Paul Krugman: The G.O.P. War on Civil Virtue

[Nevilledog]

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@shannonrwatts
Republicans are “barely even trying to make sense,” writes @paulkrugman. “Instead, they’re just making noise to drown out rational discussion until the latest atrocity fades from the news cycle.”

Whether our anger fades is UP TO US.

nytimes.com
Opinion | The G.O.P. War on Civil Virtue
Catering to gun culture is only part of the story.
3:43 PM · May 28, 2022

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/26/opinion/republicans-guns-uvalde.html

No paywall
https://archive.ph/HsXcr

It’s hard to say which of the Republican responses to the latest mass shooting was most reprehensible. The reliably awful Senator Ted Cruz attracted considerable attention by insisting that the answer is to put armed guards in schools, never mind that Uvalde’s school system has its own police force and officers seem to have been on the scene soon after the shooter arrived.

And the Buffalo supermarket that was the location of a mass shooting just 10 days earlier also had an armed security guard, who was killed because his gun was no match for the shooter’s body armor.

But if you ask me, the worst and also most chilling response came from Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor of Texas. What we need to do, declared Patrick, is “harden these targets so no one can get in, ever, except maybe through one entrance.”

That restriction would have interesting consequences in the event of a fire. But in any case, think about Patrick’s language: In a nation that’s supposedly at peace, we should treat schools as “targets” that need to be “hardened.” What would that do to public education, which has for many generations been one of the defining experiences of growing up in America? Don’t worry, says a writer for The Federalist: Families can keep their kids safe by resorting to home-schooling.

Actually, if you take the proposals by Cruz, Patrick and others literally, they amount to a call for turning the land of the free into a giant armed camp. There are around 130,000 K-12 schools in America; there are close to 40,000 supermarkets; there are many other venues that might offer prey for mass killers. So protecting all these public spaces Republican-style would require creating a heavily armed, effectively military domestic defense force — heavily armed because it would face attackers with body armor and semiautomatic weapons — that would be at least as big as the Marine Corps.

*snip*

[elleng]

1. War on Civil Virtue

[JoeOtterbein]

2. Yes, that about...

...sums it up.

(angry tears)

[yonder]

3. "...What would that do to public education..."?

Exactly what the GOP wants.....drown it and most everything else in a bathtub.

[czarjak]

4. Bircher Victory. Ask one.

[gulliver]

5. Republicans offer absurd patches, but it's because they screwed up badly

Their way doesn't work. They are idiots, and idiots of the very worst kind. That's idiots who don't admit they've been wrong all along when the evidence is that, yes, they have been. There's no place in Hell hot enough.

[KS Toronado]

6. Our anger must not fade

clear up to the midterms. Every Democrat running for office needs to pound repugs with their inaction
on gun control. If we can give Nancy & Chuck a majority, we'll see some real gun reform, not
Band-aids. Moscow Mitch wants a small Band-aid on mass massacres so repugs can brag how big and
wonderful their reform was. We shouldn't settle for anything that doesn't fix the problem 100%.
Keep massacres front & center so voters listen.

[onetexan]

10. +1 -K&R

[wnylib]

11. Nothing that Massacre Mitch does now or

in the future will ever erase the stain of the deaths of innocents from him.

Ditto for the rest of the gun clutchers in Congress.

[no_hypocrisy]

7. Fortifying schools beyond that of banks.

[modrepub]

8. Ask Them If They'll Pay For That

or if the "armed" teachers are going to get a pay hike for buying, maintaining and arming themselves.

Like just about everything in the Republican world, "it costs too much". They'll refuse the tax hikes needed to pay for their folly or more likely lift the money from Democratic areas with bigger tax bases to pay for their rural constituents.

[wnylib]

12. Much cheaper to just ban assault weapons.

Sell it to the mass murder party as "reducing the deficit."

