From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: The "Me-First" People and Guns (was Re: Why Vote?)
Date: 7 Nov 92 18:45:16 GMT
Organization: Madison Academic Computing Center, UW-Madison


In article <1992Nov3.213822.4746@PacBell.COM>
rjwill6@PacBell.COM (Rod Williams) writes:

>> anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson) writes:

>>Seems to me that for the last 15-20
>>years, just about any statement that begins "You owe it to
>><whatever|whoever>" has been discounted to zero on its face,
>>without reflection of any kind.  I hated Christopher Lasch's
>>books, but the "me" generation was (is?) a real phenomenon,
>>and a very largely negative one.

>I nearly slapped someone silly at work the other day -- a
>comfortable, middle-aged, middle-class, suburban, employed
>white male who was bewailing his choices in the election, "I
>don't see what any of them can do for people like me," as if
>that were the point.  (I refrained -- it's my boss.)

Such blatant selfishness is pretty infuriating, but a person
who says that is telling you something you need to know.
One approach, of course, is to start selling them on the
idea that their self-interests overlap or coincide with
progressive social, political, and economic interests, that
such investments will return dividends benefitting them as
well as others while making the capital more secure as time
goes along.

>Someone at hal.com (sorry, I lost the attribution) wrote:

>>>You may not think it is much, but the vote is all we have.

>>Not *quite* all: we have guns, if it ever came to that, not
>>that we wouldn't be mostly annihilated more or less right
>>away despite that.

>Heavens.  After nearly 16 years in this country, I'm still
>bowled over by answers like this that reflect a no doubt
>genuine belief that private ownership of firearms is A Good
>Thing, perhaps the only thing standing between Law Abiding
>Americans and The End Of Civilization As We Know It.  I'm
>confronted daily by newspaper and TV stories that suggest
>otherwise, that suggest we're doing our level best to
>annihilate each other with or without the government's
>participation.  I also have a sneaking suspicion that when
>the Day of Reckoning comes, those same Law Abiding, Gun
>Toting Americans are going to be gunning after *me*

I don't own a gun and since I'm not interested in hunting or
sport shooting, I can't think of many reasons why I would
want something so dangerous around.  But the *right* to own
a gun is politically important, I think.  I'm not opposed
to mandatory registration or to waiting periods for gun
purchases.

The underlying fact is that the basis for violence in this
society is not the existence of guns nor their widespread
ownership in the US.  The fear that leads generally
law-abiding people to arm themselves is a (mainly racist)
demonization of the poor.  If the Constitution were changed
so that civilian arms were outlawed, this demonizing would
not be lessened; rather, most gun-owners would keep their
(then illegal) arms and another illegal market would open
up.

-- 
Jess Anderson <> Madison Academic Computing Center <> University of Wisconsin
Internet: anderson@macc.wisc.edu <-best, UUCP:{}!uwvax!macc.wisc.edu!anderson
Room 3130 <> 1210 West Dayton Street / Madison WI 53706 <> Phone 608/262-5888
<>  <>  <> Discrimination, Bigotry, and Hate are not Family Values <>  <>  <>
Newsgroups: soc.motss