Everyday Erinyes #90

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage.  These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that.  Even though there are many more which I can’t include.  As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

I don’t have a link to the first thing I wasnt to share; I am just quoting from an email.  The email is from Mark Kelly (“Mr. Gabby Giffords,” but don’t tell him I said that), and the only link it has is to a donation page.  But following and fighting the gun lobby is Mark and Gabby’s life, so I am confident he know whereof he speaks.

Congress returns next weekend from recess and the gun lobby is ready for them to pass their “concealed carry reciprocity” legislation that will allow almost anyone to carry a loaded, concealed firearm in public places.

How ready are they? How close do they think they are? How certain are they that this is coming?

The gun lobby is so certain that they just held a three day event promoting concealed carry accessories. They sold INSURANCE in case the member erroneously shoots someone with their concealed weapon and is held liable. And the day ended with a literal “Concealed Carry Fashion Show,” complete with a runway and models, to show off the latest gear.

I’m sorry, I am speechless.  Megaera, can you cope?

 

In New Mexico, they seem to have the right idea on dealing with a situation like the one they have – a situation where one black girl in a high school class was singled out by a threatening photo which was posted on Snapchat – on the school’s official Snapchat group.

Firstly, they realized that the photo did not represent a real event – that it had been digitally altered (not that that was difficult – it only took me one glance, and I’m no expert).  So they did not overreact against everyone in the class.  They looked for and apparently quickly found the actual perpetrators, who were suspended.  One was also kicked off the football team (an action too often neglected).  Charges against them for a hate crime are also still being contemplated “because it’s this serious.”

Serious it is.  Humor is a serious thing.  Humor can hurt.  Humor can kill.  I have often seen parents laugh at their children for something they find amusing which the child is too young to understand.  I have seen parents, not just laughe at their children, but set them up to be laughed at with prompting and interrupting until the child is so frustrated that they can find it funny.

Allow me to quote from C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters:

Humour is for them the all consoling and (mark this) the all-excusing grace of life. Hence it is invaluable as a means of destroying shame. If a man simply lets others pay for him, he is ‘mean;’ if he boasts of it in a jocular manner and twits his fellows with having been scored off, he is no longer ‘mean’ but a comical fellow. Mere cowardice is shameful; cowardice boasted of with humourous exaggerations and grotesque gestures can be passed off as funny. Cruelty is shameful—unless the cruel man can represent it as a practical joke…  

Alecto, am I being unreasonable to demand that we need to teach children how humor can be used to hurt instead of to heal?  And teach them not to do that?  And to call out the wrongness of it whenever it is done?

 

This last piece of news is, to me, though shocking, yet still good news.

23 August 2017 – The United Nations body monitoring implementation of the global convention on prohibiting racial discrimination has called on high-level politicians and public officials of the United States to unequivocally and unconditionally reject and condemn racist hate speech and crimes in Charlottesville and throughout the country.

In a decision issued under its ‘early warning and urgent action’ procedure, the Committee, which monitors implementation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, stated “there should be no place in the world for racist white supremacist ideas or any similar ideologies that reject the core human rights principles of human dignity and equality.”

Friends – fellow resisters – what we are suffering is real, and visible to objective outside observers, who will help as best they can by calling it out.

Hopefully, the humiliation of having our beloved nation held up to the world publicly as a bad example will some day turn out to have been a small price to pay.  Hopefully.  Tisiphone, please help us in any way you can, if not to eliminate the disease, at least to get it out of government.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 here.