The Supreme Court says Americans have a right to own guns for self-defense and hunting, the justices’ first major pronouncement on gun rights in U.S. history.

The court’s 5-4 ruling strikes down the District of Columbia’s 32-year-old ban on handguns as incompatible with gun rights under the Second Amendment. The decision goes further than even the Bush administration wanted, but probably leaves most firearms laws intact.

The wackadoos are in full command. Not only do they have two of the three branches of the government in their pockets, but the Congress is theirs for the asking too (see the right-wing extremist FISA bill they’re about to pass).  Now their judicial arm has created a new Constitutional “right,” just for the wackadoos.  Brass knuckles are illegal, but guns are too safe for the government to ban.  God bless America.

Incidentally, the above-quoted AP lede is dead wrong–it was by no means “the justices’ first major pronouncement on gun rights in U.S. history.”  The Supreme Court had ruled AGAINST the Second Amendment having any relevance to gun control laws over and over again in rulings going back to the 19th century.

A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.

Until the reign of general idiocy that began with the fall of the Berlin Wall and is only just beginning to end, no one but gun wackos bothered quoting that irrelevant Amendment–or rather, quoting the second half of it, since the “well regulated militia” part never did their cause much good.

“Keep and bear arms”?  Nobody does that any more.  Members of the National Guard–which is today’s Congressionally-designated militia–do not keep their guns at all; they’re in an armory, and they’re the same issue the Army gets.  They DO bear arms when in uniform–unlike those who carry around a gun for self-defence or hunting, who are merely carrying arms.  In the eighteenth century, when the Second Amendment was drafted, to “bear arms” had a specifically military meaning (see the Oxford English Dictionary).

This explains the otherwise mysterious connection between a militia designed to protect the state and a right of the people.  Simply put, the feds can’t keep people from serving in their state militias–nor from keeping the weapons they’d need to do it, if any states still let militia members keep their own weapons (which they don’t).  It’s a right of the people to serve in their state’s military service–obviously subject to the provision that the state has to want them there (or the militia would hardly be “well regulated”).

Through the alchemy of our ever-obscurantist Supreme Kangaroo Court, this has transmogrified into a right to own a handgun for self-protection in the District of Columbia, which doesn’t have a militia.  Just about as logical as saying you have to stop counting votes because continuing to count them might at least temporarily swing the outcome, giving the impression that the person who’s going to be implanted into office anyway wasn’t really elected.  It’s the same five Justices–well, not quite, two having been replaced by the pseudo-president thereby implanted (and subsequently reimplanted through massive fraud).

What really worries me is the folks in D.C.  A lot of them are going to die because of this.  All in order to “reinforce the illusion, irrelevant to capitalist production but essential to its propaganda, that the individual stands self-sufficient above all symbolic restraint”–legal restraint in this case (quotation from page 21 of my big essay).

This great piece by Jeff Cohen from seven years ago has lost little of its pertinence, what with the Supreme Kangaroo Court agreeing to hear a Second Amendment challenge to D.C.’s gun control laws. In particular, as Cohen says:

Media bias in favor of the NRA’s view of the Second Amendment (as protecting individual gun ownership) is so pervasive that even many gun-control supporters seem unaware that the federal high courts have never found a gun law to have violated the Second Amendment.

The Amendment is only 27 words: “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” While the NRA emphasizes only the last 14 words, the U.S. Supreme Court and appeals courts have focused on “well-regulated militia” and “security of a free State” to rule that Second Amendment rights are reserved to states and their militias – nowadays, the National Guards.

The truth is — and one would hardly know it from the mass media — that since the Supreme Court’s unanimous Miller decision in 1939, all federal appeals courts, whether dominated by liberals or conservatives, have agreed that the Second Amendment does not confer gun rights on individuals. The NRA view, opposed even by such right-wing judges as Robert Bork, has been consistently rejected.

I know Cohen’s right that the pervasive belief in the NRA interpretation must come from the media–where else? As I recall — yes, I am old enough to remember this — as recently as the 1980’s, only gun nuts talked about the “Constitutional right to own a gun.” Now, even liberals seem to think it’s an established, if regrettable, fact. It isn’t. It’s nonsense. And like all manner of other prevailing nonsense, it’s about time it got exposed as such.

