be required by law to marry pangolins. The contention seems to be that, once SSM passes, anything goes.  A frequent inference (disturbingly frequent) is that, "if a man can marry another man, then I ought to be able to marry my dog."  The number of men who seem to have fantasies of marrying their dogs is truly impressive, and may give some insight into the prevailing psychology of those who oppose SSM, as though they fear that the only thing standing between them and marrying their dogs (to whom they may have promised God knows what) is DOMA.  This argument fails to embrace the fact that mutual consent by competent adults is a requirement for entering into any binding contract in this country, which pretty well leaves out children and pangolins, and, yes, even very smart, much loved dogs.  A relative of this argument equates homosexuality with pedophilia, asserting that pedophilia is merely another sexual orientation and should have the same standing as homosexuality in the marriage debate, completely discounting the fact that the whole problem with pedophilia is that children cannot by definition consent to the relationship, which makes this a non-starter, in addition to being manifestly absurd and probably malicious.  And then there's the question of polygamy, again on the assumption that, given SSM, anything goes.  And the argument against polygamy is not easy to formulate; on the other hand, it has no relationship to the discussion of SSM.

4) "It ain't natural!!!"  -  The objection that SSM and homosexuality in general are not "natural" and are therefore unacceptable is based on a rather nonspecific logic.  These objections are typically expressed on internet news threads, a phenomenon not found in nature, in a language (usually English, more or less) not found in nature, using a device (computer) not found in nature, concerning an institution (marriage) not found in nature, and often referencing another institution (religion) also found nowhere in nature.  The fact that homosexual relations are sometimes found in nature aside, it is unclear why not being "natural" should be a bar to acceptance by these people, many of whom also make a minor fetish of firearms, and extol as the pinnacle of God's achievement through man the development of manufacturing and technology, whose raison d'être is to distance Man as much as possible from those limitations and frailties imposed on him by his natural endowment.

5) "It's sick!  It's a mental illness and can and should be treated!" -  This is another common assertion of opponents of SSM; not, interestingly, one endorsed by persons actually knowledgeable regarding mental illness and its treatment.  I have been a licensed clinical psychologist for over thirty years, and know that, although there was a time several editions ago when the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders included homosexuality among the diagnoses one might attempt to treat, that was a very long time ago, at a time when extramarital pregnancy and even premarital sex (in females) were also regarded as mental disorders.  This was before the Boulder Conference and its Scientist-Practitioner Model for psychology were fully embraced by the profession, and most views of psychopathology still derived from the brilliant but deeply flawed theories of Dr. Freud.  Suffice it to say that at present (and for over thirty years), the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Medical Association, and their counterparts in all developed western nations are in agreement that homosexuality is non-pathological.  Moreover (Marcus Bachmann notwithstanding), studies attempting to alter sexual orientation through psychotherapy (including some rather draconian aversion therapies - see A Clockwork Orange ) have failed to produce desired results.  In sum, those who actually know what they're talking about with regard to mental disorders agree that homosexuality is NOT a form of mental disorder, and that "curing" it through psychotherapy is neither desirable nor possible.

6) "It's not NORMAL!" -  This appears to be largely a variant of items 4 and 5.  This seems to express the view that anything so far removed from conventional mainstream social norms cannot possibly be okay.  And it is true that, in the most literal sense of the term, homosexuality is not "normal" - is not the norm.  Homosexuals comprise some 5% of the citizenry of the USA, and as such they are statistically unusual.  Why this should be grounds for objection in itself is hard to grasp, since, for example, extremes of beauty, athletic prowess, and professional achievement are similarly infrequent, and no one objects to them.  That a nation that preens itself on its appreciation of individualism should reject out of hand a group of people entirely on the ground that they are different seems to be, itself, anomalous.  Remove from the discussion the fact that homosexuality is a relatively rare phenomenon, and we are left with the fact that SSM involves people falling in love, finding each other sexually attractive, and wanting to get married.  It would be hard to imagine something more normative in American society than this.