[betsuni]

9. Then why do people say Republicans are so good at messaging and Democrats aren't?

They don't make any sense. That Hillary Clinton ran a terrible campaign -- did Trump win because he ran such a fabulous campaign? Ridiculous, all of it.

[KS Toronado]

13. I hear that a lot also

Is it because Rs have using fear down to an art form? "They'll take all your guns away" "Illegals crossing
the southern border are gonna....fill-in the blank" etc, etc

[stopdiggin]

21. good point. I can't see it either.

Ted Cruz is 'winning' on messaging? Where?
No wait - Donald Trump is the most skilled public speaker of our time - and magician at 'messaging?' This a joke?

----- ---- --------- -----

[betsuni]

24. Trump contradicts himself all the time, says one thing at the beginning of a sentence and

the opposite at the end, to see which thing gets the most positive reaction. THAT'S an "evil genius" at messaging and reading a room and so on? A cheap stand-up comedian trying out jokes on audiences?

But Democrats who've had the same progressive policies to help Americans forever are somehow bad at messaging and it's a big mystery what they stand for?

[sop]

14. "I don't fully understand where this aversion to the basic rules of a civilized society is coming

from." Surely someone as intelligent as Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize winning economist, can figure out who benefits financially by the breakdown of civilized society.

[stopdiggin]

23. the idea that the 'old order'

survives nicely during a breakdown of civilized society -- is a popular myth. The truth has always been that revolutions spill a lot of blood, devastate a lot of lives - and break a lot of china. If you're Jack Ma or Jeff Bezos, or a Russian oligarch (and you're at all in your right mind ... )

[EarnestPutz]

15. School security that compares to banks sounds good if you only consider the security cameras.....

.....the single entrance and (maybe) the presence of an armed guard. Lots of schools may have that already. Every local bank that I can think of would be wide open if someone walked in with an AR-15. Effective protection would require something more like a low security prison: high fences, cameras everywhere and multiple layers of security at the entrance. Picture your local elementary school decked out like that, particularly with your kids on the playground.

[RussellCattle]

16. Maybe if a school shooter (domestic terrorist) were to mow down a bunch of kids in a playground.....

........from outside the fence, it would change the conversation from "hardening" school buildings to getting rid of AR-15s.

[AZ8theist]

18. The only thing that will get rid of AR-15s...

is if black men started buying them en mass and were parading in the public square carrying them.

THEN, and ONLY THEN will the white supremacist fuckwits panic and do something...

[EarnestPutz]

19. When the Black Panthers starting patrolling neighborhoods and following police.....

.....around while armed, California (Reagan) decided that some new laws regulating firearms was in order. The “Mulford Act” was thought necessary prevent the scary black folk from making suburban dwellers feel uncomfortable.

[AZ8theist]

17. They want the United States of Gilead...

Where heavily armed goons are on every street corner.....

[callous taoboy]

20. Soooo... then outdoor recess would be banned?

I teach in Texas, a couple of hours from Uvalde, and I already feel like my school is now a sitting duck. For a few hours every day we have a couple of hundred kids on the playground for recess (it's a huge school). Our playground is wide open. So lunatics like Cruz and Patrick would have all students enter a fortress and not have any outdoor time until they go home? Or would schools have to completely enclose their playgrounds with 10 foot high concrete walls, maybe with a turret or two?

[lindysalsagal]

22. He's right. They're not speaking rationally, or for any other reason but to get attention

They're all out-wingering each other, even if it circles all the way around back to fascism.

[Icanthinkformyself]

25. Repeal the 2nd Amendment,

pass strict gun control laws, take the guns off of the streets. If you need a gun you have the problem, not me or anyone else who doesn't see them as of value. See a psychiatrist or get some pills to make your penis bigger. Wanna hunt? Get a bow and arrow or use a spear. Show your skills as a hunter. Using a gun for hunting is cheating. Only losers’ cheat. Any a**hole can shoot a dear from 100 yards with a long rifle. Only someone truly skilled at hunting can take one with an arrow.