The Fear of Fair Play

After the latest massacre the gun debate is on again. Gun nuts, so-called conservatives and Republicans and their assorted thug allies are mounting varyingly defensive defenses depending on how confident they are in the stranglehold the extremists have on the actual laws affecting gun ownership. That stranglehold is complete. 

The opposition doesn't even dream of significant reform and its opponents portray those inconsequential hopes for concessions and compromises, against assault weapons in a country already awash in them, for example, as inconceivable attacks on personal freedom and nonexistent and invented constitutional protections.

Of course it's all about race. The gun nuts fear that one day the people they have been flagrantly screwing and oppressing forever will both see that shafting with intense clarity and react appropriately, demanding justice if not retribution. The gun nuts fear that the oppressed masses will react the way they themselves would react, violently.

This is the new American conservativism, the exact inverse of the "golden rule" and constitutional government as outlined in our founding documents. They fear fair play and a level playing field more than anything, doubting their own ability to compete following so many decades of privilege, easy-pickings and patrimony.

Fear. That's all it is about.