Mediaboss Marketing

The event educated participants on current debates over critical race theory, curriculum bans and political developments, including Florida's colloquially-termed "Don't Say Gay" legislation.

On Tuesday, the education minor and the Thurgood Marshall Pre-Law Society (TMPS) collaborated to host a Culture Wars in Education Bearchat event.

Students gathered in the Binghamton University Union for a discussion on political divisions over issues currently facing Americans. The interactive event educated attendees on identity-focused issues like race, gender and sexuality. Event speakers expanded on differences between traditionally liberal and conservative values, and students from TMPS cited specific legislation, including Floridas colloquially-termed Dont Say Gay bill, which expanded on relevant political differences.

Alexis Yang, a member of the Education Minor Steering Committees Diversity, Education and Inclusion and LGBTQ+ subcommittees and a senior majoring in English, described the impact of topics like race and gender on students aspiring to work in education.

As future educators, we have a responsibility to contribute to a more just, equitable and inclusive society, Yang wrote in an email. It is important to understand how theories such as critical race theory (CRT) work, in order to approach these social and cultural issues in the classroom. Understanding many different viewpoints will help future educators become more informed and critical learners and thus more informed and critical educators.

When brainstorming the topic for this semesters Bearchat, Yang said that she wanted to address recent political developments, including the results of major recent Supreme Court decisions 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of University of North Carolina which delivered a massive blow to minority communities across the country. Yang emphasized the need for students to be informed about political decisions impacting the future of the United States and its education system.

Zoey Kmack, TMPSs treasurer and a senior majoring in philosophy, politics and law, expanded on the benefits of culture wars discussion for pre-law students.

The inspiration for this event was to bring in a multicultural and legal perspective of history to the mainstream realm of education, Kmack wrote in an email. By having a well-rounded knowledge on the systematic oppression that is present in [United States] school systems, students looking to go into a law-oriented field can better understand how to approach issues involving social justice and human rights in their future careers.

After an information session that addressed the legal ramifications of political culture wars in education, attendees considered questions in smaller groups. After, the larger group convened and participants shared their thoughts. Certain questions, like whether or not state governments should have the right to restrict discussions of identity for K-5 public schools, prompted more debate. Others, like the extent to which textbook material should be restricted, lead to less discussion.

David Archer, the education minors faculty advisor, said that many people hear about uncomfortable situations in education, related to CRT and LGBTQ+ issues.

[Many state] legislatures getting more involved in these topics has only made the situation more volatile, Archer wrote in an email. I am hopeful that learning more about these situations will enlighten them as to how to teach about them and how to act [or] react to situations they make encounter.

Amanda Salerni, a sophomore majoring in mathematical sciences, added that the event helped to highlight how politics impacts identity.

In our discussions it was nice to not only think about how to look at these different issues, but also to hear others perspectives on them, Salerni wrote. These different perspectives are key to proper education in the future, especially since most schools in the [United States] are public schools, where there are different ethnicities, [religions], political views and genders.

Editors Note (10/26): Alexis Yang is the current arts and culture editor at Pipe Dream.

Continue reading here:
Education minor, TMPS collaborate for 'Culture Wars in Education ... - Binghamton University Pipe Dream

The plan was simple enough: Gather a bunch of disco records, put them in a crate and blow them to smithereens in between games of a doubleheader between the Chicago White Sox and Detroit Tigers at Comiskey Park. What could possibly go wrong?

This was the thinking, such as it was, behind Disco Demolition Night, a July 1979 radio promotion that went predictably and horribly awry. The televised spectacle of rioters, mostly young white men, storming the field in Chicago, sent shock waves through the music industry and accelerated the demise of disco as a massive commercial force. But the fiasco didnt unfold in a vacuum, a fact the new American Experience documentary The War on Disco makes clearer than a twirling mirror ball.