7) "Ooooooh! It's sooooo icky!!!" -  This line of "argument" embodies elements of many of the others, but it boils down to this:  opponents of SSM, contemplating what they imagine to be the sexual behaviors of homosexuals and finding them unappealing (even as gay people find the sexual acts of straight people unappealing), become agitated and incredulous that anyone could conduct themselves in so vile and repellant a fashion.  The obvious answer to this, as offered repeatedly in these discussions, is, "if it doesn't appeal to you, don't do it."  Somehow, though, this simple remedy seems not to satisfy.  The theory seems to be that if something is found subjectively revolting enough, that constitutes a justification why it should not exist.  De gustibus non est disputandum doesn't cut it, apparently.  The "ickyness argument", it need hardly be said, refers only to male homosexuality.  Sex between women is something many SSM opponents find "hot".

8) "Being gay is a choice!" -  This is an assertion offered by many opponents of gay marriage in response to the argument that, since gay people are born gay (even as black people are born black), one should not be discriminated against on the basis of something over which one has no volitional control. The theory is that, if gay people choose to be gay, they can choose not to be gay, and if they want to get married, they should first choose to be straight, like everyone else.  Well, first of all, over the course of a long life, much of it as a clinical psychologist, in which capacity I have gotten to know a great many gay people very well; I have never encountered a single gay person who reported having chosen to be gay.  Indeed, most report having gone through significant parts of their early life secretly troubled over the discovery that they embody a characteristic that society as a whole treats as loathsome, and many experiment with dating members of the opposite sex in an effort to shed their homosexuality and become "normal".  But it never works.  I have known several gay men lamenting that they are gay because they find suitable partners hard to come by, while they are often surrounded by nice women who see them as ideal mates on account of their sensitivity, aesthetic sense, understanding and disinclination to treat women as sexual objects.  Say what you will about life, it does not lack for irony.

So, the overwhelming evidence is that people do not choose to be gay (although Marcus Bachmann is striving, against clearly insuperable odds, to be straight).  But even if they did, a question remains: should  persons choosing one benign sexual orientation be denied basic civil rights enjoyed by persons choosing a different benign sexual orientation?  I have yet to encounter a cogent justification for this.

In sum, the above illustrates the basic lines of argument offered by opponents of SSM in support of their opposition.  That these are based on virtually anything but fact and logic is apparent.  There is superstition, there is aversion, there is ignorance, there is tradition, there is fear of the unknown.  What is lacking is rationality and, above all, justice.  That American society is well on its way to accepting SSM is hardly in doubt.  Whether we can demonstrate that we are a humane, compassionate and just society in a more or less timely fashion remains to be seen.  It may be seen this week when, it is anticipated, the Supreme Court will rule on the constitutionality of DOMA and Proposition 8 (a California law prohibiting SSM).

Adam Lanza Goes to Harlem

    The other night on Hardball, Chris Matthews was interviewing one Larry Pratt, evidently the head of an organization calling itself Gun Owners of America.  Matthews kept asking Pratt what would be the harm in requiring would-be gun purchasers to undergo a background check to make sure the person buying the gun is not a violent criminal, insane, or otherwise someone  that no reasonable person would want to be in possession of firearms.  And rather than give a reasoned answer to the question (it’s hard to imagine what such an answer would be, but it clearly wasn’t going to come from Pratt), Pratt repeatedly asserted that such checks would not keep criminals from getting guns.  This was so apparently an article of faith with him that he did not seem to consider that it might actually be subject to challenge.

    In Pratt’s mind, it seems, if Joe Criminal wants to buy an assault rifle such as the one used to murder children in Connecticut, and he can’t get it at the local Wal-Mart because a background check reveals him to be a convicted felon out on parole (or whatever), he will not be deterred.  In Pratt’s reality, one imagines, criminals live in a parallel universe in which, if one cannot get a gun legitimately, one need only stroll down to the ‘hood, hook up with Hakim the Gun Merchant (of whom everyone in the criminal underworld is aware but who has managed to escape the attention of the police, the FBI, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and so, is still in business and not in prison) plunk down his $500 (or whatever) and stroll away with the weapon of his choice.

