By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, February 13th, 2013 
I anticipated the State of the Union Address, more or less, correctly, though I underestimated Obama’s forthrightness. He entered softly, calling for bi-partisanship, but he followed up with a pretty big stick, strongly arguing for his agenda, including, most spectacularly, the matter of class and class conflict, daring the Republicans to dissent, ending the speech on a high emotional note on gun violence and the need to have a vote on legislation addressing the problem. Before the speech, I wondered how President Obama would balance assertion of his program with reaching out to Republicans. This was an assertive speech.
The script was elegantly crafted, as usual, and beautifully performed, as well. He embodied his authority, with focused political purpose aimed at the middle class. This got me thinking. As a sociologist, I find public middle class talk confusing, though over the years I have worked to understand the politics. I think last night it became clear, both the politics and the sociology.
Obama is seeking to sustain his new governing coalition, with the Democratic majority in the Senate, and the bi-partisan coalition in the House, although he is working to form the coalition more aggressively than I had expected. He is addressing the House through “the people,” with their middle class identities, aspirations and fears.
In my last post, I observed and then suggested:
“Obama’s recent legislative victories included Republican votes on the fiscal cliff and the debt ceiling. I believe he will talk about the economy in such a way that he strengthens his capacity to draw upon this new governing coalition. He will do it in the name of the middle class and those aspiring to be in the middle class. This is the formulation of Obama for ordinary folk, the popular classes, the great bulk of the demos, the people. In this speech and in others, they are the subjects of change, echoing Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: government of the middle . . .
Read more: Class Matters: The Not So Hidden Theme of the State of the Union
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, February 1st, 2013 
Obama’s deeds don’t always match his words. Thus, he is a hypocrite and worse: a corporate stooge, the commander and chief of the prison industrial complex, and a war criminal. This is the sort of judgment one hears from the left. It seems this was the ground of Cornel West’s recent expression of self-righteous anger. And this, I believe, is all the result of a lack of understanding about the relationship between politics as a vocation and the art of protest.
In my last post, I expressed my indignation, my criticism of West and this sort of criticism (not for the first time, and certainly not the last). It is with the same concern that I have regretted the lost opportunities of Occupy Wall Street, which had real prospects to expand its influence, but fled instead, for the most part, into utopian fantasies and irrelevance. In Weber’s terms OWS activists chose completely the ethics of ultimate ends and fled responsibility, the articulation of the dreams over consequential actions. For me personally, the saddest manifestation of this was in the events of Occupy New School and its aftermath. Students and colleagues posturing to express themselves, to reveal their sober judgment of the realistic or their credentials as true radicals had little or nothing to do with the important ideas and actions of OWS, centered on the concerns of the 99% and the call for equality and a decent life for the 99%.
But my hope springs eternal. Perhaps with Obama’s new inauguration the protesters will get it.
A friend on my Facebook page summed up the problem. “It’s really difficult to be on the left of the current White House in the US nowadays.” Apparently hard, I think, because both easy full-throated opposition and full-throated support don’t make sense. Binary opposition is off the table. Struggles for public visibility of political concerns and consequential action are the order of the day. It’s difficult but far from impossible. Politicians will do their jobs, well or poorly, but so will social protesters. . . .
Read more: Guns and the Art of Protest: Thinking about What is to be Done on the Left
By Richard Alba, December 27th, 2012 
I know from personal experience about the long-run suffering inflicted by gun deaths. I was not quite three years old when my father was killed, in November, 1945, by a fellow American soldier test firing a souvenir Lugar in the barracks. He had survived the war, but not the peace that followed. That shot has echoed down the decades in my family. I think I can still faintly hear it today, nearly 70 years later.
The cruelty of gun deaths comes partly from their absurd randomness. When I was a child, I imagined that my father was a war hero who had been killed in combat. (How else could he have died?) When I was an adolescent, I learned that the US Army reported that he was shot in a room where “men were working on guns.” Later still, due to my mother’s obsessive persistence, we learned the even more prosaic truth: he was seated, playing cards, when the unanticipated recoil of the Lugar directed a shot meant for the floorboards across the room and into his back.
Survivors of such capricious deaths cannot help being tormented by thoughts of alternative realities. In the case of my father: If only the shooter had aimed in a different direction or taken into account the powerful recoil. If only the shot had gone twelve inches to the left (or the right). If only my father had been demobilized earlier. If…if…if… Not far behind such thoughts lies the guilt felt by survivors. For my mother, there was guilt about my conception. If only I had been born earlier, my father might not have been drafted in the first place.
