On gun violence, US is a failed state
W a political regime is failing is its inability to do anything about a problem universally seen as urgent and that has some obvious remedies. And it’s a mark of political corruption when unaccountable cliques block solutions that enjoy broad support and force their selfish interests to prevail over the common good.
has become a corrupt failed state.
This is the only conclusion to draw from the endless enraging replays of the same political paralysis, no matter how many children are gunned down at our schools or how many innocent Americans are slaughtered at shopping centers and other public places. Whatever happens, we can’t ban assault weapons, we can’t strengthen background checks, we can’t do anything.
In corrupt failed states, politics is our debate is a pack of lies and evasions.
In no other country is the phrase “thoughts and prayers” a sacrilege, a cover for cowardice.
In no other country are the words “mental health” so empty. They are muttered by politicians who have no history of caring in the least about programs to help those with psychological - legiance to a gun lobby that appears to be utterly indifferent to mass murder.
President Trump’s rote address middling annual report. He told us: “We are committed to working with state and local leaders to help secure issue of mental health.”
Trump’s speech, as Vox’s German or a bomb. But God forbid the president mention guns. Vox also noted that people with mental illness are more likely to be the victims, not the perpetrators, of violence. Yes, and if Trump cared so much about mental health, he cut over a decade in Medicaid, which nation’s mental health care.
in somber, serious tones that we must do more about mental health. This might well be true, but in the context of crimes such as those at such sentiments is to be complicit in propaganda by pretending that a cover story is actually on the level. We should not have to point out over and over that while mental illness exists everywhere, other countries do not have killing sprees comparable to ours.
because the Republican Party has become a paid agent of the gun manufacturers’ lobby. The party of law and order cares about neither if doing so means causing the least disturbance to the Na politician after another who couldn’t even utter the word “gun” following the Parkland horror turned out to have received millions from the NRA. And it’s no wonder that Trump decided he cared so much about mental health.
- ing weapons is the vast overrepresenta of taking on the NRA. This is another classic problem of failed regimes: Their structures are no longer capable of responding to current needs.
No one wants our political system to fail more than Vladimir Putin does and our powerlessness on guns hardly enhances our democracy’s image to the world. It is worth revisiting reports last spring in
about the relationships Russians close to their govern lobby as part of the outreach by proPutin forces to the far right.
of McClatchy reported in January that the FBI “is investigating whether a top Russian banker with ties to the Kremlin illegally funneled money to
Wherever this Russia story goes, we already know that the NRA and - ing our government on one of the gravest problems confronting us. What would we say about any other country that watched its children gunned down again and again and did absolutely nothing?