America faces harsh new non-fiction

 

 

America faces harsh new non-fiction

On December 15th when I posted 27 people who were alive yesterday would still be alive today if US fantasists were denied access to US fantasies, I wasn’t being funny. The slaughter of 20 schoolchildren and six of their teachers in a sleepy Connecticut town wasn’t a crime for the gunman; it was a game. He wasn’t murdering human beings; he was racking up a score.

Amid the public clamour for America to re-visit its gun regulation and the abhorrence of ‘yet another’ mass-execution-by-a-lone-gunman in the dystopian Home of the Brave, only a minority have made reference to the Sandy Hook gunman’s mental illness. Still fewer cried out against the proliferation of socially aberrant young men whose withdrawal from society is aided and abetted by an absorption into shoot-em-up video games.

And fewer still will have referenced America’s reverence for its hallowed institution of Hollywood and its fantastic output of larger-than-life fantasy… until the cancellation was announced of the latest Quentin Tarantino movie Django Unchained, owing to its ultra-violent story line likely being perceived as poor taste following the school murders. And other bang-bang premiers followed. But perceived is the key word here…

Wanting to lynch the National Rifle Association (NRA) or – more hysterically – calling for civilian ownership of guns to be banned is just not realistic. The vast majority of US gun owners muddle along quite happily without upsetting anyone. And the industry’s contribution to employment and taxes is unquestionable. But in a country that was so famously settled and later ruled by the gun, suddenly to think that firearms can be ruled out of the country’s history is ridiculous. What needs to be more urgently addressed is how to foster a healthier perception of reality.

Whether it be the Columbine High killer, or troop deployment in Afghanistan or Travis Bickle there exists in American culture an enormous capacity to blur the boundaries of fact and fiction. Hollywood has become so accomplished in helping the willing suspension of disbelief that some of its less mentally or emotionally developed moviegoers and video gamers and gun owners gleefully succumb to a different reality. It warps their perception.

So if one were to deprive US citizens of their right to bear arms, does it follow that movie theatres (cinemas) be closed too, or that young men be banned from being alone in their rooms with the Xbox for anything other than Super Racer encounters? I think not.

But here’s a start…

Yes, you can own a gun; a pistol for protection, a rifle for hunting, a shotgun to bring down birds for the pot, or Grandad’s carbine from Iwo Jima. But an assault rifle, no. This is a weapon of war, not the realization of a constitutionally-underwritten right. And at the point of purchase, the system must allow vendors the right actually to say, “No you can’t buy one because I have reason to believe you’re a fucking idiot”.

America has lots to recommend it, but whether or not one supports the right to bear arms in a 21st century developed country that no longer has a domestic frontier to defend, the place has spent 400-odd years arming its citizens, and suddenly to believe one can call them all back or pretend the wild west never happened is to be guilty of a faulty perception of reality oneself.

A gun is a weapon it’s true… so is a car, so is a bottle, so is a camping knife. But you cannot idiot-proof 300 million Americans. And even a culture that feels the need to label peanut packets warning – may contain nuts might not react that positively to video games and Hollywood blockbusters with the caveat, warning – may contain utter fiction.
NOTE
A new term for the Uxbridge English Dictionary (ref. The late Humphrey Lyttleton) – Tarantinrum (noun) a tantrum thrown by a film director when advised by his paymasters to defer a premier of a new opus. e.g. viz “There’s violence in the world, tragedies happen… It’s a western. Give me a break.” Q. Tarantino, December 2012 # sensitivesoul