Uvalde and the Poverty of Public Policy
Explaining the tragedy in realist policy terms
Events are still clarifying in the aftermath of the horrendous school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. At this point in time this is what's clear: 19 children and two teachers were shot dead by an 18-year old who bought a rifle on his birthday, made threats online, had a troubled personal history, and all of it was made worse by a local police force that was trained, armed, and employed for just such a scenario and instead made the "wrong decision".
Instead of rushing in, all as one or alone, police held parents back, arrested one, tackled another, and when finally going into the school one officer called out for children to yell if they need help despite an active shooter still present.
This resulted in another death, according to a surviving child's account. They said another student yelled for help from her hiding spot and was shot dead.
This isn't the first elementary school massacre, and national and Texas Republicans are all but guaranteeing future ones because they, over decades, have diminished the problem-solving ability of the electorate through calculated bullshit-mongering and anticommunist rhetoric. The Democrats, for their part, are professionally useless unless it’s to offer voters a different brand of Republican.
America, like Canada and the UK and other apparently advanced countries have let their democracies wither into grotesque zombies, going through the motions and insisting upon themselves that change and accountability can come from their elections.
How do we explain that even when there’s consensus among the people on something so urgent and grotesque as elementary school classrooms being massacred that leaders refuse to do anything about the free flow of assault weapons or social and commercial determinants of mental health?
If you turn on the TV, people like Dan Crenshaw are arguing that additional regulation is unnecessary and redundant. In effect, he is saying let’s not change the status quo. Let’s add security guards to schools.
In two weeks we will see what the news cycle will be talking about. We all live in a mediascape that is dazzlingly ineffective at captivating public attention long enough to see issues through to resolution. A collaboration between Axios, Schema, and Google Trends found news cycles in 2018 lasted 7 days before moving on to the next sensation.
If people cannot be sustained in their outrage, what happens to public pressure on leaders to change the way things are?
One explanation is plain: the system by which public issues are raised and resolved is foundationally corrupted. The citizen, the journalist, the leader and would-be leader co-habitate an ecosystem of 24-hour news, social media in an attention economy, gerrymandering and voter suppression, big and little lies, and limitless money in politics to psychologically profile, microtarget, cultivate and Get Out the Vote (GOTV) to preserve or enhance vested interests at the expense of the many and the future.
Obviously, democracy is broken if it was ever meant to work. But democracy at its core recognizes a need for the group, the royal We, to have rules and to self-organize its frameworks of conduct and boundaries through a process of choosing who ought to make and remake those rules.
If at least some people at the top of pyramid can be popularly picked by the masses in the rest of the pyramid, there’s hope that the framework of society within which people draw the designs of daily life, standard of living and quality of life can improve.
That’s not nothing (and if nothing else, is an enlightened centrism, s’il vous plait).
But the ecosystem between citizen, journalist, and leader is damaged.
People believe things about the real world that aren’t real because they implicitly trust news sources and peers and social circles in their media bubbles.
Where once people had to learn about what happens over the hill yonder by speaking with travelers or listening to town criers, our diets are increasingly algorithmically-derived online and available wherever at any time.
I can cry listening to stories of needless deaths half a world away or be violently shook with anger about my city putting in more bike lanes, and none of it can be true.
Good information about what is happening is an ingredient in good decision-making. That role was written into constitutions as the press when the press didn’t mean dazzling images, scoring and make-up teams or engineered algorithms. Easily overlooked writers and futurists warned of this. A fractured mediascape and a largely unaware and habitually defrauded voter class.
Just from the changes of the last thirty years alone, modern democracy is filled with these predatory contradictions.
How do people organize when things are so broken? How do people group problem-solve what is clearly an issue when the poverty of public policy and all these contradictions not only exist, but are actively used against people?
Lefties of old had it figured out and there is a resurgence as seen in recent union drive successes: You Agitate. You Educate. You Organize.
If you take a group of people stranded on a tropical island where scarcity is only a result of disorganization or lack of cooperation, and you would likely see communication, organization, and administration. When resource scarcity stops being an issue, inequity is then only a product of disorganized abundance.
