Fear! Underneath, it is all the same!

I was having a conversation with my lovely wife a couple of nights ago as we heard the horrific news of the mass shooting in Lewiston, ME.  Earlier in that day, our country received a new speaker of the US House of Representatives, Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana.  I will admit that from what I have read, Speaker Johnson does not hold a single position on anything that I agree with.

Two days after the horrible mass shooting, people in several towns in Maine remain on lockdown as the shooter remains at large or unaccounted for.  No one knows for sure where he is or whether he is dead or alive.  So people are staying home, businesses are closed, schools are not open.  It is reminiscent of how things were at the beginning of the COVID pandemic.

But, I thought about the fact that there are more guns in this country than there are people.  One recent survey at thereload.com suggested one in five Americans owns an AR style rifle.  That would be around 60 million of them.  Now in this country mental health rates are not significantly different than in other countries, but because these assault weapons are so easily available this country has a far higher rate of mass shootings than anywhere else in the world.  In short,

And the fear which the gun manufacturers use to pad their bottom line is as irrational as anything any American has ever said or thought.  If having more than 300,000,000 guns in our society has not made us safe, 400,000,000 or 500,000,000 will not either.  This will sound cynical but I think the gun manufacturers like when these events happen because it is good for business.

But the truth was spoken by Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Herein lies the connection between the views of someone like Speaker Johnson and the awful shooting in Lewiston.  Johnson has suggested that we are having these mass shootings because of abortion.  I would expect an attorney and the person second in line to the presidency to understand the law of cause and effect better than that.

I told a close friend yesterday that the entire laundry list of ideologies which I think are dangerous to humanity:

Christian nationalism

Opposition to immigration

White Supremacy

Misogyny

Anti-LGBTQ sentiments

Opposition to legalized abortion

Unconditional support for the nation of Israel, and the fundamentalist theology which feeds it

Strict constructionism in constitutional interpretation

Gun enthusiasm

And I am sure there are more, are rooted in fear.  There is a primal, irrational angst at the heart of all of this.   It may be fear of God's wrath, or of damnation, or fear of dying.  It may be fear of losing one's wealth.  It may be fear of people "replacing us."  (I have yet to understand why Critical Race Theory is bad, but Replacement Theory is OK.  All Replacement Theory is, is CRT for white guys.)

I saw this meme recently:

In Jungian fashion, I think all of these concerns I listed above are denominations of the same religion of fear.  They are all manifestations of some collective unconscious, and all unworthy of the people God has created and called us to be.