Guns and the (Dystopian) State

Photo by Casenbina (Getty Images)

If you were to write a dystopian novel that involved a mass shooting every day followed by national leaders calling for thoughts and prayers for the families of the victims, you would have chilling and sobering concept for a literary endeavor. You might have trouble selling such a plot line to a publisher. It might seem just too far-fetched to sustain a believable story – except that we are there now in real life.

I wrote earlier this year in “The Fires of Moloch Are Burning” that our willingness to accept the loss of innocent lives due to gun violence should be as abhorrent to us as the child sacrifices that were offered to the ancient Phoenician god, Moloch.  Instead, for the sake of our “right to bear arms,” we seem to be afraid to pass sensible gun safety legislation. “Our words say that we honor American freedom, while our actions say that we live in fear and have so little regard for our children that we will willingly feed them to our modern day fires of Moloch.” 

 

Some Sensible Viewpoints

This week, with yet two more mass shootings, there are many sensible viewpoints being expressed while our nation continues to be paralyzed. Nicholas Kristoff recently wrote in The New York Times that “We need a new public health approach based not on eliminating guns (that simply won’t happen in a land awash with 300 million guns) but on reducing the carnage they cause.” He went on to point out that most gun owners are in favor of universal background checks and gun control measures, while the NRA blocks any reasonable measures. (See his full article, "On Guns, We're Not Even Trying")

Photo by Sherwin McGehee
(Getty Images)

One of the responses often heard from the NRA is that more guns in the hands of the "good guys" is the solution to stopping the killings by the "bad guys' with guns.  Joshua Holland, writing for The Nation dispels that idea in his article, "Tactical Experts Destroy the NRA's Heroic Gunslinger Fantasy." The truth is that law enforcement officers go though rigorous training in order to be equipped to respond during a dangerous threat. More citizens with guns would just add to the danger and confusion during any situation where a shooter is involved.

My friend Jane Philips has a blog, Spiritually Speaking. She writes the following on her recent post, Time to Speak Up:

When we aggrandize people who espouse more violence, when we sell our souls to the National Rifle Association, when we block laws that would stop the proliferation of semi-automatic weapons, we are inviting and even complicit in the violence that is killing our children and turning our streets into bullet-ridden rivers of blood.

People of conscience have to become as vocal as those who are ranting about vengeance and hatred.

  

John Archibald speaks in a similar vein in his op ed piece for the Birmingham News, "To Hell with the NRA; this country has to talk about guns."

To hell with the NRA, which sows fear as a way to make sure as many guns as possible are bought and sold and left lying around. To hell with the NRA. The influence is too great; the rhetoric too wrong. We have to at least be able to talk about the proliferation of guns and the proliferation of dead bodies they tend to leave behind.

I don't have the answers. I don't know how to solve the problems.

But I know that prayers for the victims don't bring them back or stop the next shooter from opening fire. Not that there is anything wrong with prayers, but politicians who offer empty ones one day and easy access to weapons the next need to examine their faith. I know processions lead only to the grave, that gun buybacks are feel-good but futile gestures. And as long as people and politicians are too timid to question the deification of the gun, the more things stay the same.

So far this year, we have had 352 mass shootings  in 334 days (that's more shootings than days). It is time to offer more than “thoughts and prayers.” If we want something better than a dystopian state for our children, we need to hold our leaders accountable.

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Harper Lee: Treasure of the South, Gift to the World

Harper Lee in 2006
 (Birmingham News photo by Linda Stelter)

It has been 54 years since Harper Lee published To Kill a Mockingbird. In 2010, with the 50th anniversary of the book's publication, Harper Lee and her novel were the topic for many a publication.  BBC News Magazine published an article exploring why To Kill a Mockingbird continues to be so hugely popular in Great Britain. In publications almost as foreign to some of us in the South, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and Smithsonian Magazine all featured articles  trying to explain the Harper Lee phenomenon.  Those articles were, respectively, “The Courthouse Ring,” “What 'To Kill a Mockingbird' Isn't,” and “Harper Lee's Novel Achievement.”

Every summer, Harper Lee's hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, hosts tourists from all over the world who come to see the town that inspired her novel, to visit the old courthouse, and to see the theatrical production of To Kill a Mockingbird, performed by local actors. I have never been go Monroeville, but two of my friends made the trek this summer to see the play. One day I'll make it over there. It is one of those things on my "bucket list" of things to do before I die.

Lee's novel is a perennial best-seller, and the movie version of To Kill a Mockingbird is a cinematic work of art in itself. My main point in featuring Harper Lee is to share what two Southerners have said recently about Harper Lee. I am no expert on the renowned author, and certainly make no claims of any personal knowledge of her. I much prefer for you to hear what Wayne Flynt has said about why Harper Lee wrote only one novel, and to read what journalist John Archibald has written about what we may learn about Harper Lee from reading her novel.