Premiering Monday on PBS, The War on Disco traces the rise, commodification, demise and rebirth of a dance music genre that burned hot through the 70s, and the backlash against a culture that provided a safe and festive place for Black, Latino, gay and feminist expression. Originating in gay dance clubs in the early 70s and converted into a mainstream sensation largely through the 1977 movie Saturday Night Fever, disco engendered simmering resentment from white, blue-collar kids who werent cool enough to make it past the rope at Studio 54 and other clubs. The film details discos role as a flashpoint for issues of race, class, gender and sexuality that still resonate in the culture wars of today.

These liberation movements that started in the 60s and early 70s are really gaining momentum in the late 70s, Lisa Q. Wolfinger, who produced the film with Rushmore DeNooyer, said in a video call from her home in Maine. So the backlash against disco feels like a backlash against the gay liberation movement and feminism, because thats all wrapped up in disco.

When the Gay Activist Alliance began hosting feverish disco dances at an abandoned SoHo firehouse in 1971, routinely packing 1,500 people onto the dance floor, the atmosphere was sweaty and cathartic. As Alice Echols writes in her disco history book Hot Stuff, gay bars, most of them run by the mob, traditionally hadnt allowed dancing of any kind. But change was in the air largely because of the ripple effect of the Stonewall uprising in 1969, when regulars at a Greenwich Village gay bar fought back against the latest in a series of police raids. Soon discos were popping up throughout American cities, drawing throngs of revelers integrated across lines of race, gender and sexual orientation.

Some of discos hottest artists were Black women, including Gloria Gaynor and Linda Clifford (who is a commentator in the film). Many of the in-demand DJs, including Barry Lederer and Richie Rivera, were gay. In its heyday disco was the ultimate pop melting pot, open to anyone who wanted to move through the night to a pulsating, seemingly endless groove, and a source of liberation.

The club became this source of public intimacy, of sexual freedom, and disco was a genre that was deeply tied to the next set of freedom struggles that were concatenate with civil rights, said Daphne Brooks, a professor of African American studies at Yale University who is featured in the film, in a video interview. It was both a sound and a sight that enabled those who were not recognized in the dominant culture to be able to see themselves and to derive pleasure, which is a huge trope in disco.

All subcultures have their tipping points, and discos began in earnest in 1977. The year brought Saturday Night Fever, the smash hit movie about a blue-collar Brooklynite (a star-making performance from John Travolta) who escapes his rough reality by cutting loose on the dance floor. Inspired by the movie, middle-aged thrill seekers began dressing up in white polyester and hitting the scene. The same year saw the opening of Studio 54 in Manhattan, which became famous for its beautiful-people clientele and forbidding door policy.

There was this image of the crowd outside the door on the news, with people being divided into winners and losers, said DeNooyer, the War on Disco producer. And the majority were losers because they didnt get by the rope. It was an image that spoke powerfully, and it certainly encouraged a view of exclusivity.

At least one man had reason to take it all personally. Steve Dahl was a radio personality for Chicagos WDAI, spinning album rock and speaking to and for the white macho culture synonymous with that music. On Christmas Eve in 1978 Dahl lost his job when the station switched to a disco format, a popular move in those days. He didnt take the news well. Jumping to WLUP, Dahl launched a Disco Sucks campaign and, together with the White Sox promotions director Mike Veeck, spearheaded Disco Demolition Night.

Organizers expected around 20,000 fans on July 12, 1979. Instead, they got around 50,000, some of whom sneaked in for free. Admission was 98 cents (WLUPs frequency was 97.9), leaving attendees plenty of leftover cash for beer. Located in the mostly white, working-class neighborhood of Bridgeport, Comiskey Park had a built-in anti-disco clientele.

During the first game of the doubleheader, fans threw records, firecrackers and liquor bottles onto the field. By the time the crate of records was blown up, the place was going nuts, with patrons storming the field and rendering it unplayable. The White Sox had to forfeit the second game.

There were other anti-disco protests around the country in the late 70s, but none so visible or of greater consequence. As the film recounts, reaction was swift; radio consultants soon began steering toward nondisco formats. Disco Demolition Night was a real factor, and it did happen very quickly, DeNooyer said. And we hear from artists in the film who experienced that. Gigs started drying up almost immediately.

