Is the United States in terminal decline?

[Amor de Cosmos]

Is the United States in terminal decline?

You can be disturbed by the narrative, as I am, but it's still not what is motivating or inspiring the majority of gun deaths in the US.

I agree. National narratives (or any other kind for that matter) are rarely required to become so explicit. Only in actual war-time are they likely to be used to motivate or inspire. But that doesn't mean they don't exist, nor that they're without influence. They're present, or referenced, all the time. In every social studies class, at every college football game, in every flag that flies over every courthouse or front yard. They are enormously powerful. Yes, every country has them, but in few other post-industrial nations (China perhaps, not sure about Russia these days) are they as conspicuous and as consistently employed as they are in the US.

[ursus arctos]

Is the United States in terminal decline?

I don't think it's a police culture thing per se, rather a would-be pragmatic stance in reaction to a grim reality.

B, I honestly don't buy this. I don't know lots about Cleveland (though I do recall what the CPD did to that poor kid in the playground), but the dominant thread in "police culture" in this country over the last two decades has been one of the massive escalation of police firepower and the "otherness" of people not wearing blue.

It just so happens that the current issue of the NYPD Sergeant's Benevolent Association magazine crossed my desk today



That's the Chief Prosecutor/State's Attorney of Baltimore. These people are out of control, and they are armed up the wazoo.

[Bruno]

Is the United States in terminal decline?

My lazy intuition about police violence is that more stuff is now being reported that used to go unreported. What are the stats in other words, and could they be considered reliable.

It's not unthinkable that being armed to the teeth would translate into the quicker resort to violence, of course, or to greater "othering." But to kill a kid on a playground (or similar) you just need your sidearm and the willingness to believe he's armed ('cause he's black obv).

[ursus arctos]

Is the United States in terminal decline?

As I assume you know, there are no stats, because the police have thwarted attempts to collect them at every possible turn.

[caja-dglh]

Is the United States in terminal decline?

The other day I was driving home from work and passed this thing on an otherwise relatively suburban, tree-lined street.

[Bruno]

Is the United States in terminal decline?

ursus arctos wrote: As I assume you know, there are no stats, because the police have thwarted attempts to collect them at every possible turn.

Right. Given how bad things were when othering was the official policy, I'd hope we're on a macro upswing.

I thought the arming to the teeth thing was more about terrorism anyway.

[Bruno]

Is the United States in terminal decline?

dglh, I'd say there's nothing to see there. Move along.

[ursus arctos]

Is the United States in terminal decline?

You need to get out more

[caja-dglh]

Is the United States in terminal decline?

I was driving the Prius. I feared he may choose to use me as the equivalent of a ramp on one of those Land Rover off-road courses.

[Bruno]

Is the United States in terminal decline?

ursus arctos wrote: You need to get out more

what, and get shot? no way

[Cesar Rodriguez]

Is the United States in terminal decline?

Brunho wrote:

It's also worth remembering that rural gun owners, the ones we associate with cold dead hands rhetoric, aren't responsible for the majority of gun deaths.

Sure they are. Their arrogant and entitled attitude to gun ownership creates the climate and the unfettered access which allows the nutjobs to go on killing sprees.

How about they tone down the rhetoric and grow up a little?

As I said, killing sprees are a small fraction of gun deaths.
I'm sure I hate their rhetoric as much as you, but I don't think mass murderers view themselves as "exercising their 2nd amendment rights" by going on a spree. Belief in the 2nd amendment per se is not the "climate" that motivates mass shootings. The latter are tragically facilitated by availability, which is facilitated by a very resilient cultural and Constitutional tradition.

I didn't intend for my comment to be interpreted as a claim about whether the sprees were a big or small fraction of the total number of people killed by guns.

It was more a comment on the fact that the reason maladjusted, mentally ill people can get hold of guns as easily as they can is because of the rhetoric of so called responsible gun owners. The ones that keep their NRA dues paid up in full and who interpret any legislation designed to control access to firearms as an infringement of their civil liberties.

[ursus arctos]

Is the United States in terminal decline?

Life in these United States

[Bruno]

Is the United States in terminal decline?

Cesar Rodriguez wrote: It was more a comment on the fact that the reason maladjusted, mentally ill people can get hold of guns as easily as they can is because of the rhetoric of so called responsible gun owners. The ones that keep their NRA dues paid up in full and who interpret any legislation designed to control access to firearms as an infringement of their civil liberties.

The rhetoric of responsible gun owners is responsible rhetoric. The NRA is irresponsible, we know this, in blocking any and all sensible restraints. One would hope it were possible to at least turn responsible gun owners en masse against the NRA.