My mother was haunted all her life by this death. Never able to find relief, she eventually took her own life, stipulating that she was to be buried beside her first husband. Remarriage could not give the succor she needed: As a Catholic woman with a young child, she faced a limited field of choice in the immediate post-war years, since a shortage of marriageable men was the inevitable consequence of the . . .
Read more: Testimony of a Gun-Death Survivor
By Gary Alan Fine, December 24th, 2012 
One of the truisms of the Internet Age is what has become known as Goodwin’s Law: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one. Let us turn to the Third Reich in Connecticut.
The reason that Americans permit the tragedy of Sandy Hook to occur year after doleful year has nothing to do with the fear of home invasion. It has nothing to do with cocaine-soaked gangs. It has nothing to do with the love of hiding in a duck blind. It has all to do with George III, Josef Stalin, and Adolf Hitler. This is the half-hidden secret behind the National Rifle Association’s passion and it needs to be judged in its own terms.
The justification for the Second Amendment and the justification for opposition to such real and apparently rational limits on semi-automatic weapons is to keep power in the hands of the people. The local community is a bulwark of democracy. Just as the rest of the libertarian-blessed Bill of Rights is concerned with constraining the heavy hand of state control, so is the Second Amendment. The fantasy is Red Dawn as Groundhog Day. A demand for personal liberty led Charlton Heston to be willing to fight until “they” pry the gun from his “cold, dead hands.”
In the aftermath of Sandy Hook, of Aurora, of Tucson, of Virginia Tech, of Columbine the issue is trust. Can we trust that our American regime (or invaders from Venezuela or Mars) can eschew the temptations of tyranny? Does power corrupt absolutely? Although the National Rifle Association is loath to admit it, gun control depends on political theory. The reason for heavy personal artillery is not to provoke one’s children against a break-in by Spike or José, but to kill Sergeant Spike or Colonel José. We need an arsenal not to hunt Bambi, but Senator Bambi. And if the National Rifle Association did not fear public revulsion, this is the argument that they would make.
In fact, the argument is not entirely crazed. Some seventy-five years . . .
Read more: Sandy Hook and Hitler
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, December 18th, 2012 
While I take for granted that gun control is a proper response to the atrocity in Newtown, not all do. This is the second of a two part extended exchange (part 1, here ). My friend Thomas Cushman, who holds libertarian views, challenged me and proposed a different interpretation and a different course of action. I hope this will open a deeper deliberate discussion.
Tom: Jeff, I wonder if we as sociologists could bring some kind of understanding to this situation that does not sink down into the extreme positions on either side? Otherwise it’s just politics as usual. Consider, for instance, that Connecticut already has severe gun control measures. They did not stop the atrocity. Vermont is a state where any resident can buy as many guns, and as much ammunition as they want, carry concealed handguns, own assault rifles, and it has the lowest homicide rate in the country. I am not a fan of the gun culture by any stretch, but it seems shallow to imagine that some amorphous, state induced “gun control” is going to ever stop these kinds of things. As you know, the problem is cultural. We live in a degraded cultural environment full of simulated and prosthetic violence,. Our children, especially our boys, are immersed in violent culture produced by Hollywood. Why not start there?
Jeff: Agreed the problem at its base cultural. Gun culture, the culture of violence and its glorification. And yes, violence in popular culture is a problem. But why have so many guns? I would like to work on all fronts. I would start with a discussion about gun controls in the political arena. Certainly some weapons shouldn’t be in private hands. Certainly, also, we should have a discussion about depictions of violence in films and music. If you want to start there, . . .
Read more: After Newtown: A Discussion about Gun Controls and Popular Culture
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, December 17th, 2012 
As with many others, I have been consumed by the tragedy in Newtown Connecticut. I wrote a post on Saturday, something I try not to do. Signed a couple of petitions (see here and here). Watched the memorial service last night. Was moved and inspired by Obama’s speech.
It is at moments like this that I am relieved and proud that Barack Obama is president. He gave a powerful speech. He got to the heart of the matter. I am confident a real response to this tragedy will happen.