Stuff like this spreads from television and other media into the popular discourse and is then passed on through endless repetition.  Why do people repeat what they hear on TV as if it is fact?  Television is one of the worst sources of information.   But this is what allows USTV (the U.S. T.V. culture zone) to perpetuate itself in its colossal ignorance, deliberately maintained through a one-way communication medium.

Heyoka Magazine says,

THE WAR GAME
is a 1965 television film on nuclear war. Written, directed, and produced by Peter Watkins for the BBC’s The Wednesday Play strand, its depiction of the impact of Soviet nuclear attack on Britain caused dismay within the BBC and in government and was banned for 20 years. It was scheduled for transmission on August 6, 1966 (the anniversary of the Hiroshima attack) but was not transmitted until 1985, the corporation publicly stating that “the effect of the film has been judged by the BBC to be too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting”. It was widely viewed before its BBC debut on video and in art-house cinemas, often using prints provided by Watkins. The film won the Academy Award for Documentary Feature in 1966.

The War Game is available from Amazon, but you can watch it online right now. It’s horrifying and, unfortunately, a must-see. Calmly, without histrionics, it shows some of the various effects that, AT A MINIMUM, we should expect from a nuclear war–an event that, with the proliferation of nuclear capabilities, may actually be a greater danger now than it was during the Cold War.

The Amazon page shows clearly that the battle to silence such knowledge is far from over. “The War Game is a fictional, worst-case-scenario,” the supposedly neutral plot synopsis begins. Wrong and wrong. It is not a fiction at all, but an extrapolation of what might happen in the future should a nuclear war break out, as the narration makes clear throughout. It doesn’t follow any one person but shows a series of different events, all based on the impacts of firestorms in Europe and actual atomic bombs in Japan. Far from a worst-case scenario, it was probably an overoptimistic scenario, even back in 1966, when the bombs weren’t as powerful. The real-life firestorms it’s based on cannot compare to nuclear war. (Note: the plot synopsis for some reason does not always show up on the Amazon page; sometimes, sometimes not.)

Also, the Amazon reviewer’s comment, “Subtlety isn’t Watkins’s suit” is exceptionally idiotic–I suppose he was hoping for a film about the SUBTLE EFFECTS of nuclear war? This reviewer also refers to “the film’s blunt antiestablishment politics,” which isn’t entirely wrong, but isn’t entirely right, either. Apart from one moment in which survivors express the sentiment that the British civil defense system didn’t do any good, the politics of this film are essentially in the scientific facts and historical events on which it’s based. This is a bit like Bill O’Reilly: you can’t trust the facts, because they have an antiestablishment bias.

The real political stance of the film is sufficiently given in this: it refuses to twist facts to suit the Masters of War. “Do so,” say the hawks. “Do so, but to a moderate degree,” say the moderates. “Do so just enough to make support for the military clear,” say the pro-establishment doves. Only the “extremists” of the anti-war cause actually want the facts to be given straight.

If the position that facts speak for themselves without any politics involved is inadequate, it’s not just because some sort of framing structure is required to present and indeed comprehend facts–the framing structure required to arrive at this film’s position is basically the establishment’s own. More crucially, it’s because, in the face of massive, relentless, and predictable political pressure, only a strongly-held political position can cause you to hold on to the truth, no matter how clearly it may present itself. Only in this sense does this film, which stays faithfully within the format of its assignment and of the BBC’s style, take a political stand.

Documentaries that enact possible future (or past) scenarios are hardly unprecedented, yet Amazon’s plot synopsis reiterates, “Although it won an Oscar for Best Documentary, it is fiction.” The people who voted it the Oscar had better political judgment than whoever wrote that. I doubt, in fact, that its horrifying nature was the real reason it wasn’t aired. As Amazon’s reaction shows, the unwillingness to know the true magnitude of what the world faces should these weapons ever be used is alive and well today.

