With no black man in the White House, with Hillary Clinton pushed into political retirement, the National Rifle Association faces a challenge in sustaining the paranoia that it feeds upon. So this week, it released a startling new advertisement, depicting the United States as a society at war with itself, a society in which “we” the good people are under assault by an unidentified “they.”
Here’s the script, read as a rant over scenes of riot and mayhem:
“They use their media to assassinate real news. They use their schools to teach children that their president is another Hitler. They use their movie stars and singers and comedy shows and award shows to repeat their narrative over and over again. And then they use their ex-president to endorse ‘the resistance.’”
The left’s aim, allegedly, is to “bully and terrorize the law-abiding until the only option left is for the police to do their jobs and stop the madness. And when that happens, they’ll use it as an excuse for their outrage. The only way we stop this, the only way we save our country and our freedom, is to fight this violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth.”
Of course, everybody knows who the unspoken “they” is. “They” is the opposite of “we.” “They” are the enemy, whom patriots must battle if true patriots they be. That message becomes more ominous still when it comes from a group dedicated to selling guns, that argues as a central tenet of its philosophy that guns are a constitutionally protected means of political change.
Look also at the word choices.
“They use their media to assassinate real news….” Other words would have conveyed that meaning — “undermine,” even “destroy” — but the NRA went with the loaded term “assassinate.”
“The only way we stop this, the only way we save our country and our freedom, is to fight this violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth.” Again, study the word choices. “… Violence of lies” is not an everyday expression. Nor is “the clenched fist of truth.” This is rhetoric designed to drive the wedges soul-deep into this country.
The Fourth of July will soon be upon us, when we celebrate the founding of this nation. The audacity of the American experiment has been the idea that through representative government, we could govern ourselves peaceably and work out our rivalries and disagreements through compromise. However, that system presupposes that, as Americans, we do not see or treat each other as bitter enemies caught in a twilight struggle for existence. Without that as lubrication, the engines of democracy will grind to a halt.
Again, in its modern incarnation this troubling trend can be traced back 30 years or more to Newt Gingrich, the man who rejected compromise as a leftist conspiracy and who taught a rising generation of Republicans how to “speak like Newt.” Look back at that infamous list of words — “betray, decay, destroy, they/them … traitor” — that Gingrich instructed his acolytes to apply to their opponents. Look at those words, and look where we stand today.
The idea is to make people angry and fearful, because angry, fearful people are stupid and easily led. The idea is to destroy faith that debate, discussion and compromise are possible with those who might see things differently. The idea is to destroy what remains of our faith in our fellow Americans, because power and profit can be reaped from the resulting chaos.
Is this really the road that we wish to travel?
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