"They Shall Not Replace Us"

 

 Jacksonville August 26, 2023

Charlottesville, August 2017

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. US Constitution, Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3

In allocating taxes, our founding Constitution not only supported slavery but counted them (“all other persons”) as three fifths of a white resident. There weren’t many other persons of color back then, African and indigenous peoples were virtually the only persons that fit that category, but their skin tones and defining features would make them stand out for our nation’s entire history. They were actively discouraged from assimilation with the majority white community, even as they had resided within this American territory, for centuries if not millennia. It took the Civil War and a spate of subsequent constitutional amendments to accord “equal status” to free slaves at least a legal, but hardly a de facto, basis for civil rights that really did not find meaningful traction, since eroded in part, in the middle of the twentieth century. We still struggle with racism.

As I have blogged before, developed countries face another demographic pressure that eats away at GDP growth big time, and that most definitely impacts the United States. That magical 2.1 live births per couple steady-state replacement rate – what keeps the relevant demographic at zero growth – is increasingly becoming an unsustainable number. While the US does not face the dramatic 1.26 birth rate of Japan, we were at 1.9 shortly before the pandemic and have fallen to 1.64 today. In short, the number of resident Americans is contracting, impacting everything from the way Social Security and Medicare are funded, the rising labor costs to that economic growth that American businesses depend on. Fewer consumers. Fewer workers. A less vibrant economy.

There has been a parallel rise in global populism heavily focused on keeping “they’re not our kind” immigrants from entering developed countries, notwithstanding the contracting consumer base. Economists have tried to measure the cost to the US economy from keeping immigrants out and making sure that those in this nation either seeking asylum or simply undocumented remain marginalized. Those paid under the table. Those who live outside our tax base. The annualized number is as high as a staggering $5.1 trillion. This contraction has literally forced so many major US corporations to focus their investment and growth efforts overseas. For many, the lack of annual incremental growth in this country forces new US-based businesses to succeed domestically only to the extent that they can take money away from existing businesses.

The anti-“people of color” movement, the “anti-woke” rise of white Christian nationalism, that today defines MAGA Republicans (who literally control the GOP), is heavily focused both on stopping immigration and containing our own non-white demographics. Purging discussions of slavery, creating false narratives finding benefits to those who were slaves, and labeling movements of people of color facing rising discrimination as left-wing, radical socialist radicals is further empowered by another parallel distortion of the US Constitution. Applying a judicial interpretation of “originalism” – requiring courts to review constitutional provisions solely by looking at society and technology existing at the time of passage and eschewing any material changes since – the first case in over two centuries reviewing the extent of 2nd Amendment gun rights applied the world of flintlocks and muskets to a world of AR-15s and Glocks: Antonin Scalia’s absurd majority opinion in the 2008 Supreme Court ruling in Heller vs DC creating a national right to gun ownership. That decision opened the floodgates of enabling red state legislation decimating any attempt at meaningful gun control since.

Add to this the connective tissue of bigotry, racial violence and raw hatred that connects once very separated right wing killer racists from assembling, sharing and encouraging their toxicity including murderous methodology and conspiratorial mythology: social media. Simply put, there are no lone wolves in the litany of racially or religiously motivated mass shootings. They are all well interconnected. I’m not going to begin to list the litany of racial, gender and religious mass shootings even just this year. They are sufficiently reported in the press.

But our courts and state legislators, where gun ownership (particularly concealed carry and military grade assault weapons) are encouraged, are definitely responsible in material part for those numerous victims of unwarranted mass shootings. All based on that erroneous “originalist” interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. As state in this August 9th LA Times Editorial: “The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that Americans’ right to possess, carry and conceal weapons cannot be curtailed by laws that are not rooted in practices that existed in the late 18th century, when the 2nd Amendment was drafted and ratified. Gun advocates argue that the right to carry weapons makes Americans safer, and that any bad guy with a gun is now more likely to be stopped by a good guy with a gun — someone presumably like an armed parent, retired police officer or judge.

“The targeted racist slayings understandably loomed larger in the news than the family violence. President Biden said, ‘We must say clearly and forcefully that white supremacy has no place in America.’ Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, said, ‘Targeting people because of their race has no place in the state of Florida.’ Former Vice President Mike Pence, also running for president, said, ‘There is no place in America for racially inspired violence.’

“They are wrong and they know it. The American people, their politicians, their courts and their culture have made this nation the planet’s preeminent place to target people for death because of their race — or for any other reason, such as their familial relationship, differing beliefs or reasons indiscernible to the rest of us. This country is exactly the place for hateful, murderous, suicidal gun violence, because this is the place for millions upon millions of guns, and the bizarre American delusion that the more of them we have, the safer and freer we are.

“Pence added that his solutions include an ‘expedited federal death penalty for anyone engaged in a mass shooting.’ It’s difficult to grasp how quick executions would alter the behavior of the Jacksonville killer, who shot himself to death. Or whichever member of the Dunham family pulled the trigger, the deranged Ventura cop who died at the scene or the judge who claims to have shot his wife by accident.

“Firearms are the leading cause of death of juveniles in the U.S. Biden recently unveiled a plan to increase access to mental health care, including in schools, in part to address the causes of gun violence… The far-right organization called Moms for Liberty said, in effect, don’t you dare. Mental health care ‘has NO place in public schools,’ the group said in a social media post earlier this month.

“At a special session of the Tennessee Legislature called in response to the slaying of three children and three adults at a Nashville elementary school in March, lawmakers last week rejected gun control proposals and instead introduced measures to allow more guns in schools.” Common sense has left the building. We are decimating our own economy, fomenting murder, with what genuine benefits to “most of us”? There’s no place like America for gun violence, so how do we make the bad men stop? When do we stop lying to ourselves?

I’m Peter Dekom, and the MAGA mantra of “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” needs to be replaced with the much more realistic: “guns might not kill people, but easy access to guns definitely results in more gun homicides.”