Commercial oversaturation didnt help. Disco parodies were becoming rampant, including a memorable one in the 1980 comedy Airplane!, and novelty songs had been around since Rick Dees Disco Duck in 1976 (followed up by the lesser-known Dis-Gorilla in 1977). But the film makes clear that the Disco Demolition fiasco and resultant coverage was a major factor in the death of discos mainstream appeal.

The War on Disco also features a 2016 interview with Dahl, who insists racism and homophobia had nothing to do with that particular display of anti-disco fervor. Demolition Night attendees who were interviewed for the film echo this sentiment.

I would not dispute that is their truth, Brooks said. But I think one of the insidious ways that white supremacy has done a number on this country is that it permeates every aspect of our cultural lives. People dont want to be told that theyre entangled in something thats not entirely of their control.

Its also important to note that disco didnt die so much as its more mainstream forms ceased to be relevant. The music and the culture morphed into other dance-ready genres including house music, which ironically emerged in Chicago. When you go out and cut loose to electronic dance music, or EDM, you are paying homage to disco, whether you know it or not. The beat is still pulsating. The sexual and racial identities remain eclectic. The Who may have bid Sister Disco goodbye in their 1978 song, but the original spirit lives on. As Brooks put it, Its vibrancy and its innovations just continued to gain momentum once the spotlight moved away from it.

The culture, and its devotees, outlived the clichs. Disco is dead. Long live disco.

Continue reading here:
The War on Disco Explores the Racial Backlash Against the Music - The New York Times

State Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington Washington D.C. West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming Puerto Rico US Virgin Islands Armed Forces Americas Armed Forces Pacific Armed Forces Europe Northern Mariana Islands Marshall Islands American Samoa Federated States of Micronesia Guam Palau Alberta, Canada British Columbia, Canada Manitoba, Canada New Brunswick, Canada Newfoundland, Canada Nova Scotia, Canada Northwest Territories, Canada Nunavut, Canada Ontario, Canada Prince Edward Island, Canada Quebec, Canada Saskatchewan, Canada Yukon Territory, Canada