Prosperity Gospel and right-wing ideology justifies this in lofty terms of deserving and toil, but they are full of shit. Jesus wasn’t an insufferable prick like every televangelist is, and people don’t have to like Ted Cruz or accept any of the thoughts in his orbit.
In a public policy lens the nature of preaching that people dying from lack of healthcare is God’s plan upholds the way things are through persuasion. The nature of Ted Cruz, while very much a compensating fevered ego, is that of a person at the top of the pyramid with power over frameworks, but like other elected leaders he is a placeholder for opinions and positions on questions that uphold a favorable status quo for the vested interests that enable his political victories.
Democracy as a system of organizing a group’s priorities, direction, and policies is, like any social construct, as meaningful as participants play into. But organizing for power remains the same.
The political right has the Powell Memo while the left was eviscerated through an overblown anticommunism and ritual sacrifices by Democrats who somehow believe in spite of all evidence and surveys saying they haven’t materially, tangibly improved the lives of people they say they care about that their party is going “too far left”.
What Republicans have done over decades is corrupt a system of leader-selection and decision-making. Stocking the Supreme Court and stacking committees with their own, countless smaller elections and seats and appointments, all upheld by a feedback loop of being better-resourced to win elections through marketing in exchange for being influenced with languaging and framing and scripts and draft legislation that all invariably benefit the few at the expense of the many.
Dark money and political action committees (PACs) can oust anyone through primaries who won’t play ball. The vested interests, the deep-pocketed industries with their lobbyists are well-served by the status quo, and refuse to let anyone change it.
Even when there’s consensus among the lower 90% of the pyramid, even when they vote for it, don’t get what they want.
The strategies for the winning of elections was perfected over decades of refinement, consultant fees, focus groups, data collection, microtargeting and gerrymandering, all while liberals and Democrats have fecklessly accepted the premise that this is how they can win elections too.
When most Americans and even most of the NRA members want universal background checks, they don’t get it. What most people do get though is that politics is corrupt and broken, yet their zombie democracy still goes through the motions of elections, replete with emotional totems and psychological talismans of cultural identity to prey upon: Gravel-voiced truck commercials and fantasies of home defense engorged on machismo.
The predictable effects of putting out so much bullshit and polarization is that the propaganda that was used to give cover for selfish policies has soaked through and become political culture.
Getting Republicans to vote against their own interests is easier when they think it’s their identity as moral beings at stake.
Truly, pro-life and pro-gun can peacefully co-exist.
Political marketers know that people argue harder for their sense of self, their identity, than they would a regular opinion about something they are comfortable with admitting being wrong about.
In Carol Tavris and Elliot Aaronson's book "Mistakes Were Made (but not by me)", they explore the science and psychology of self-justification and cognitive dissonance. People hold more to their fragile senses of self with increasing cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias rather than, say, practice some humility or separate a political opinion from their values.
Tethering voters' sense of self through emotional appeals with political opinions about what is happening and what could possibly be done is how Republicans have consistently voted against their own economic and social interests.
The impact over time has been a poverty of public policy and all-too-frequent mass shootings in an America where now 83% feel has gone off the rails.
Issues with infrastructure, housing, homelessness, mental health and addictions, war and violence, healthcare and meaningful jobs would not have evolved to where they are today without the GOP.
And to zero in on the tragedy in Uvalde, Texas and so many other places visited upon by bad leaders and bad policies: happy, healthy people don't commit mass murder.
Mass shootings don't happen because a person is evil alone. So many of these mass shooters are disconnected on a soul level from other people and themselves. They are alienated from society, increasingly online, fevering in media bubbles algorithmically designed to encourage engagement.
Almost always there's emotional barriers and gaps in their family life that are known in the health economics and research sector as "social determinants". Many mass shooters have interpersonal issues in romance and love. Many mass shooters start by killing their wives, girlfriends, or mothers. The Pulse Nightclub shooter, killing dozens at a gay venue, was predictably fighting something in himself, stewing resentment and self-hatred until he snapped.
