The Elephant Unseen...

 This post is a comment on an article published by TheAtlantic The Problem Is Gun Culture, Not SCOTUS;

"To the town of Aqua Fria rode a stranger one fine day… Didn't talk to folks around him… Didn't have to much to say…"  Most definitely on my list of any era any genre  favorite music. Not to mention a totally fine way to open an essay on the subject of guns.  It is rare that I totally agree with something published by The Atlantic, but this is one of those times.  The author's (Tom Nichols) thesis sentence, with which I couldn't agree more, is found as paragraph four of the offering.

"The problem is not the Court’s decision. The problem is an adolescent, drama-laden gun culture, a romance with weapons that became extreme only in the past quarter century."

Beyond an absolute truth well spoke that sentence contains an assertion in its' closing words that implies Tom has noticed something that I have also noted.  In the last quarter century?  From the mid-90's till now? I agree, he's right, but why that period of time?  What happened in the mid-90's to start such a transformation?  What enabled it? It had to be something. What was it?

As a contra-social philosopher and GM-CT I have never investigated that obvious question as fully I should have. Mea culpa, my bad.  His assertion sparked a thought, the thought a question, and what was found looking for an answer to that question is a possible explanation for not only this conundrum but several others equally problematic that have radically escalated across the same period.

Are they related by something unrecognized?  Maybe.  This potential is in the realms of Social Psychology and I've never heard a whisper of it anywhere. Not to say it hasn't been noticed, or spoken of, just that I've never heard of such a thought being examined. It's new to me.  Gentle reader, allow me to share that thought with you.  Perhaps it might strike a chord in your contemplations as it has in mine.

Social evolution, cultural evolution, is absolutely horrible about conflating and equating things which really have little or nothing to do with each other in absolute fact.  These things are rarely seen at the surface of thought, they are often simply stored in the same register of thoughts as it were, and yet by that simple proximity across the run of history they can become very powerful influencers in shaping what will become an individual's deepest expectations.  Since expectations, particularly those never fully understood, have direct access to shape the structures of emotional responses the sum of such conflated expectations can easily be a totally concealed motive to empower any number of things into reality.

There is one HUGE point that broached the surface for most people in the mid-90's that I am certain was so heavily conflated with several other cultural elements as to become an almost a ubiquitous driver in the opening days of the new century (important point… the new century as accounted by the Gregorian calendar in current service). 

The subject of Tom's essay was the change in attitudes concerning weapons, guns in particular.  A fact of life: Fear, and the consequences of fear, are the constant companion of any weapon of any sort.  As my thoughts evolve I'm ever more convinced the now comical and seldom mentioned  Y2K thing… the fear of electricity going down, the fear of all the computers suddenly turning into economic assassins… was simply a thin veneer of irrational ridiculousity concealing a much deeper set of fears of such scale as to secretly echo decades into the future as motivation for a great many things.

How could a set of numbers rolling over on a calendar create an irrational fascination and romance with lethal weaponry?  How could that change mandate a desperate effort by half of society to reshape society into a totally ovine collectivist herd mentality and destroy the individual?  How could it demand a return to a feudalistic religious fundamentalism in the other half, the half most commonly in  love with the weapons? 

What has dawned on me is there is a point that when combined, emotionally conflated, with the totally public onset of not only a new century but a new millennia would be of sufficient power to set such a cycle in motion to become self sustaining beneath the surface of a society.

The United States of America evolved, and in large degree still is, a Christian society. In the structures of Christendom is the solid belief that at a time of his choosing known only to him Jesus will return to the mortal realms of Planet Earth.  A very, very powerful and very old belief. Judgment day, as it is known to the faithful.  Judgment day, to accompany what the prophet John detailed elegantly and gruesomely… and apparently ever more accurately…  in the book of Revelation. 

I know for a fact that for a great many Christians that series of prophesied events was firmly expected sometime immediately after the onset of the Gregorian new millennia (which was in close and convenient proximity to an astrological event of equally epic proportions… a grand conjunction of the planets marking a new age of the earth to the Pagan folk) and I equally know that regardless of the true depth and degree of faith, or secret lack thereof, from one perspective or the other there is no greater a terror for a Christian than the consequences of that day come to reality!

  Enough fear that a total fascination with guns makes sense in that environment.  Pick the fight, load the guns, shoot all the bullets.  Only the survivors will have to face judgment day, those who died in the fighting will have died before Jesus made it back, they'll have died without KNOWING and are therefore forgiven pursuant to Jesus' sacrifice… right.  No wonder Ragnarok looks better to a lot of them than what Armageddon implies.

Look at what is known to every shrink and every good parent, look at what happens when a deep expectation fails to materialize in reality! Fear. Secret fear, the authority (be it parental or societal) has failed its' charter and we do not know where we stand.  And a lot of very public resentment.  Said authority betrayed what our culture led us to believe was a promise. Time for a good temper tantrum and pout, if nothing else.

Folks, are we looking at a case of a self fulfilling prophecy?  To speculate further would be to further abuse your patience (thank you!), but think about it.  Looks to me like there is good potential for a solid and fully concealed connection between this thought and every major factor that is now dividing America.