Zip Code

Country United States of America US Virgin Islands United States Minor Outlying Islands Canada Mexico, United Mexican States Bahamas, Commonwealth of the Cuba, Republic of Dominican Republic Haiti, Republic of Jamaica Afghanistan Albania, People's Socialist Republic of Algeria, People's Democratic Republic of American Samoa Andorra, Principality of Angola, Republic of Anguilla Antarctica (the territory South of 60 deg S) Antigua and Barbuda Argentina, Argentine Republic Armenia Aruba Australia, Commonwealth of Austria, Republic of Azerbaijan, Republic of Bahrain, Kingdom of Bangladesh, People's Republic of Barbados Belarus Belgium, Kingdom of Belize Benin, People's Republic of Bermuda Bhutan, Kingdom of Bolivia, Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana, Republic of Bouvet Island (Bouvetoya) Brazil, Federative Republic of British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Archipelago) British Virgin Islands Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria, People's Republic of Burkina Faso Burundi, Republic of Cambodia, Kingdom of Cameroon, United Republic of Cape Verde, Republic of Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad, Republic of Chile, Republic of China, People's Republic of Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia, Republic of Comoros, Union of the Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, People's Republic of Cook Islands Costa Rica, Republic of Cote D'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, Republic of the Cyprus, Republic of Czech Republic Denmark, Kingdom of Djibouti, Republic of Dominica, Commonwealth of Ecuador, Republic of Egypt, Arab Republic of El Salvador, Republic of Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Faeroe Islands Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Fiji, Republic of the Fiji Islands Finland, Republic of France, French Republic French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon, Gabonese Republic Gambia, Republic of the Georgia Germany Ghana, Republic of Gibraltar Greece, Hellenic Republic Greenland Grenada Guadaloupe Guam Guatemala, Republic of Guinea, Revolutionary People's Rep'c of Guinea-Bissau, Republic of Guyana, Republic of Heard and McDonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras, Republic of Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of China Hrvatska (Croatia) Hungary, Hungarian People's Republic Iceland, Republic of India, Republic of Indonesia, Republic of Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq, Republic of Ireland Israel, State of Italy, Italian Republic Japan Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of Kazakhstan, Republic of Kenya, Republic of Kiribati, Republic of Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait, State of Kyrgyz Republic Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon, Lebanese Republic Lesotho, Kingdom of Liberia, Republic of Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein, Principality of Lithuania Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Macao, Special Administrative Region of China Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Madagascar, Republic of Malawi, Republic of Malaysia Maldives, Republic of Mali, Republic of Malta, Republic of Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania, Islamic Republic of Mauritius Mayotte Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova, Republic of Monaco, Principality of Mongolia, Mongolian People's Republic Montserrat Morocco, Kingdom of Mozambique, People's Republic of Myanmar Namibia Nauru, Republic of Nepal, Kingdom of Netherlands Antilles Netherlands, Kingdom of the New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua, Republic of Niger, Republic of the Nigeria, Federal Republic of Niue, Republic of Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Norway, Kingdom of Oman, Sultanate of Pakistan, Islamic Republic of Palau Palestinian Territory, Occupied Panama, Republic of Papua New Guinea Paraguay, Republic of Peru, Republic of Philippines, Republic of the Pitcairn Island Poland, Polish People's Republic Portugal, Portuguese Republic Puerto Rico Qatar, State of Reunion Romania, Socialist Republic of Russian Federation Rwanda, Rwandese Republic Samoa, Independent State of San Marino, Republic of Sao Tome and Principe, Democratic Republic of Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of Senegal, Republic of Serbia and Montenegro Seychelles, Republic of Sierra Leone, Republic of Singapore, Republic of Slovakia (Slovak Republic) Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia, Somali Republic South Africa, Republic of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Spain, Spanish State Sri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic of St. Helena St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. Pierre and Miquelon St. Vincent and the Grenadines Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Suriname, Republic of Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands Swaziland, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Switzerland, Swiss Confederation Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan, Province of China Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand, Kingdom of Timor-Leste, Democratic Republic of Togo, Togolese Republic Tokelau (Tokelau Islands) Tonga, Kingdom of Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Tunisia, Republic of Turkey, Republic of Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda, Republic of Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe

See the rest here:
Letter to the editor: Sheehy only seems interested in culture wars - Bozeman Daily Chronicle

Dispatch

07:00

by Flo Read

Billionaire Peter Thiel addresses students at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford

Oxford

Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer have a secret agreement to talk about the culture wars as much as possible, Peter Thiel has said.

Already registered? Sign in

Speaking at the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford as part of the Scruton Memorial lecture series, the Silicon Valley billionaire argued that the Prime Minister and Labour leader were trying to distract the population from the economic problems facing the country:

- Peter Thiel

He began his speech with a chant he remembered from his days as a student at Stanford: Hey hey, ho ho, western cultures got to go. It sums up, he says, a battle that has raged ever since. But the woke vs. anti-woke dichotomy is a magic trick designed to distract us from what is really going on.

Thiel singled out the housing crisis, which successive politicians have failed to remedy over the last two decades: Think about the craziest woke excess in the UK of the last 10 years and then think about how it increased aggregate housing prices, he told the audience, before adding that the Marxist critique had quite a bit to it:

- Peter Thiel

Thiel asserted that the Left was more prone to trying to repeat old radical ideas than the Right, warning that going back to Blair is a mistake we have to make in the UK:

- Peter Thiel

In his address and subsequent conversation with philosopher John Gray, Thiel said there were other issues that politicians and elites were attempting to distract from. One was the decline of the sciences in universities.Be suspicious of cancer researchers claiming theyll have a breakthrough in just a few more years, Thiel warned. Science has been degraded, and it is no longer progressing:

- Peter Thiel

The most significant loss in contemporary society, according to Thiel, has been that of God and religion. Its an odd thing to be distracted from, Thiel said, because it suggests so many ways that this debate could be reframed. Wokeness, meanwhile, was a perversion and acceleration of Christian narratives: woke post-Christian temptation is to be more Christian than the Christians.