Moving from alarm, to depression to hope, I discussed with friends on Facebook the events as they have been unfolding. I think the discussions were informative and re-produce slightly edited versions here. The discussion crossed intellectual gated communities, an interesting exchange on my left was initiated by my Israeli friend, Orly Lubin, joined by American based friends Peter Manning, and Esther Kreider-Verhalle. In the second, from the more libertarian side of things, there was a civil exchange with my friend Tom Cushman, which I will post tomorrow. I hope we can continue these discussions at Deliberately Considered.
The discussion on the left was between those, including me, who saw a major change in Obama’s approach to leadership and gun policy, and those who see a pattern of compromise and ineffectiveness in domestic and foreign policy.
Orly: You Americans are the masters of understatements – Hannan and me were furious – between Jesus and god bless America, couldn’t hear the word “gun” nor the word “control” – but what do I know, don’t speak american, I guess.
Jeff: Yes, I think you don’t. Though I also don’t like certain religious aspects of American.
![]() After Newtown: A Dialogue on the Left
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, December 15th, 2012 
This time it was in a Connecticut elementary school, not very far from my home. The local and national news together are overwhelmingly depressing. I feel despair and powerless: such brutality, and Americans have kept on arming themselves, with support for gun control diminishing.
Why? Perhaps it is because too many of us confuse fictions with facts? On this issue the NRA view of the world seems to dominate. Consider this blast from Deliberately Considered’s past, the story of a preteen sharpshooter defending her home in Butte Montana. Gun advocates make up there own facts to justify their position that guns yield personal and public safety.
A fact free world provides the grounds upon which outrageous judgments are made. Charles Blow cited one today:
“Larry Pratt, the executive director of Gun Owners of America, wasted no time trying to pin Friday’s shooting on gun control advocates. ThinkProgress quoted a statement of his that read, in part: ‘Gun control supporters have the blood of little children on their hands. Federal and state laws combined to ensure that no teacher, no administrator, no adult had a gun at the Newtown school where the children were murdered. This tragedy underscores the urgency of getting rid of gun bans in school zones.’ ”
How is it possible for someone to imagine let alone utter such words? Following their logic, and the sort of pseudo-evidence it is based on, “the fictoid from out west,” perhaps the answer to school violence is arming kindergarten kids. David Frum, indeed, in a tweet sarcastically declared: “Shooting at CT elementary school. Obviously, we need to lower the age limit for concealed carry so toddlers can defend themselves.”
And then there is the magical power of prayer. Mike Huckabee: “We ask why there’s violence in our schools but we’ve systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would . . .
Read more: Another Day, Another Gun Massacre
By Matthew LaClair, December 22nd, 2010 
 Matthew LaClair is a student at Eugene Lang College. He attended Jeff’s course this semester on Democracy in America. He is also a radio correspondent for WBAI in NYC. He sends in this report of a fictoid from the Heartland.
I received the following chain e-mail from a relative of mine. I thought of it as a good example of dangerous fictoids, because after I checked the story out, I found it has simply never happened. Here, read the unedited text of the e-mail:
Thought for the day: Calling an illegal alien an ‘undocumented immigrant’ is like calling a drug dealer an ‘unlicensed pharmacist’ .
Have you ever wondered why good stuff never makes NBC, CBS, PBS, MSNBC, CNN, or ABC news………an 11 year old girl, properly trained, defended her home, and herself….
…against two murderous, illegal immigrants…
…and she wins, She is still alive.
Now that is Gun Control!
BUTTE, MONTANA
Shotgun preteen vs. Illegal alien Home Invaders: Butte, Montana November 5, 2009
Two illegal aliens, Ralphel Resindez, 23, and Enrico Garza, 26, probably believed they would easily overpower home-alone 11 year old Patricia Harrington after her father had left their two-story home. It seems the two crooks never learned two things: 1 – They were in Montana 2 – Patricia has been a clay shooting champion since she was nine. Patricia was in her upstairs room when the two men broke through the front door of the house. She quickly ran to her father’s room and grabbed his 12 gauge Mossberg 500 shotgun. Resindez was the first to get up to the second floor and was the first to catch a near point blank blast of buckshot from the 11-year-old’s knee crouch aim. He suffered fatal wounds to his abdomen and genitals. When Garza ran to the foot of the stairs, he took a blast to the left shoulder and staggered out into the street where he bled to death before medical help could arrive. It was found out later that Resindez was armed with a stolen 45 caliber handgun he had taken from another home invasion robbery. The victim of that robbery, 50-year-old David 0Burien, . . .
Read more: Fictoid from out West
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