Rona Rage and Rifles: Americans' other worldly response to COVID-19

By Daniel Patrick Welch

This whole gun thing in the US, it's fascinating because there are so many different avenues of analysis. And I don't know if it's because a third of the world is on lockdown and we're all bored to death, and we haven't realized that now's the time to go out and do the general strike and make the revolution or what but it does give us kind of a pause to think about things in a different way.

And of course, the first thing that makes this such awesome clickbait is Americans and guns, aren't they crazy? These people just love their guns, guns and money is what make America run.

And that's the stereotype of the cowboy, the gun toting Clive Bundy, you know, Wild West, or even Charlottesville, the white supremacists, you know, with their Second Amendment guns and everything. And there's a kernel of truth to that--the thing that makes that funny that it’s partly true: Americans do have an obsession. It's a violent, racist society with this fear of collectivism and this adulation of rugged individualism, and that's something that does make people say, ‘See, that's how the US responds to this, wow.’

And then on the world stage, you can see it too. There's a great meme out nowadays with a phalanx of Cuban doctors behind the Cuban flag in their white coats, marching into Italy, you know, and then below that there is the standard view of US troops surrounding a flag, the US flag, with their guns at the ready.

And this is like ‘nothing could be a better contrast’ in terms of how societies deal with this: socialist society--We have doctors, you need doctors, we'll send them to you. And the US Imperial response is who can we bomb, we'll shoot that virus, we’ll teach them a thing or two.

There's also this apocalyptic vision of the new dystopia, this kind of fear of The Walking Dead and the pandemic apocalypse where everyone has to be armed to the teeth, oh, we're all going to get eaten by zombies or whatever.

On the other side there's also a kernel of truth that the government is--and should be-- scared to death of an armed populace. It is a dangerous thing for tyrannical governments.
And that's, of course, the mythical origin of the Second Amendment: ‘the well regulated militia being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.’

That calls to mind the Minutemen, the Massachusetts Minutemen, or the idea that a truly free society means that a government has to live at the behest of its citizens, that is a government who needs to defend itself needs the population to rise in its defense, otherwise, it's just the beginning of Empire.

The difference is you have no standing army and you call up an army—kind of like Switzerland having no standing army in the past and like the Massachusetts minitemen like I said. Then it's also basic revolutionary theory -- you've got to have guns, you've got to have more guns than your class enemy. Look at the Soviet Union in the early days was swamped by, I think there were like 21 countries who sent troops to aid the whites in fighting the Reds. The same thing In Nicaragua, one of the first things they did was distribute guns. They weren't afraid of the armed people, they were afraid of the reactionaries and the counter revolution
Same thing to an extent in Venezuela that they had to have control of the military apparatus in order to safeguard the revolution.

Gun retailers have reported a surge in sales in the US.

So that's all true and it plays into some of this analysis but the other meaning of the Second Amendment in the US is often overlooked. The true history of the Second Amendment was purely cynical and practical. They needed Virginia to pass the Constitution, they needed Virginia on board and Virginia held out because they wanted their own right to put down slave rebellions--with slave patrols--they were afraid that the slave patrols would be dismantled if they were not specifically allowed. That's why it says the security of a free ‘state’ not country, they're talking about the Virginia slave patrols. And it's an ugly and racist beginning to what eventually devolved into the organization of local Police Departments. They came from the original slave patrols.

So there's nothing noble about that at all. In fact, it's completely horrific. And lumping it all back together it brings you to this realization of how the US differs in its societal response. It's selfish and it's rugged individualist, it's chaotic by design so that there are shortages and then you get this impression that the government really does not give a damn about you.

And that the free market is going to take care of all this. And of course, the ground has been laid by 40 years of neoliberal austerity. And so there is perfect priming of that disaster My latest for PressTV. Please s. And it comes from both wings of the duopoly. This is a duopoly genocide. The most vulnerable will be culled. That's what they say to people. And this is just like Katrina, where they just all of a sudden have no response to a disaster. And they not only haven't learned anything from that disaster, but they've taken a step further, with 20 more years of degradation and shredding of the social net.

So, it comes back to this need for guns as an individual paranoia. You can call it what it is. It is that kind of paranoia, but it also is a harbinger of the lack of trust in institutions of government that people simply do not trust that the leaders are here to take care of us. They don't.

And if they feel they have to have a gun in order to take care of themselves then so be it. That's the thinking. And the sad part is that there's nothing to dissuade them from this. You have senators profiting by selling stock when they first know--I mean the whole thing is a is a sociopathic shit show.
You know maybe it actually is time for people to rise up and say wait a minute, that's why they want us all back to work soon, because people are seeing the man behind the curtain, the puppet strings behind the show. Wait a minute, we've been making these people rich for generations, not the other way around. And they want us back to it as soon as possible.

The main issue is this, the anxiety and the unknown of where this all is going. And you know, because everyone's at home, maybe more people will be listening than usual, but stay healthy and fight the power.

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Daniel Patrick Welch is a writer of political commentary and analysis. Also a singer and songwriter, he lives and writes in Salem, Massachusetts with his wife. Together they run The Greenhouse School. He has traveled widely, speaks five languages and studied Russian History and Literature at Harvard University. Welch has also appeared as a guest on several TV and radio channels to speak on topics of foreign affairs and political analysis--around his day job. He can be available for interview requests as time and scheduling permit. Despite the price of being outspoken against US foreign policy and military adventurism -- which can be steep in today's circumstances -- he believes firmly as did Rosa Luxemburg that "It will always be the most revolutionary act to tell the truth out loud."