Hoplophobia

 A good insight here, but coupled with a lot of irrational fear of weapons.

The good:

[E]very time we build a new tool of state power — every time we cheer on its use against our enemies — we increase the chances it will be turned around and used against us. And each time it happens, people act surprised.

That’s where we are now, again. President Trump is openly using the machinery of the federal government to prosecute political enemies. He wants to “root out” the deep state, deport migrants unilaterally and deploy the military on U.S. soil. He has made no secret of it.

Liberals see this and panic. They’re right to be alarmed — but they’re wrong to treat this as something new. What they’re witnessing isn’t the sudden collapse of American democracy. It is the logical consequence of decades spent building and normalizing a government that increasingly operates with few real limits.

This didn’t start with Trump. Many of the very tools Trump wants to wield were built with bipartisan support. The post-9/11 security state — with its surveillance dragnet, indefinite detention, “black sites” and bloated executive authority — was cheered on by both parties in the name of fighting terror.

President Barack Obama didn’t dismantle that machinery — he streamlined it. He claimed the right to kill U.S. citizens abroad without trial, used the Espionage Act against whistleblowers and expanded domestic counterterrorism. He helped perfect the arsenal that Trump would later inherit.

It was the left, not the right, that normalized censoring disfavored online speech during the pandemic, often using intelligence-linked partners to do so. It was establishment liberals who applauded when the FBI investigated Trump-world operatives — not on the basis of principle, but because they liked the target.

The bad:

There’s a well-known finding in psychology called the “weapons effect.” It describes how the mere presence of a weapon increases the likelihood that it will be used — not just by hardened criminals or soldiers in combat but by anyone, in ordinary settings, even and especially in the home. The deadly object creates a condition of heightened possibility. Violence moves closer to the realm of the likely.

We rarely admit that this applies to government.

As I remarked at AVI's place, this is really a logical deduction rather than a 'finding in psychology.' A weapon that doesn't exist has a zero probability of being used. A weapon that does exist has a non-zero probability. Even if it's very low, logic dictates that the presence of a weapon makes it more likely that one will be used than if one is not present.

However, it wasn't just a logical error. He expands on this later in ways he would have been wiser to leave out.

The ugly:

Cultural neuroscience tells us that environments shape behavior more than we realize. The tools we surround ourselves with — whether in a home or in a bureaucracy — subtly shape what we think is possible. In a household with a loaded firearm, the gun doesn’t just sit there. Its presence hovers. In moments of anger, fear, confusion or desperation, it calls to be used.

"Cultural neuroscience"? Cultures do not have neurons, so he must mean a form of actual neuroscience that likes to talk about culture and its effects. 

This gun-fear is irrational, however. I have a revolver that hangs from my bedpost in a gun belt. It's been there for decades. I check it nightly, clean it regularly, but otherwise it really does just sit there in the holster. It doesn't have a 'presence' to 'hover.' It never 'calls' to me or to anyone else. This kind of talk is senseless. 

Still, the good part is really pretty good. It would have perhaps been better to use Chekhov's Gun as the metaphor, rather than reaching for 'psychology and cultural neuroscience.' In a drama -- which politics is, among other things that it is -- guns that are introduced or even displayed are usually used. I once saw a Roy Rogers film with a rifle that hung on the wall the whole movie without anyone using it for anything; I can remember how strange that seemed in a movie, even though it's exactly what I was just describing as the real fact of my own home.

The state is a kind of weapon, or a set of weapons, which are designed to be used chiefly against us. And that's something to remember when Trump is doing it, too: an excellent reason to stand firm against his police-state impulses is that what goes around comes around. Well, it's been around and it's come around again, but the cycle doesn't stop with him.