In 2012, journalist Helen Lewis formulated Lewis's Law: "Comments on any article about feminism justify feminism." She was referring, of course, to the way that any article, especially written by a woman, that posits that sexism is a thing that is real will immediately attract dozens of angry men whose efforts to deny this are belied by their own screaming, out-of-control sexism.
I was reminded of this rule by what's happening to historian Rick Perlstein right now. Perlstein wrote a piece, using reporting he did for his book The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan, laying out the case that the POW/MIA flag is, like the Confederate flag, a symbol for racist historical revisionists who want to paint the bad guys in famous conflicts like victims and heroes. In this case, it was about American right wingers using the myth that there were a bunch of still-captive POWs in Vietnam as cover for their real mission, which was rewriting the history of how that whole debacle went down. A sample:
[The flag and its accompanying propaganda blitz] memorializes Americans as the preeminent victims of the Vietnam War, a notion seared into the nation’s visual unconscious by the Oscar-nominated 1978 film The Deer Hunter, which depicts acts of sadism, which were documented to have been carried out by our South Vietnamese allies, as acts committed by our North Vietnamese enemies, including the famous scene pictured on The Deer Hunter poster: a pistol pointed at the American prisoner’s head at exactly the same angle of the gun in the famous photograph of the summary execution in the middle of the street of an alleged Communist spy by a South Vietnamese official.
If you've ever seen people flying that flag and wondered what that is all about, Perlstein's piece---and his book---is a must-read. I remember when I first saw those flags in the 90s, when they were undergoing something of a resurgence. I kept thinking, "If there really were POWs left in Vietnam, surely they're dead now, two decades later." Now that it's been 40 years, it's impossible to believe that anyone flies this flag because they are holding out hope of bringing our boys home.
Perlstein's explanation of what this is about helps make sense of this. It was never about bringing POWs home, and there's really no reason to think that the men that Nixon classified as "MIA" were ever being held secretly as POWs by North Vietnam after the official end of the war. The sad truth is that most, probably all, of them died during the war, and their bodies were simply never found. As with most conspiracy theories and urban legends, it's less about literal truth and more about conveying ideologies, in this case in no small part because admitting literal truths is fatal the ideological belief that America's involvement in Vietnam was justified.
Which is where we come to Lewis's Law. If you had any lingering doubt that the POW/MIA flag is anything but a signifier of belligerent nationalism, the reaction to Perlstein's piece should wipe that out for you. His Facebook page is being trashed by haters, most of whom are spewing on random threads that have nothing to do with the topic at hand. I took some screenshots.
There's something particularly poignant about the accusations of stupidity, coming as they do from people who think the best way to prove they aren't a bunch of bigoted right wing blowhards is to act like a bunch of bigoted right wing blowhards. A glimmer of pity for those so tragically un-self-aware sparkles in my heart, and then is killed off immediately by remembering that these people are assholes.
I consider Rick a friend, but more than that, he's a great historian and his books are fun to read. Yes, they are notorious doorstoppers, but that's because he has a real eye for detail and really knows how to convey the spirit of the eras he's writing about by including all this cultural context that really helps bring his stories alive. A lot of people can write dry histories about what happened, but Perlstein is great at giving you an idea why.
So, I'd like to ask people to support him during this trying time by checking out his books. I got The Invisible Bridge on both Kindle and Audible, so I could switch back and forth between reading and listening without losing my spot. Recommended!
It was widely reported that in the wake of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, then-President Donald Trump shocked members of both parties when he expressed support for gun control measures. But he was later convinced to reverse course after meeting with the NRA.
Now, a new report from The New York Times reveals that Trump pushed for gun control measures a year later after a pair of gruesome mass shootings rocked the country once again, one where in August of 2019, a far-right gunman killed 23 people at a Walmart store in El Paso, and then the next day when a man shot and killed nine people outside a bar in Dayton, Ohio.
Trump was reportedly "so shaken" by the violence that he made it clear to aides that he wanted to take some sort of action, and was again, convinced to reverse course, the report states.
“What are we going to do about assault rifles?” Mr. Trump asked.
“Not a damn thing,” Mick Mulvaney, his acting chief of staff, reportedly replied.
“Why?” Trump asked.
“Because you would lose," Mulvaney replied.
The Times reports that Trump ended up never pursuing an assault weapons ban, even though he called for one in his 2000 book, “The America We Deserve,” where he criticized Republicans for opposing even limited gun restrictions.