    Now, not being a criminal myself (nor, technically, is Pratt, I assume), I do not possess those specialized feral instincts that lead Joe Criminal unerringly to Hakim the Gun Merchant.  But there seem to be a lot of guns in the ‘hood, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if there were some real-life equivalent of Hakim with whom career gangsters routinely do business.  So, we’ll accept that as given.

    Now, the following may seem coldhearted (possibly even racist) of me, but while in the abstract I would much prefer that gang bangers in the ghetto not murder each other, I am inclined to feel that those killings are more or less the inevitable result of a chosen way of life for which the participants have volunteered (for reasons best known to themselves), and therefore, if they decide they want to stop being gangsters and shooting each other, they need only walk away.  Maybe they can get a job at Wal-Mart not selling guns to convicted felons and certified lunatics.

    Anyhow, I am less concerned with Joe Criminal and his desire to rob liquor stores than I am with people like Adam Lanza, who are not professional criminals, but whose mental health problems, if well-documented, would show up as a flashing red light and strident klaxon noises on any well engineered background check had he gone to Wal-Mart to buy, say, an assault rifle for the purpose of which we are all now too vividly aware.  At that point, the person at Wal-Mart rings up the local FBI office (I guess) and says: “Mr. – uh – Adam Lanza, a certified lunatic, has been trying to buy assault rifles.  Thought you’d like to know."

    At this point one of two things happens: either 1) Lanza goes home, where he gets to know some real live FBI agents, who ascertain he is probably a very dangerous person and place him in the Home for Very Dangerous Persons (which was where his mother was planning to place him when she was murdered); or 2) (my personal favorite, and the one Larry Pratt needs to contemplate) he goes where Joe Criminal goes – to the ‘hood, in search of Hakim the Gun Merchant.  Lanza does not know Hakim specifically, but he has a notion that there must be some such person somewhere in the ‘hood.  I don’t know what ‘hood that would have been for Lanza – maybe New Haven - but we’ll say Harlem, since it’s somewhere in the same general region of planet earth and has been known historically as a Very Rough Neighborhood.  This may no longer be the case.  For all I know, Harlem has become gentrified, and impoverished tenements have been converted to trendy lofts and little boutique hotels and Michelin-rated bistros are springing up on every corner.  So if my impression of Harlem is out of date or insensitive, I apologize.  But this is not about Harlem per se.  It is about Adam Lanza going to the ‘hood to buy an assault rifle from Hakim the Gun Merchant.

    Of course, Lanza (like the majority of mass shooters) does not really exactly blend in the ‘hood.  He’s a scrawny white kid with goggly eyes who mutters audibly to himself as he wanders the mean streets in search of Hakim.  Maybe he approaches a group of local tough guys who are hanging out on a street corner getting high (or composing string quartets, or whatever they do).  Lanza (who, bear in mind, is crazy – sane people don’t do what he has in mind; why would they?) says, more or less, “Excuse me, gentlemen.  Can you direct me to the nearest merchant who sells machine guns to criminals and lunatics?”

    I don’t know what the local tough guys say in response to this (it’s probably not printable - this is a family blog);  I doubt it is very helpful to Mr. Lanza.  But they get to thinking (after he has wandered away, muttering, to buy some more aspirin and No-Doz) that this guy is looking for guns, and he’s either a cop (they’ll take anyone, these days), or else he’s a potential customer, in either of which cases, Hakim the Gun Merchant would probably like to know about it.  So they tell their cousin who was once in jail for a couple of days with somebody who claimed to know Hakim, that there’s an incredibly geeky white kid wandering around  trying to buy machine guns.  Eventually, word of this gets to Hakim who, having done a bit of basic research of the sort that gun dealers who want to stay out of prison get adept at, concludes Lanza is not a cop and goes looking for his would-be customer, accompanied as always by “Big Ernie” and “Bigger Ernie”, whose job it is to deal with anyone who is not a cop and tries to cause trouble for Hakim.

