Gun Ho America

For the US right-wing, guns are a means to political control. Even children shot dead won't change that

- Chidanand.Rajghatta

At the best of times, political discourse in America is marked by fine manners and exaggerated courtesy. Every lawmaker is gentle and every state is great. Senators and Representatives in Congress invariably address each other as gentleman or gentlelady from the “great state” of – even if it is Rhode Island (the smallest state) or Mississippi (poorest state) or West Virginia (least educated). The Pro-forma respect and deference extend to other branches of government, including white-majority law enforcement and police, whose menacing record in a militarised America does not preclude them from addressing violators or criminals with a “sir”.

However, the country’s long history of political civility is now fraying rapidly. At a press conference this week, the mayor of Uvalde, the Texas town now and forever associated with the massacre of 19 elementary school children, publicly and in front of TV, cameras called a political adversary a“sick son of a b***h” and an “a**hole” for questioning the state’s permissive gun laws. Another Democratic lawmaker used a copulatory verb to tell a Republican colleague to self-fornicate and propel his “thoughts and prayers” for the shooting victims up his fundament. Through the traumatic aftermath of the latest schoolchildren massacre, many Republicans and Democrats who disagree on gun rights called each other “piece of s**t”, successfully trending the hashtag #pos.

That the United States is divided and its politics fractured has been evident for some time. But it has taken the latest carnage to viscerally illustrate the animosity of the rift – and its lopsidedness.