Mediaboss Marketing

Jacqueline Smetak| Press-Citizen opinion writer

We have met the enemy and he is us."

So said Pogo during the McCarthy Era and again for Earth Day in 1970. Fifty years later. it's still relevant.

We are currently engaged in an odd auto-genocide. It's not unusual for those who kill lots of people to not only deny responsibility, but to deny the massacres ever happened in the first place.

What's odd is that we are not killing other people. We are killing ourselves.

We acknowledge those who die in war. We lay wreaths and offer thoughts and prayers, even for those dead so long that no one alive remembers them.

Since 1775, the total number of American military who died in every war we've fought is 1,354,664. Of those, 666,441 were combat deaths.

But now we are confronted by mass deaths we refuse to recognize. One is natural cause. The other is violence. Both are preventable.

On Jan. 20, 2020, the CDC reported the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the United States. Nearly two years later, the number of dead is more than 800,000.

The other threat is firearms. We rank second, worldwide, in the number of deaths each year. Among wealthy nations, we are No. 1.

Between 1968 and 2015, the number who died of gunshot was 1,516, 863. Combined, those deaths from gunshot and COVID are a million more than died in all our wars.

The numbers are bad enough, but what is worse is this has been so politicized that a sane conversation is impossible. For those of us who remember when vaccines for most diseases were unavailable, COVID anti-vaxxers are incomprehensible. But anti-vaxxers have been using the rhetoric of fear and disinformation for the last 300 years.

Vaccines don't work;they make people sick;mandatory vaccinations are medical despotism. And this in spite of the fact that 98-99% of those who now die of COVID are unvaccinated.

With firearms, it's worse. We can dismiss COVID deaths. They did it to themselves. With firearms, however, there's too much collateral damage.

But every effort to stop the carnage is blocked by the Second Amendment, with one side screaming A well-regulated militia and the other shall not be infringed." Frightened people tend toward authoritarianism. The most recent studies point to as many as 40% of us favoring authority, obedience and uniformity (Law and Order) over freedom, independence and diversity.

COVID creates a world out of control. Firearms provide a means to take advantage of this.

We've been split since our beginnings between a distrust of the federal government vs. an understanding that the survival of this nation depends on an effective federal government. That was the point of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

One side saw the government as an agent of unwanted change, the other as an agent of progress. We got to live this conflict acted out in civil war and civil rights, and we're still acting it out.

What's simmering now is another civil war. Civilians own nearly 400 million guns, half of those are owned by 3% of the population. And there's people who believe the Constitution allows them to overthrow our government by force.

Stand your ground laws have created open season on people who are seen as a threat. Laws protecting people who drive their cars into protesters have been passed in Iowa, Floridaand Oklahoma.

Not guilty verdicts in the trials of George Zimmerman, Kyle Rittenhouse and the like have sent the message that it's OK to kill people who can be constructed as a threat.

And then there's Jan. 6.

Jacqueline Smetak lives in Lone Tree.

See the original post:
Opinion: With COVID-19 and firearms, are Americans fighting another civil war? - Iowa City Press-Citizen