This film is soberly and unsensationalistically done, based on solid research. It’s a dry BBC documentary, and at the same time extremely powerful. The presentation is cool and relentless. It’s hard to watch, but watch it anyway, and arm yourself with knowledge. Only if enough people realize the danger we’re in is there much hope of doing something about it. Bush Sr. and Clinton did NOT take the steps they could have to rid the world of these weapons when the Cold War ended, and they are now in more hands than ever. The risk of all-out nuclear war may be less than during the Cold War, but the risk of a smaller one has never been higher. Even if a smaller one did not escalate into a larger one, the consequences would be unthinkable.

Confronted with the indefensibility of the established order, Amazon.com shows the same defensive reaction as the New York Times and other dyspeptic corporate media outlets, unable to cope with the unruly turn public discourse has taken over the past two years. Anyone who points out that the Emperor not only has no clothes but is revealed without them to be a bizarre and horrifying monster must have faulty eyesight and an ungenerous spirit. Such generosity, of course, is never required of those who point out faults of figures who could be suspected of “antiestablishment” proclivities.

Here’s somebody who comes out of academia — and so do I! Now, I may not be the most pro-academic person in the world (to put it mildly), but I do appreciate good academics. That’s why I was tentatively excited when I found out about Feldman’s Frameshop, in which he dissects the way issues are framed so as to advantage conservatism…very much in line with my own blend of media criticism and discourse analysis, very interesting, potentially very good. I even used and linked to some of his material the other day.

I got a little worried when I read the sample chapter from Feldman’s book and found out his glowing reaction to Teddy Roosevelt’s 1906 “Muck Rake” speech, in which the president attacked the bulldogs who were too persistently pointing out America’s failings. Old Teddy had — and in some circles apparently still has — a greatly exaggerated reputation as a progressive. He did do some trustbusting and supported some health and safety regulations, but behind the scenes he was generally quite pro-corporate. He was also a ferocious racist and imperalist. His “Muck Rake” speech, which gave us the word “muckraker,” showed the true colors of a sunshine liberal — sure, criticize abuses, but not too much. Feldman turns this into an inspiring moral message on some elevated plane of little relevance to the actual politics of the time — or of any time.

But what really threw me was this ringing defense of deliberative censorship. In the midst of a post in which Feldman performs the admittedly worthy task of shredding Bill O’Reilly, he chides Mad Bill for accusing DailyKos of fostering “9/11 conspiracy theories”:

According to the FAQ free and open for every human being and Bill O’Reilly to read, The DailyKos adheres to a strict editorial policy whereby posting a 9/11 conspiracy diaries results not only in the deletion of the diary, but the banning of the offending writers from the site. Write a 9/11 conspiracy diary on DailyKos and within hours, your diary,and every other diary you ever wrote, is deleted and your a free account is canceled.

More importantly, O’Reilly failed to report how a volunteer team of DailyKos “trusted users” constantly sifts through every diary posted to make sure the site does not step across that murky line dividing civil debate from violent rhetoric. They accomplish this through a combination of requests to writers to clean up foul language and–occasionally–by “bleeping out” offensive words (e.g., O’Reilly is full of ***t). If nasty words do make are kept in a post, it is typically because they are a key to the story (e.g., the story of Bill O’Reilly’s viewers sending death threats to the owner of The DailyKos). These trusted users do not get paid, they simply believe in DailyKos’s patriotic mission of fostering free and open debate. In the end, then, even though YearlyKos is distinct from DailyKos, JetBlue should be proud of any perceived ties this gives them to The DailyKos–a blog that historians will someday credit with helping to revive deliberative democracy in America.

The hypocrisy here is a clear indication that Feldman has learned a little too much from studying Republican framing — like Saruman researching the rings too long.

After the above quote, Feldman castigates O’Reilly for allowing Dinesh D’Souza to promote his own “9/11 conspiracy theory.” D’Souza’s latest cerebral hemorrhage is that the “cultural left” caused 9/11.