A Most Graceful Dance 

Wayne Flynt, Professor Emeritus in the Department of History at Auburn University, is a widely sought after speaker and author of many books including Poor but Proud, and Keeping Faith: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives. He has visited with Harper Lee on numerous occasions and in a recorded interview offered his theory on why she only wrote one book.  An historian who is superbly nimble with statistics, Flynt readily calls to mind statistics which he sets to a graceful dance in celebration of To Kill a Mockingbird:

"Harper Lee, Bless her soul, has become Boo Radley"

John Archibald is a columnist for the Alabama Media Group whose work appears in The Birmingham News. He recently did an opinion piece which implores the public to stop trying to draw the reclusive author out, but rather to take a look into her writing to see who she is and to see the gifts she has given us:

  

There's so much talk about Harper Lee. Has the first lady of Alabama literature finally gone 'round the bend? Has she lost herself, holed up in that Monroeville world of hers? Has she simply put her trust in the wrong people?

Everybody wants to know, to draw her out into the sunlight. Was she suckered by a sweet-talking carpet-bagging biographer? Or was it Lee herself who did the suckering?

Stop it. Just stop it. Because if there's a story to be told about Harper Lee, Lee herself already told it better than anyone. In To Kill  A Mockingbird.  (Please continue reading Archibald’s essay here.)

A Realistic Hope

My guess is that the world will continue to be enthralled by Harper Lee’s one book, and that people will continue to make pilgrimages to Monroeville, Alabama to see the place and to touch the courthouse rails where a story for all the ages was born. For as long as we are enthralled, and as long as we look at that story of justice denied with a measure of hope in our hearts, we will be all the better for it. We will forever have Harper Lee to thank for a vision of a time in the past that is not the “one brief shining moment” of an idealistic Camelot. Neither is it sentimental nostalgia.  Instead, it is a look into ourselves to see why we live in the communities we have created, and how we can have hope that we can do better.

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Photo: The photo of Harper Lee is by Linda Stetler and is from The Birmingham News file. It is a 2006  reception for her at the Alys Stephens Center in Birmingham, where she received a lifetime achievement award from The Birmingham Pledge. 

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Leaving Starbucks: Unchaining America

 I heard an interview with the mayor of Marion, Indiana on NPR the other day. He was proud to get a Starbucks to help revitalize his town, and other town’s folk were hoping they might see a Target, a Texas Roadhouse, and a Panera in the future as well.  I can understand the relief and/or enthusiasm of people to see such national brands promising to infuse new life into a depressed economy where jobs have dwindled. On the other hand, relying upon corporate chains could have other consequences as well.

Chain stores have taken over America.  We have been lulled onto a deep corporate sleep so that we see nothing but the same restaurants, hotels and stores wherever we go. John Archibald, a local columnist for The Birmingham News recently expressed dismay that The Olive Garden was voted “Best Italian Restaurant in Town” when there are locally owned Italian restaurants, run by actual Italian families that have a long tradition of authentic cuisine. I fully concur with his assessment.

Go to any shopping mall in America and you will find the same stores with the same look and feel.  This is not true Americana. Why should I travel a thousand miles to see the same strip malls and shopping centers that I left back home? Where is the local flavor?

As I write this, I am sitting in a little coffee shop located in a small shopping center, but I am not in a Starbucks or any other chain operation.  Forest Perk Coffee, located in Forest Park in the Piggly Wiggly Shopping Center, is a locally owned operation.  It may lack the spiffy shine and trendy décor of a Starbucks, but it is a one-of-a-kind spot. The floor is a cement slab with marks and scrapes incurred, no doubt, from previous tenants. The space may be a bit too large for the enterprise, but it has local character. Art from local artists adorns the walls. The menu is not one printed for mass distribution to dictate the choices for patrons across the country. It is a simple chalk board with today’s items written just this morning. This morning it was a great place to sit and read an essay by Robert Bly as well as do some writing. I'll definitely be back!

There is another coffee shop closer to where I live, Crestwood Coffee Company, that my wife and I enjoy patronizing.  It is not in the high rent district. It also has a not-quite-finished appearance, but it has its own character. You walk in there and you see a real community. You get a true snapshot of American life. Both of these shops brew and sell fair trade coffee from Higher Ground Roasters that is roasted locally. Crestwood Coffee Company is another place that you will definitely want to go back to once you've experienced it.

What can we do to unchain America? For one thing, we can support local independent entrepreneurs whenever possible.  Next time you want Italian food, instead of automatically thinking of some nationwide chain that has pumped millions of advertising dollars into TV ads to assure name recognition, take a few minutes to consider a locally owned restaurant.  Make a local coffee shop your stopping place rather than a prefabricated national chain. Try to do the same when you need household repair items, flowers, shrubs, or other purchases.

I’ll admit that the malls are convenient, but they are not Americana.  The really good ones try to fake Americana, but it is all fabricated in some corporate board room. We could lose our local identity, not through totalitarian governments, as was feared in the last century, but through our own lazy complicity with corporate giants and Wall Street financiers.  

I am not a paid celebrity spokesman for either Forest Perk Coffee or Crestwood Coffee Company. In all fairness, there are other local coffee shops in town. Check online or in the telephone directory to find other independent, unchained establishments.



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