Then there's the economic despair and little or no sense of hope their personal futures would get better. Most young people share this.
Then you add in their media diet constantly flooding their nervous system with stimulation: attractive socialites and influencers, angry and outrageous 24/7 news constantly misdirecting blame for very real problems in society, and then you couple that with an utterly useless class of politicians unable to make anything better and a society awash in guns and few rules to gain them and it seems less impossible someone would snap, and more inevitable that some would.
Violently raging against a place they don't feel belonging or recognition is much more menacing with weapons of war so easily accessible.
There's apparently an African proverb that goes "when a child is not embraced they will burn the village down just to feel its warmth."
I looked into the origins of this quote and was reminded it was in the movie "Black Panther". An r/AskReddit post posed the proverb and asked for times in life people were close to burning down the village. The post has over 104,000 upvotes from individuals. One response was someone who said they were heavily bullied in middle school and they "thankfully" didn't have access to guns because they would definitely be a school shooter.
Health care and mental health care are policy choices. Shipping jobs away and stripping social safety nets to force people into low-wage jobs are policy choices.
If and who and when and how easy it is to acquire weapons is a policy choice. Addictions services are a policy choice. The work week, paid time off, maternity leave, all policy choices.
The diseased state of political culture has meant that for many people the fact that the "other side" wants it becomes all the more proof of preserving it. Liberals hate freedom, we're told. Leftists want to take over, I hear. And my sense of self and belonging and tribe is tethered to the worldviews I didn't know was propaganda to serve the interests of the few at my expense.
I think of Sebastian Junger years ago on Joe Rogan's podcast (archived Episode 1034) explaining the differences between so-called liberal and conservative brains, explaining how crazy it is to him that such differences as basic as neurology and interpretation are fevered up into life-or-death, loyal-or-treason dichotomies in political discourse. This is backed up by works from cognitive linguist George Lakoff, who among others look at how the brains of self-identified liberals and conservatives respond to outside stimuli.
Sebastian Junger's message to Rogan:
"Partisan rhetoric is a national security issue."
The GOP made "owning the libs" an identity. Libs want abortions, we're against abortion and we call ourselves pro-life. Libs want gun control, we're against gun control and we call ourselves pro-freedom.
It doesn't matter that access to safe abortions better guarantees health and preserves generations of woman and children against cycles of poverty. It doesn't matter that, as The Onion sarcastically and routinely puts it after every mass shooting, "'No way to prevent this,' says only nation where this regularly happens". These are policy choices that are upheld by the dynamics of a broken democracy.
Pro-life is a paid-for talking point. Pro-gun is a paid-for talking point. These were concocted and disseminated over decades through various media forms on radio, television, 24 hour news and now social media with its hyper-individualized and opaque algorithms of microtargeting, isolating, and edging of the limbic system. It does so at the altar of engagement and market capitalization.
Cultivating opinions, crystallizing them into positions, and encouraging actions in the real world like showing up to school board meetings to yell about white guilt or show up to vote is what media now exists to do. It’s not controversial or bad but it is part of the broken ecosystem between citizen, journalist, and leader.
Both Republicans and Democrats maintain advanced data banks of every detail of their voter base. Because that's how you win the power to change the status quo.
Things like mental healthcare, services for addictions, paid time off and maternity leave, and what's needed to buy a rifle when one turns age of majority are all policy choices. They are conscious decisions by the people in power, the people trained by their party to understand public opinions and segregate and target the ones that preserve or enhance the interests of the party and its backers.
Gun manufacturers fund the NRA. The same NRA that issues report cards giving As and Ds and Fs to politicians that don't vote its agenda.
The same NRA that had its own channel and programs promoting, always promoting, a preservation or enhancement of a status quo to the benefit of its backers.
Decades of investigative journalism have warned us its agenda is profits for gun manufacturers, justified by language that invariably answers any problem with "more guns, less red tape, and together this equals freedom equals good".
But like so much of politics, the waves of opinion used to ride into power are quickly set aside because political power is just one type of power. There's other players in the top of that pyramid.