Like well-trained CIA liberals of the Cold War era denouncing both fascism and communism in the same breath (see MORE THOUGHTS below), Feldman wants to make very clear that he rejects both “9/11 conspiracy theories” that blame the U.S. government AND those that blame the left. Instead, he takes a sensible, moderate, reasonable, unideological position in the middle — that it was a conspiracy done by Arabs. The great advantage of saying that Arabs plotted the meticulous conspiracy is, of course, that this isn’t a conspiracy theory. Only if some prominent group of Americans or American allies were the alleged conspirators would it be a conspiracy theory. (If this seems at all an unorthodox statement, just check the way the term “conspiracy theory” is in fact routinely used.)

The kind of “deliberative democracy” Feldman wants is the same one that has murdered people by the millions overseas for the last sixty years — while debating at home how to take our unchallengeable supremacy in the practice of democracy to an even higher pitch of perfection.

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Or rather, candiDATE, with no ’s.’ Tom Tancredo, R-Col., is the sole Republican candidate to address the NAACP convention. He was flanked by lecterns with placards for nine other GOP candidates — all no-shows. Every invited Democrat showed up.

As Jeffrey Feldman remarks, “One has to wonder why this photo was not the lead on every morning show and on the front pages of every morning newspaper in America.”

Charlie Rose: Welcome to the show. Let me start by kissing your ass for a while before I get on with interrupting you.

No, I guess I didn’t really hear that. It just seemed like it.

Two right-on-the-money rebuttals: first off, Moyers’ impassioned fire. Then, Greenwald’s legal, logical ice. Both pieces are brilliant.

All Glenn Greenwald ever does, really, is uphold the sense of political decency, propriety, legality, and respect for the rules and for basic fairness that were, believe it or not, widely accepted by the American establishment as recently as the post-Watergate era (1975-78). Granted, they didn’t consistently practice what they preached, and huge areas — such as all U.S. operations overseas, and certain assassinations that had occured back home — were exempt from any concept of fairness, decency, or lawfulness whatever. But debates within the U.S. were, provided they stayed within certain bourgeois, pro-Cold-War bounds, protected by hard-fought-for rules of fairness — as were the contestations between the two major parties — as was ideological struggle within a rather broadly defined mainstream, from strong liberal to strong conservative. (It wasn’t until the Reagan era that we were indoctrinated through endless repetition with the idea that liberalism isn’t part of the mainstream. Most liberals and progressives, seeming to almost relish their faux unpopularity, did not strongly contest this nonsense at the time, with disastrous consequences ever since.)

And the corporate media, in those same post-Watergate times — at least the respectable, anti-tabloid media — adhered to strict rules of neutrality in news reporting that have since gone by the boards. (Imagine news stories that don’t assert what is likely to win public support or how the ongoing struggles they chronicle are likely to come out, that don’t make use of the passive voice or appeals to anonymous “experts” to attribute authoritative opinions, and that don’t strive for false balance — news stories that, even when they decontextualize or fail to dig enough, more or less report facts and not opinions. Yes, Virginia, many of the basic principles of journalistic integrity progressives now fight a 175-degree uphill battle for were once part of the establishment media’s own rulebook.) These rules did not prevent bias — even massive bias — in sourcing and framing assumptions, for example — but they did put some very real limits on it.

Don’t get me wrong — the rules of fairness under which public discourse operated in this country at that time were perfectly compatible with, and indeed conducive to, the capitalist order. Given the destructiveness which American imperalism had already achieved by 1975 (which Greenwald, significantly, does not criticize), it might not seem like much to aspire to get back to a comparable level of inconsistently principled public discourse. But we’ve fallen so very far that in fact it is a huge undertaking, and a desperately needed one to keep us from outright fascism. (No, North Carolina, we are not already in a state of fascism — or I’d be arrested for writing this — and not merely, as is likely, spied upon.)

Like Greenwald, Bill Moyers also, in his way, upholds the old sense of honor — the one that eventually forced out Agnew and Nixon, and that caused a backlash against their repressive machinations, not just among the great unwashed, but even among the freshly scrubbed of Washington opinion-setters (who already viewed said unwashed with the absolute condescension of an elite whose members know their names will always outweigh their lack of talent). Still less than Greenwald would Moyers ever question American imperalism as such. After all, he was the lackey of the president who lied us into Vietnam. In Moyers’ field of vision, such an act is only an excess, not a monstrosity like those committed by “our” foes.