Now, Trump is scheduled to speak at the NRA's annual conference this Friday, just days after 18-year-old Salvador Romero killed 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
Mass killings are becoming more frequent. Yet there has been no significant gun legislation passed in response to these and other mass shootings. Why?
Monika McDermott: While there is consistently a majority in favor of restricting gun access a little bit more than the government currently does, usually that’s a slim majority – though that support tends to spike in the short term after events like the recent mass shootings.
We tend to find even gun owners are in support of restrictions like background checks for all gun sales, including at gun shows. So that’s one that everyone gets behind. The other one that gun-owning households get behind is they don’t mind law enforcement taking guns away from people who have been legally judged to be unstable or dangerous. Those are two restrictions on which you can get virtual unanimous support from the American public. But agreement on specific elements isn’t everything.
This isn’t something that people are clamoring for, and there are so many other things in the mix that people are much more concerned about right now, like the economy. Also, people are insecure about the federal budget deficit, and health care is still a perennial problem in this country. So those kinds of things top gun control legislation in terms of priorities for the public.
So you can’t just think about majority support for legislation; you have to think about priorities. People in office care what the priorities are. If someone’s not going to vote them out because of an issue, then they’re not going to do it.
The other issue is that you have just this different view of the gun situation in gun-owning households and non-gun-owning households. Nearly half of the public lives in a household with a gun. And those people tend to be significantly less worried than those in non-gun households that a mass shooting could happen in their community. They’re also unlikely to say that stricter gun laws would reduce the danger of mass shootings.
The people who don’t own guns think the opposite. They think guns are dangerous. They think if we restricted access, then mass shootings would be reduced. So you’ve got this bifurcation in the American public. And that also contributes to why Congress can’t or hasn’t done anything about gun control.
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut speaks on the Senate floor, asking his colleagues, ‘Why are you here if not to solve a problem as existential as this?’
How does public opinion relate to what Congress does or doesn’t do?
David Jones: People would, ideally, like to think that members of Congress are responding to public opinion. I think that is their main consideration when they’re making decisions about how to prioritize issues and how to vote on issues.
But we also have to consider: What is the meaning of a member’s “constituency”? We can talk about their geographic constituency – everyone living in their district, if they’re a House member, or in their state, if they’re a senator. But we could also talk about their electoral constituency, and that is all of the people who contributed the votes that put them into office.
And so if a congressmember’s motive is reelection, they want to hold on to the votes of that electoral constituency. It may be more important to them than representing everyone in their district equally.
In 2020, the most recent congressional election, among citizens who voted for a Republican House member, only 24% of those voters wanted to make it more difficult to buy a gun.
So if you’re looking at the opinions of your voters versus those of your entire geographic constituency, it’s your voters that matter most to you. And a party primary constituency may be even narrower and even less in favor of gun control. A member may have to run in a party primary first before they even get to the general election. Now what would be the most generous support for gun control right now in the U.S.? A bit above 60% of Americans. But not every member of Congress has that high a proportion of support for gun control in their district. Local lawmakers are not necessarily focused on national polling numbers.
You could probably get a majority now in the Senate of 50 Democrats plus, say, Susan Collins and some other Republican or two to support some form of gun control. But it wouldn’t pass the Senate. Why isn’t a majority enough to pass? The Senate filibuster – a tradition allowing a small group of Senators to hold up a final vote on a bill unless a three-fifths majority of Senators vote to stop them.
Monika McDermott: This is a very hot political topic these days. But people have to remember, that’s the way our system was designed.
David Jones: Protecting rights against the overbearing will of the majority is built into our constitutional system.
Do legislators also worry that sticking their neck out to vote for gun legislation might be for nothing if the Supreme Court is likely to strike down the law?
David Jones: The last time gun control passed in Congress was the 1994 assault weapons ban. Many of the legislators who voted for that bill ended up losing their seats in the election that year. Some Republicans who voted for it are on record saying that they were receiving threats of violence. So it’s not trivial, when considering legislation, to be weighing, “Yeah, we can pass this, but was it worth it to me if it gets overturned by the Supreme Court?”
Going back to the 1994 assault weapons ban: How did that manage to pass and how did it avoid a filibuster?
David Jones: It got rolled into a larger omnibus bill that was an anti-crime bill. And that managed to garner the support of some Republicans. There are creative ways of rolling together things that one party likes with things that the other party likes. Is that still possible? I’m not sure.