But I don't know how you stop someone without a criminal or mental record who has murderous intentions from buying a gun, short of banning the sale of firearms, and that's not going to happen in the US. Could the shooter in Oregon have been stopped by sensible responsible laws?

[Bruno]

Is the United States in terminal decline?

ursus, one wants context for that quote you've posted. What does the "toxic virtual environment" refer to? Oakland is a notorious high-crime area, and that looks like someone's response to an over-zealous/misguided strategy for reducing crime.

But high crime in urban areas is a lot about guns (and of course people of color with guns) and has been a chronic problem. So how is that quote indicative of a new and worsening problem, as opposed to an apparently misguided overreaction to an old problem? I.e. is it a policy replacing a better policy, or worse, or no policy at all?

[linus]

Is the United States in terminal decline?

I think we need to dissociate gun violence, gun ownership and the NRA with US decline, because gun violence in the US has been on a steep decline over the last few decades.



The problem lies elsewhere: deindustrialization/offshoring of industry and capital, social dislocation from the dissolution of the nuclear family, suburbanization, alienation/fear culture, post 9-11 militarization and the rise of the security-military industrial complex, media and financial consolidation, coopting of governement... A pretty vast array of related issues.

[San Bernardhinault]

Is the United States in terminal decline?

I don't really accept the premise of this thread. I think the horror stories we hear are, by definition, horror stories. Media reporting on 300 million people is going to find horrific drama in places.

But I don't see any significant decay in US society. Maybe I'm insulated, but it looks like media hype rather than an actual decay.

Not that gun-fetishisation isn't a problem - it's just not symptomatic of the decline of the US.

[Bruno]

Is the United States in terminal decline?

Suburbanization? I assumed we'd moved on to the terrible problem of desuburbanization.

To supplement that chart:

Firearm-related homicides declined 39%, from 18,253 in 1993 to 11,101 in 2011.

Nonfatal firearm crimes declined 69%, from 1.5 million victimizations in 1993 to 467,300 victimizations in 2011.

Firearm violence accounted for about 70% of all homicides and less than 10% of all nonfatal violent crime from 1993 to 2011.

From 1993 to 2011, about 70% to 80% of firearm homicides and 90% of nonfatal firearm victimizations were committed with a handgun.

Males, blacks, and persons ages 18 to 24 had the highest rates of firearm homicide from 1993 to 2010.

About 61% of nonfatal firearm violence was reported to the police in 2007-11.

http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?iid=4616&ty=pbdetail

[Bruno]

Is the United States in terminal decline?

And to SB's point, yeah, as someone who's around college kids a lot, albeit relatively privileged ones, they seem on the whole to be a cooler and more accepting bunch than my lot.

[ursus arctos]

Is the United States in terminal decline?

Especially my nephew

[ursus arctos]

Is the United States in terminal decline?

linus makes some excellent points. Both suburbanisation and de-suburbanisation and the creation of suburban ghettos are issues.

B, here's the context for that quote.

Oakland is a big place. It has very poor and and dangerous areas and incredibly rich and privileged areas. The people they are talking about don't live in the Flatlands.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Is the United States in terminal decline?

When I first went to the USA, in 1990, it was a gap year excursion with my equally naive mate Andy that started in Miami. We were both 18, and from Devon. If American readers of this don't get what Devon is, imagine a state that only has cows, the odd mountain, and fields.

We got out of Miami International, and found our way to our hotel, that was overlooking the Orange Bowl. The next morning, properly set up as dumb tourists (backpacks on, baseball caps askew, bum-bags round our waists with all our fucking money in) we confidently went down for our bacon and pancake breakfast, and asked the waitress how to get to downtown and to the beach.

"Well..." I remember her saying, " it's down that way ..." (pointing vaguely east) "but are you sure you boys want to walk to there? I can call you a cab?"

"Nah, we'll be fine," I confidently replied, tucking into my bacon and looking at my map.

So we walked. And we did, indeed, meet some interesting characters along the way, who were probably so amused at the sight of two young English kids with backpacks wandering through their block that they felt it was beyond their code of conduct to just shoot us and dispose of us right there and then.

Would it be any better now, 25 years on?

[ursus arctos]

Is the United States in terminal decline?

Man, you walked through Liberty City with valuables in 1990 and survived?

The locals must have thought you were decoys for some kind of sting operation (or else they hadn't woken up yet).

Liberty City is still problematic, but violent crime is down all over the country, largely for demographic reasons.