Long-established dynamics of deep-pocketed interests will dictate that even when a clear majority or 90% of Americans (and 72% of NRA members) want things like background checks that it won't happen.
Those deep pockets buy the consultants and marketers who cultivate public opinion through media, and can easily fund primary opponents if anyone in the GOP finds a backbone and a soul and deviates from the agenda.
The system there, as in North America now, is working as intended by the people most benefitting from the status quo. The people at the top of the heap are convinced by deep psychological mechanisms of self-justification that their commercial and economic interests are right, smart, savvy, and must continue.
Chris Hedges, the former New York Times war correspondent and religious scholar quoted WB Yeats in his book "Empire of Illusion":
"We had fed the heart on fantasy; the heart has grown brutal from the fare"
School shootings then become the price of freedom. They become a tragedy to which we offer thoughts and prayers. There is no questioning our highest value of freedom.
But to decode events like massacres of children in the wealthiest, most powerful nation on Earth in public policy terms is "politicizing" something that cannot or should not be politicized, meaning it is a current way of things that cannot be changed.
The act of forbidding politicization is itself politicizing: it seeks to put outside of possibility the choice to change the way things are. It is a hallmark projection by vested interests.
Yeats' quote is bookended more plainly by historian Andrew Bacevich who wrote in "The Limits of Power":
"conviction follows self-interest"
Those who benefit from the way things are don't want to change the way it is and will speak with the conviction and framing and language that appeals most to secure its preservation.
Marketing and cultivating opinions in the electorate reinforces an attachment to the status quo, that moving away from it is conceding to enemies of freedom, to treasonous liberals and communists who want to politicize what is harped upon as facts of life.
The brutality of this state of things has meant a chronically underfunded and resourced public education, with teachers facing hatreds for teaching about the existence of LGBTQIA2S+ people or teaching the facts and truths of slavery's legacy. Teachers who are now being told to arm themselves for $35K a year and give their lives defending students.
They already do. Teachers are gunned down.
Teachers devote their lives to giving something of value to others to nourish their growth, prepare them for the world, and arm them with the skills and knowledge to understand in the various ways how things work. It's the parents who are the real pieces of work, and it's those parents who vote.
Public policy is about how we live together and by what rules encourage or discourage conduct. From parking spots to securities fraud and yes, if and who and how many and how easy it is to acquire weapons of war and if and where people can carry them around.
Texas policy allows people to buy weapons on their 18th birthday with optional background checks flagging threats to ex-partners, domestic abuse, or threats to shoot up public spaces and workplaces. This is in spite of many and most Texans favor for stricter gun laws.
Texas Republicans, quoting the above article, give Texans
"the right to store firearms in their cars; allowing licensed gun owners the ability to openly carry a handgun in a holster in public; requiring the state’s public universities to allow those licensed to carry a concealed weapon to be able to do so on campus (including in dorms, classroom, and campus buildings); removing the cap on the number of school marshals who can carry a firearm in K-12 schools; clarifying the right of handgun owners to carry their weapon in a church or other place of worship; and, most recently, allowing anyone over the age of 21 who is not prohibited from owning a gun to be able to carry one in public without a permit or training."
The GOP chose that. The national GOP voted against background checks to see if someone is on a terrorist watchlist, all while putting out rhetoric in the media and speeches and election pitches of the risk of terrorists pouring over the border from Mexico.
The parents of the children of Uvalde were held back, tackled, arrested and resisted.
All while the most superlative scenario where police ought to spring into action -- to save the lives of kids -- unfolded and was delayed and bungled out of fear for personal safety and apparent confusion with the chain of command.
Like the Prosperity Gospel with its justification of selfishness, generations of people are growing up witnessing there is no gain in selflessness because gain is all there is to do in life.
What happened in Uvalde, we understand now, was trained for. Like the grotesquely routine school shooting drills inspired by Columbine and Sandy Hook and used to justify tens of billions of dollars in militarization and siege vehicles and hyper-macho equipment, gear and weapons, this way of things was allowed to happen, opted into even.
By both police in Uvalde and policymakers.