(Here I am reminded of a passage in the George V. Higgins gangster classic The Friends of Eddie Coyle in which Jackie Brown, himself a sometime gun peddler to the Mob, is trying to acquire military rifles from some naïve soldiers who seem bent on spending the rest of their lives in Leavenworth.   The guy Brown is buying the guns from suggests they drive into a grove of trees to meet his colleagues who are bringing the guns.  Brown declines the suggestion, explaining (approximately)

“…I ain’t so dumb as to go into the woods to meet some people with machine guns who know I’ve got money.  This life is hard, but it’s harder if you’re stupid.”)

    But Adam Lanza wasn’t Jackie Brown.  Not street smart.  Not part of the criminal culture.  And not capable of getting himself admitted to that semi-exclusive subculture.  Too weird.  Too crazy.  Too utterly lacking in anything a criminal would respect, identify with or relate to.  When he is approached by Hakim (assuming Hakim bothers to track him down, which is unlikely), and Hakim says “I understand you have an interest in a machine gun,” Lanza says “I have $500 for an assault rifle.”  Whereupon Big and Bigger Ernie take his money, maybe kill him, and give him no gun, in part because, now that he’s dead he has no need for a gun, and in part because they are criminals, and this is how they deal with people who have money and no backup.

    In short, I reject Pratt’s thesis – his bit of divinely revealed Truth – that creating obstacles to gun ownership won’t help stop gun violence because the criminals will get guns in other ways.  And he’s right.  Joe Criminal will get guns from Hakim the Gun Merchant.  But Jared Loughner wouldn’t.  James Holmes wouldn’t.  Seung-Hui Cho wouldn’t.  And neither would Adam Lanza.

Politicization

This is not going to be terribly elegant, because I am more furious than I can handle gracefully.  But here goes.

In the "wake" (well named) of the Sandy Hook Elementary slaughter, discussion has arisen (not too surprisingly) regarding the evident proliferation of powerful and extremely dangerous firearms in this country.  I should start, as a matter of truth in advertising, with the disclaimer that I know virtually nothing about guns, except that they are devices designed for the sole purpose of blowing holes in living flesh, a fact which makes me extremely uneasy.  That the people of this nation have seen fit  to acquire something over 300,000,000 of these devices entirely for their own personal gratification seems to me indicative of some serious craziness.  And I'm a clinical psychologist with over thirty years experience, and I understand a bit about mental illness.  Anyhow, I do not pretend to be able to speak knowledgeably regarding the relative merits of Glocks versus Smiths and Wessons, or the distinction between high-powered automatic assault rifle A versus high-powered automatic assault rifle B, or any of the other technical crap with which public commentary on this matter seems to be laden.  To me, they're all dangerous.  They're supposed to be dangerous.  It is their raison d'etre, if an inanimate object can be said to possess a raison d'etre.

I am an intelligent, peace-loving middle-aged white adult family man, and I can assert candidly that  in a life spent substantially in Houston, Albuquerque, and Detroit,  I have never found myself in a situation in which I would have been better off possessing a gun.  Except once in graduate school when I was really strapped for cash and would have liked to have something I could pawn for a couple of hundred bucks.  Of course, I may be mugged tomorrow and wish that, instead of having devoted my life to the treatment of the mentally ill, I had spent more time honing my quick-draw skills so I could gun down my assailant a la Matt Dillon (the marshal, idiot, not the actor!).  But one cannot be all things to all people.  So I shall attempt to steer clear of high-crime neighborhoods and avoid wearing expensive stuff (I don't have much, so this should be a piece of cake) that would tend to attract predators.

My issue concerning the present gun debate (why there should even be a debate eludes me) is the recrudescence of the term "politicization" (a made up word if ever I saw one).  As in "I don't think it's right for Obama to 'politicize' the Newtown tragedy for the purpose of pushing his socialist, Kenyan, Muslim, antichrist, Nazi, what have you, agenda."

So, what is meant by "politicizing"?  It seems to mean that Mr. Obama is cynically exploiting a sensational catastrophe to achieve some devious political objective.