The venture capitalist concluded that a possible alternative to the extremes of fascism or communism might be some form of Christian democracy.

Read more:
Peter Thiel: UK leaders have 'secret agreement' to talk up culture wars - UnHerd

Its hard for Americans in the 21st century to think about their guns as ordinary objects. When nightmarish events like the recent mass shooting in Maine occur, we retreat to reassuring positions in the culture wars.

Gun cultureis our collective, contentious effort to apply meaning to these inanimate things made of wood, plastic, and steel. For some, guns may be the biggest force for evil in America, as Seattle Times columnist David Horsey wrote last year of the firearms industry. For others, like the National Rifle Association, guns are in fact the best defense against malevolent supernatural forces. In the aftermath of the horrific 2012 mass slaughter of children in Newton, Connecticut, NRA executive vice-president Wayne LaPierre explained that genuine monsters walk among us, people so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons that no sane person can possibly ever comprehend them. We ought to expect similar platitudes from the gun lobby in response to Maine in the days ahead.

A 2021 study by a group of sociologists found a correlation between Americans who believe in the earthly presence of demons and devils and support the expansion of gun rights. You might negotiate with metaphorical monsters, you might think the laws you pass limit their ability to harm others, but when it comes to genuine monsters, you must shoot to kill.

To kill fantastical creatures, you need fantastical weapons. Thats where the gun industry comes in, to provide you with the talisman you need to operate in a world in which evil people possessed by demons walk. Guns are more than just metal and plastic, more than just technology. They protect, defend, secure, preserve, and safeguard. They connect, too, linking gun owners present with an imagined past, with those who resisted tyranny with arms, or who took up arms to fight for causes noble and ignoble. Youa white man armed with an AR-15 and storming your state capitol building to protest state coronavirus restrictions, or stockpiling guns just outside Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021you are the minuteman who grabs his musket to answer the call to confront the Redcoats. Magical thinking about guns is one of gun capitalisms most effective products, turning cheap crap into cherished commodities, at the cost of a society increasingly fearful and armed.

Read More: Maine Is Missing Opportunities to Stop Gun Violence, Experts Say

Magical thinking about guns is a kind of fetishism, which sees guns as totems instilled with meaning beyond their basic material parts. Its a variant of what Karl Marx called commodity fetishism, which obscured the more mundane material realities of the social relations of industrial capitalism. Commodities were raw materials transformed through human labor into objects of utility. But capitalism made magic of them, in the process making invisible the labor of the exploited workers who made raw materials into consumer goods.

Gun capitalists of the 19th century first learned to sell the magic of guns to American consumers. Samuel Colt and Oliver Winchester, among others, knew that selling guns meant selling stories about guns and thus imbuing the guns with cultural meaning. God created men equal. Colonel Colt made them equal, went one variation of a popular tagline, while Winchesters Model 1873 rifle was the gun that won the West. These early gun capitalists were storytellers as much as they were inventers and tinkerers.

The innovative gun capitalists of the postwar United States crafted a different narrative. Chief among them was Samuel Cummings, founder of Interarms, which became the worlds largest arms dealer by the 1960s. While the press occasionally linked him to international arms dealing intrigue, he made most of his money in the most mundane of ways: he sold American consumers millions of cheap guns. His biggest moneymakers in Interarmss first two decades were war surplus firearms, hauled out of European warehouses where they had been collecting dust. Cummings cleaned them upsporterized them, in the parlance of the times, anticipating the 21st centurys modern sporting rifle by a half-centuryand shipped them to hunters and collectors and the gun-curious, mostly white men, suddenly flush with cash in the afterglow of Americas moment of global supremacy.

