That way, we’ll know it’s really not about the victims
MICHAEL COBLENZ for Common Dreams
I don’t know about you, but I’m getting
really bummed out by all of these mass shootings. One after another, day after
day, more than one a day since the beginning of the year. Something must
change. This is America after all. The United States has a long history of
dealing with challenging problems.
There is a huge amount of Tchotchke being sold on
the internet using this theme on posters, t-shirts
and other gun nut paraphenalia
So, what’s the solution? Simple,
rebranding.
America has a long history of rebranding,
of changing the terms we use when dealing with unpleasant issues.
When slaughtering Indigenous people and
stealing their land started to sound bad, we rebranded. We called it “Manifest
Destiny” and said it was about spreading freedom from the Atlantic to the
Pacific. This made it sound noble.
When enslaving and dehumanizing the people
stolen from Africa started to get bad press, slave owners knew they had to do
something. So they rebranded. They began calling it “The Peculiar Institution.”
Peculiar, sort of like your weird Uncle
Phil, with his handlebar mustache and old MG, who affects a British accent.
Although, as peculiar as old Phil was, he never whipped anyone to death or bred
them like cattle.
After the South lost the Civil War,
Southerners knew they needed to change the terms of the debate. They knew that
if everyone thought they had simply been fighting to maintain slavery they
would lose sympathy. They knew they had to do something to preserve any vestige
of their traditions (you know, white supremacy). So they rebranded.
They starting to refer to the war as “The
Lost Cause.” This just sounds mundane, non-offensive. It made it sound not much
different than the loss of a hard-fought, though honorable, soccer match.
Simply a “Lost Cause,” never mind the fact that they were seeking to preserve the enslavement and systematic brutalization of millions of human beings, or the fact that Confederate soldiers routinely and summarily executed Black Union soldiers on the spot. Reality often is bad, and so sounds bad. Much better to hide behind banality, behind “The Lost Cause.”
When systemic and frequently violent racism
in the 1950s started to get bad press, Southerners wisely rebranded it from
white supremacy to “States’ Rights.” This sounds so much more noble, and
hearkens back to the nation’s founding. Who could argue with a state simply
seeking to preserve its own rights?
Perhaps the most recent example of
rebranding involves “Parental Rights.” This is how conservatives now sell book
bans and restrictions on medical care for transgender youth. After all, what
kind of monster doesn’t support the right of a parent to protect and safeguard
their own child? “We’re not banning books,” they say, “we’re not discriminating
against gay or transgender children,” conservatives add, “we’re simply
protecting the rights of parents to safeguard their children.” That just sounds
so much better, doesn’t it?
Clearly, we Americans have a long history
of successfully rebranding difficult issues. Or more accurately, I should say
that conservatives have a long and successful history of rebranding troubling
issues.
Now there are nearly daily news reports
about mass shootings. And in nearly every news story there is also someone, a
liberal politician or a grieving family member, demanding a solution. More
often than not they call for restrictions on access to guns.
“Mass Shooting” has such a negative
connotation, particularly when paired with “Mass Casualties.” The term is
scary, and frankly it almost seems as if the biased liberal media has coined
the term to embarrass gun rights advocates, and to make them look callous and
uncaring. This must change.
I’ve batted the idea around in my mind for
a while now, trying to come up with something more palatable or benign. And I
think I’ve finally got it. Here’s my proposal.
Let’s changed “Mass Shooting” to “Second
Amendment Celebration.” That shifts the tone from scary to laudatory, and when
people hear about it (for example on Twitter at the hashtag “Active Shooter”)
it will put a smile on their faces. They will know that somewhere a true
patriot is expressing his God-given Constitutional right. This will also change
the unwilling victim (“victim” is another downer of a word) from a casualty to
a patriot, since they are nobly sacrificing their lives to preserve one of the
primary rights in our revered Constitution.
This way, at each mass shooting… sorry, old
habits die hard… at each Second Amendment Celebration, Americans can be
reminded of what the Second Amendment means to all of us.
MICHAEL COBLENZ is
an attorney and writer from Lexington, Kentucky. He has recently completed a
book about the damaging impact of the culture wars on American politics.