But is that not precisely what we elect public officials to do?  To identify significant problems in our nation and devise ways of resolving those problems.  And sometimes, as in the matter of the slaughter of little children in Connecticut, to draw public attention to the nature and severity of the problem in order to marshal public support for solving it?  Isn't this why we have a Congress in the first place?  To identify problems and propose legislative solutions to them?  Or are they just there to pass resolutions declaring November 23 to be officially recognized as Franklin Pierce's birthday, or National Pork Belly Day, or National Kiss Your Mother Day, or National Think Nice Thoughts about Jesus Day?  If so - if we really have all the laws we need and Congress is only there to conduct such foolishness as the aforementioned - then why don't we shut it down altogether (it wouldn't seem that different from the present state of things) and just leave it to the Executive Branch to administer the presumably all-sufficient set of laws we already have.  We could divide the Capitol into condos and sell them to wealthy lobbyists (who, admittedly, would now have a lot of time on their hands, since there would no longer be influential congresspersons to bribe).

If by "politicize" we mean make use of a vivid example of an existing problem to bring public attention to bear on the existence and significance of that problem, then it would be a pretty lame public servant who did not thus "politicize" the Newtown massacre for the sake of enabling government to act to make it much less likely for things like this to happen again.

Unless, of course, you don't think it's a problem.

Conservative gun addicts have lately asserted that there is not a gun problem.  What we have instead is a "people problem", and that guns are protected under the Constitution.

I, for one, was under the impression that people, too, are protected under the constitution.

I read the view that the problem is a mental health problem, and so, to a considerable extent, it is.  And because we completely dismantled the greater part of public mental health resources back in the Sixties and Seventies, it may take a while to re-establish any serious attempt to address the problem of mental illness in this country.  Moreover, most mentally ill persons are not dangerous, even as most members of the Tea Party are not actually dangerous.  So, is everyone who qualifies for a psychiatric diagnosis to be deprived of his/her constitutional rights?  And is that not diving headfirst into Socialized Medicine?  The dreaded "nanny state"?

I also read that the problem is our "culture of violence", the ubiquity of violent movies, TV shows, and video games to which the USA seems to be addicted.  Now, I'm not a constitutional lawyer (like I said, I'm a clinical psychologist), but even I can recognize a First Amendment issue when it's this obvious.

So, what'll it be, folks?  Do we violate the Second Amendment (or, preferably, repeal it) so the government can pass reasonable laws concerning the possession of dangerous weapons?

Do we deprive all persons "convicted" of mental health problems of their civil rights, as though there were not degrees and varieties of mental illness, most of which are not at all dangerous?  That seems like a constitutional issue in itself and certainly at variance with the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act).

Or do we conclude that, in the absence of violent TV, video games, and movies it would never occur to anyone possessed of a gun to actually shoot someone with it?  That this is absurd beyond all previous Tea Party absurdities, and clearly involves inroads into the First Amendment that no one would consider acceptable can hardly be doubted.

Which leaves prayer.  I kid you not, I have actually encountered numerous expressions of the idea that the reason the Newtown slaughter occurred was because we have taken prayer out of our schools.  Any intelligent, mature, humane adult who gives voice to such pernicious nonsense should probably recognize that they have become a monster and lock themselves away from the rest of the world.

The point about prayer is that it is essentially trusting to luck.  Landing a plane "on a wing and a prayer" means hoping to hell you manage to bring the plane in successfully in spite of damage to essential systems.  A "hail Mary" in football means throwing the ball as far as you can and hoping that your guy catches it.

I wasn't there, but I'd be willing to bet that there was more praying going on at Sandy Hook School last Friday than at any other school in the world, and it didn't accomplish a thing.

In sum, then, if Obama is "politicizing" Newtown for the sake of trying to see that homicidal maniacs are not equipped with sophisticated weapons with which to conduct their horrors, then I say "politicize away".  And any public servant who doesn't is being grossly, immorally, criminally irresponsible.