It sounds like what you are saying is that lawmakers are not necessarily driven by higher principle or a sense of humanitarianism, but rather cold, hard numbers and the idea of maintaining or getting power.
Monika McDermott: There are obvious trade-offs there. You can have high principles, but if your high principles serve only to make you a one-term officeholder, what good are you doing for the people who believe in those principles? At some point, you have to have a reality check that says if I can’t get reelected, then I can’t do anything to promote the things I really care about. You have to find a balance.
Wouldn’t that matter more to someone in the House, with a two-year horizon, than to someone in the Senate, with a six-year term?
David Jones: Absolutely. If you’re five years out from an election and people are mad at you now, some other issue will come up and you might be able to calm the tempers. But if you’re two years out, that reelection is definitely more of a pressing concern.
Some people are blaming the National Rifle Association for these killings. What do you see as the organization’s role in blocking gun restrictions by Congress?
Monika McDermott: From the public’s side, one of the important things the NRA does is speak directly to voters. The NRA publishes for their members ratings of congressional officeholders based on how much they do or do not support policies the NRA favors. These kinds of things can be used by voters as easy information shortcuts that help them navigate where a candidate stands on the issue when it’s time to vote. This gives them some credibility when they talk to lawmakers.
David Jones: The NRA as a lobby is an explanation that’s out there. But I’d caution that it’s a little too simplistic to say interest groups control everything in our society. I think it’s an intermingling of the factors that we’ve been talking about, plus interest groups.
So why does the NRA have power? I would argue: Much of their power is going to the member of Congress and showing them a chart and saying, “Look at the voters in your district. Most of them own guns. Most of them don’t want you to do this.” It’s not that their donations or their threatening looks or phone calls are doing it, it’s the fact that they have the membership and they can do this research and show the legislator what electoral danger they’ll be in if they cast this vote, because of the opinions of that legislator’s core constituents.
Interest groups can help to pump up enthusiasm and make their issue the most important one among members of their group. They’re not necessarily changing overall public support for an issue, but they’re making their most persuasive case to a legislator, given the opinions of crucial voters that live in a district, and that can sometimes tip an already delicate balance.
The heads of the two largest U.S. teachers' unions on Thursday roundly rejected renewed calls by Republican politicians—some of them funded by the firearms industry lobby—to arm educators following the massacre of more than 20 children and staff at a Texas elementary school.
"Teachers should be teaching, not acting as armed security guards," National Education Association (NEA) president Becky Pringle asserted in a statement.
"Our public schools should be the safest places for students and educators, yet the gunshots from a lone shooter armed with a military-grade weapon shattered the physical safety of the school community in Uvalde, Texas," she added. "The powerful gun lobby and their allies did not waste a second after the horrific killing of 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School to call for arming teachers."
"Bringing more guns into schools makes schools more dangerous and does nothing to shield our students and educators from gun violence," Pringle said. "We need fewer guns in schools, not more."
Pringle continued:
We need common-sense solutions now. Schools need more mental health professionals, not pistols; teachers need more resources, not revolvers. Arming teachers makes schools more dangerous and does nothing to protect students and their families when they go off to school, shop at the grocery store, attend church services, ride the subway, or simply walk down the streets of their neighborhoods. Those lawmakers pushing to arm teachers and fortify school buildings are simply trying to distract us from their failure to prevent another mass shooting.
"Educators and parents overwhelmingly reject the idea of arming school staff. Rather than arming educators with guns, we need to be giving them the tools needed to inspire their students," she said. "Rather than putting the responsibility on individual teachers, our elected leaders need to pass laws that protect children from gun violence and bring an end to senseless and preventable killings."
"Americans want the carnage to stop," Pringle added. "My message to Congress: What are you going to do?"
Polling has shown that teachers are overwhelmingly opposed to being armed in the classroom.
"I think that arming a bunch of people without the training or desire to shoot guns is a disaster in the making," explained one respondent to a 2019 survey of U.S. educators by California State University professor Lauren Willner that found 88% of teachers were opposed to being armed. "I worry about students getting their hands on guns, and I worry far more about gun accidents than about school shootings."
Echoing Pringle's stance, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten said in a statement that "only in America do people go grocery shopping and get mowed down by a shooter with hate in his heart; only in this country are parents not assured that their kids will be safe at school."
"Gun violence is a cancer, and it's one that none of us should tolerate for one single moment longer," she added. "We have made a choice to let this continue, and we can make a choice to finally do something—do anything—to put a stop to this madness."