Yet in opposing these excesses, folks like Moyers and Greenwald sometimes see with brutal clarity the exact place where tyranny is now advancing into yet another former stronghold of those who, however waveringly, resist it. My confirmed impression, from hanging out with my fellow leftists, is that most leftists most of the time don’t see this stuff for what it is, dismissing it as fiddling over crumbs. It is not.

To defend these quite unpurist strongholds, good radicals must fight full-shouldered beside our liberal brothers and sisters — even if in other areas, especially their nationalism, they are themselves part of the problem.

I’ve figured out the meaning of the way the last Sopranos episode ended…

(drumroll, please)

The writers are going to get whacked.

Now that MSNBC has pulled the plug on talkshow host Don Imus for his overtly bigoted remarks, will Newsweek yank away Howard Fineman’s editorship for his overtly bigoted logic?

Five days after Imus opened his mouth and let the ugliness inside show for the umpteenth time, Newsweek editor Howard Fineman appeared on Imus’ show, like all the other willing abettors who came before, and with a tone of a lecturing grade school teacher offered pearls of wisdom to the besieged casual racist and smiling misogynist. Fineman had this interesting observation:

The environment, politically, has changed. And some of the stuff that you used to do, you probably can’t do anymore…. You just can’t. Because the times have changed. I mean, just looking specifically at the African-American situation. I mean, hello, Barack Obama’s got twice the number of contributors as anybody else in the race…. And the kind of — some of the kind of humor that you used to do you can’t do anymore.

Note that Fineman doesn’t say you can’t get away with as much racism any more because people are more sensitive, more easily offended, more likely to complain, and so on. No. Fineman says you can’t get away with as much racism as before because people aren’t as racist. Why else would he bring up Obama’s contributors? People don’t give money to Barney Frank because they’re offended by homophobia. The only possible relevance of the money given to Obama is that a lot of white people are now capable of being so energized by a black man, they’re actually willing to give him some of their hard earned cash. God damn it, that makes life tough for poor, hardworking folks who like to spew racist filth every time they open their mouths. Even if they’re actually rich and paid to gab.

In other words, Fineman — not me — but Fineman is acknowledging that Don Imus’ ability to get away with this kind of stuff before depended on the fact that the social climate used to be more racist. This wouldn’t have been quite so bad if Fineman hadn’t preceded this observation with a ramble about the work Imus did in the past, saying things that range from kind to apologetic:

I would like to continue to enable you to do a lot of the good things you do. Including, you know, talking about stuff happening in the world, which you do a very good job of on this show.

You know, the form of humor that you do here is risky, and sometimes it runs off the rails. Most of the people who listen to this show get the joke most of the time, and sometimes, you know, as David Carr said in The New York Times this morning, sometimes you go over the line so far you can’t even see the line. And that’s what happened in this case. And I think of all the stuff you’ve done and do do, and, you know, you make your mistakes — we all make our mistakes.

Okay, boys and girls — let’s put together Fineman’s syllogism. An asterisk (*) denotes a step Fineman declined to state explicitly:

1. Barack Obama is getting contributions from more people than anyone else.
   
2. Therefore, people aren’t as racist as they used to be.
3. Therefore, you can’t get away with racist remarks as easily as you could before.
4. This explains why you’re getting in really bad trouble for the kind of thing you used to do routinely before.
5. * Therefore, what you used to do routinely was racist.
6. I like what you did before, and regard the bigoted parts as a pushing of the envelope that sometimes got out of hand.
7. * Therefore, I, Fineman, condone racism — as long as you know when to stop before you get into trouble.

Is this passive racism, which accepts and appreciates prejudice for making life easier on the good old boys’ circuit even when one says nothing prejudiced oneself, the mentality that has allowed so many celebrities, politicians, and pundits to be a part of Imus’ “club” over the years?

Here is the relevant part of the exchange in full:

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