The story Cummings and the new postwar gun capitalists toldthe magic they soldwas of a country without limits when it came to partaking of the worlds bounty of firearms. Interarmss advertisements, packed with dozens of guns for sale, most of them war surplus imports, spoke of abundance and power: guns from vanquished foes like Germany, Japan, and Italy, and even from new rivals the Soviet Union, could be yours for as little as $10. The gun consumer was a global conqueror. Cummings joked that a cheap Carcano rifle made in wartime Italy, just like the one Lee Harvey Oswald used to kill John F. Kennedy, was a throwaway gun, one you could leave out in the woods after you bagged your first deer.

Oswalds Carcano inevitably drew attention, however, as did the plague afflicting urban residents in an era of rising crime rates: cheap handguns, many of them also imports, mass-produced in fly-by-night factories in Western Europe out of scrap metal leftover from the war. When Congress began debating new restrictions on firearms in 1963, a movement of consumers rose up to oppose itthe gun rights movement. The National Rifle Association, arguably the worlds most successful consumer lobby, stepped in to help write new laws that would not so much prevent gun violence as they would protect gun consumerism. The resulting 1968 Gun Control Act was a mild set of restrictions that respected the fundamental legitimacy of the gun consumer market and sought to protect the law-abiding citizenanother magical totem of our gun culturefrom certain categories of people (like convicted felons) who might give gun buyers a bad name.

The Gun Control Act didnt make anyone happy. Despite prioritizing the needs of the law-abiding citizen, it angered gun rights activists convinced that it was the first step down a slippery slope toward totalitarianism. For the early grassroots gun control activists emerging after 1968, the law was so weak precisely because it was written to placate gunmakers and consumers. These activists urged their political leaders to look to other liberal democracies around the world, which either rejected guns as a market good altogether or regulated the gun consumer market so extensively as to make it unrecognizable to its American counterpart.

Todays predominant understanding of the Second Amendmentthe widespread popular belief that this constitutional provision protects an individual right to own a firearm independent of service in a militiaemerged in the first decades after the Second World War, when gun consumerism boomed and Cold War anxieties supercharged conservative politics. Just as consumers grew accustomed to Cummingss seemingly limitless bounty, state and federal officials started debating how to restrict it. A burgeoning gun rights movement seized on the obscure Article II of the Bill of Rights (few Americans in 1968 could have told you what right it protected) to claim that any limits on gun ownership amounted to a violation of basic freedoms. Those activists saw themselves as the well-regulated militia (even if few of them were active members of the United States actual militia, the National Guard), ready and eager to defend the nation from its external and internal enemies. But as the gun rights movement increasingly became a popular gun consumer movement in the 1970s and 1980s, the right-wing cold warriors commitment to what the Constitution calls the unorganized militia fell by the wayside, and the Second Amendment increasingly became a statement of consumer rights centering the individuals desire rather than the collective good. It, too, is fetishized, divorced from its historical origins and imbued with mystical power.

But the Second Amendment says nothing about capitalism or commerce; its two crucial verbs are keep and bear, neither of which is or ever has been a synonym for buy, sell, distribute, market, or manufacture. Yet weve mostly fought our political battles over guns on the field of commerce. Various federal efforts to restrict guns stand on Congresss constitutional power to levy taxes and regulate interstate commerce. Any suggestion that a government has an obligation to defend its citizens from deadly violence is met with the circuitous counterargument that the government cant strip the citizen of the right to defend himself from his own government. If gun capitalism sold magical abundance in the 1960s, today it sells the fantasy of insurrection and righteous violence against political enemies, or even against ones own government of the people.

Thinking about gun capitalism means thinking about the quotidian experience of buying and selling guns in America. Sam Cummings didnt sell freedom or security or insurrection; he sold cheap crap. Thinking about gun capitalism also means considering how weve written our laws and built a legal and state infrastructure to accommodate all that gun buying and selling. Gun capitalism is too deeply embedded in our political life, and as a result, too easily obscured by its ability to make magic out of the mundane, to convince us that only the most lethal violence can stop the monsters and demons that walk among us.

Excerpt from:
How Magical Thinking Gave Guns Their Power - TIME