Channeling our inner Don Quijote

Magnolia a Verbania by Josep Renalias Lohen 11
(CC BY-SA 3.0; courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

This post will be fairly quick and short (within reason; it is me after all). I am in the process of moving to a new city--to a new country in fact--and have been working toward tomorrow (aka, moving day) since I last posted in May.

I'll try to have more to say for myself on the flipside of the month--at least once I've unpacked my computer and established an internet connection. It's a sign of modern times that packing and moving excepted, my current priorities in life are a bank account, a Hulu subscription, and good internet. Never mind the new job and the commute--I'm already busy with entertaining myself and spending money I haven't earned yet!

But one thing that has occupied my mind over the last week is the mass assassination of nine African-American worshippers at a Charleston, South Carolina, church on Wednesday, June 17, 2015. Not a lot has penetrated my consciousness of late, mostly due to the whiff of cardboard I seem to ingest every day, but this most definitely has. I think it brings up my somewhat tortured relationship with my country and my home region, plus a sense of guilt for leaving family and friends behind. I often worry who will be the next victim of "a bad guy with a gun" and whether it will be someone I know, family or friend.

It's not that I walk around worried about this all the time, mind you. It's not that I need to, actually. Despite the "cowboy" reputation of the U.S., I really don't see guns everywhere--although sometimes at night, I do hear them from the broken-down neighborhood on the other side of the railroad tracks, just a block away.

I don't generally feel unsafe in the U.S. But perhaps I should. I mean, there is occasional gunfire only a block or two away from my head and my bed. There is "active shooter" training at work. There is my sister's state wanting to allow for guns on the university campus where she works. There is me scoping out escape routes in restaurants should something bad happen. There are, what? 11,000+ gun deaths each year in the U.S., 55,000+ nonfatal gun injuries, and 138,000+ gun-aggravated assaults (at least according to statistics from FactCheck.org)? And yet two of these numbers represent a decrease over previous years?

Let that set in for a moment.

Now doesn't that still seem like an awfully large number? And what about the fact that gun ownership and gun manufacturing continue to increase?

You can keep arguing that "more guns make us safer," but with those kind of numbers, pardon me if I don't feel like cuddling up to and fellating my firearm at night.

(For the record, I don't own a gun, nor does anyone in my family. My Dad used to have a rifle for occasional hunting and to scare away unwanted residents from his backyard birdhouses, but that's about as firearms-friendly as it got at Chez Montag.)

* * *

Kudzu on trees in Atlanta, Georgia by Scott Ehardt
(public domain); courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Which leads me to the point of this post: We are once again tilting at the wrong windmill.

And the windmill we're currently tilting at is removing the Confederate flag from our sight. We've once again taken the wrong message from the racially motivated mass murder of 9 African-American worshippers in Charleston last week.

And that message should be this: A gun killed them all, not a flag.


Please don't misunderstand me: I've got no problem with removing the Confederate flag from public buildings; I've got little to no problem relegating that symbol to museums and reenactments. At one point in my life, I might have tried to participate in a nuanced discussion of that flag's multiple meanings, but, honestly, who needs to hear all that? Plus I think knowing what I know now--that the flag made its reappearance during the early 1960s Civil Rights standoffs, as a way for the South to say "FU" to the rest of the country--I would just be horribly, horribly wrong.

If you're looking for a symbol of Southern uniqueness and pride, I dunno, try the magnolia or the loblolly pine, the collard, or, heck, even kudzu. That stuff can withstand anything.


While protesting the Confederate flag and the racism it symbolizes is all well, good, and necessary, I fear we're just letting the real culprits off the hook once again. I'm willing to bet that nearly every right-leaning politician piling on the issue right now knows this and is using it as a way to not deal with legislating meaningful firearms restrictions. And, hey, if they happen to make the Republican Party look sensitive to racial issues, bonus points.

Maybe it's a victory that Wal-Mart and Amazon are willing to stop selling the flag (at least until things cool down) and that manufacturers are willing to stop making the flag (at least until things cool down). But it all seems very hollow. And speaking of hollow, no one's volunteering to stop making hollow-point bullets.

While all this is going on and we're rending our garments in public, gun manufacturers are doing their best Alfred E. Newman impersonation: "What, me worry?"

Yes, I think racism is still a huge problem in this country--the murder of nine African Americans during Bible study is the recent, most heinous example, but there are many others. Cops killing black motorists and citizens who resist arrest or are merely under suspicion for . . . something (poverty? blackness? effrontery to white privilege?); high black unemployment and endemic economic disadvantage; the incredibly negative reaction by some to Barack Obama--a strong, impressive, educated, self-made man--being elected as President of the United States (twice no less). These are just a few that come to mind that I right this. 

So, yes, it's well past time to take down the Confederate flag and relegate to the history bin (or the trash bin, take your pick). It's well past time to recommit to fighting against he racism it represents. 

 

Nonetheless, this just seems like the same ol', same ol'. Let's call for reparations for slavery when instead we should be clamoring for continuing community and individual investment in disenfranchised minority populations (and/or the poor in general). Maybe that's the point--aim for the symbolic, get the real. I question its effectiveness, but then again, no one ever thought gays would be allowed to serve in the military or get married.

 

I feel like we were trying to do this in the 1960s and 1970s--significant investment in the disenfranchised, leveling the playing field, providing opportunity. But by the 1980s, we stopped doing it. Maybe because it was too hard to do, or we just royally messed it up (tearing down neighborhoods to put everyone in projects? really?).

 

But maybe we just let ourselves get distracted. After all, there are so many other windmills out there at which we can tilt.

Thanks for your time. See you in July.