Left-wing New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow accused Republicans of making the United States a “killing field” through their promotion of propaganda and an “insane” gun culture, while claiming the extraordinary levels of “American carnage” are due to the amount of “American Republicans” within the country.
In an essay published in the Times on Wednesday, titled “The American Killing Fields,” Blow begins by accusing the Republican Party of having “turned America into a killing field.”
“Republicans have allowed guns to proliferate while weakening barriers to ownership, lowering the age at which one can purchase a weapon and eliminating laws governing how, when and where guns can be carried,” he wrote.
“They have done this in part with help from conservatives on the Supreme Court who have upheld a corrupt and bastardized interpretation of the Second Amendment,” he added.
“No other country has the level of American carnage, but no other country has American Republicans,” writes @CharlesMBlow. https://t.co/SPxpYbUVd7
— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) May 26, 2022
Blow claims that Republicans have also promoted “fear and paranoia” to achieve their aims.
“They tell people that criminals are coming to menace you, immigrants are coming to menace you, a race war (or racial replacement) is coming to menace you and the government itself may one day come to menace you,” he wrote. “The only defense you have against the menace is to be armed.”
According to Blow, who has described Trump supporters as “angry white men,” such “propaganda” has been “incredibly, insidiously persuasive.”
Once accepted, he argues, “no amount of tragedy can persuade you to relinquish that idea, not even the slaughter of children and their teachers in their classrooms.”
As a result, Blow writes, Republicans “keep the country trapped in a state of intransigence, ricocheting from one tragedy to another.”
Charging that the current state is “not normal,” he places the blame squarely on Republicans.
“No other country has the level of American carnage, but no other country has American Republicans,” he writes.
Admitting that the passing of gun safety measures “wouldn’t immediately end all gun violence” in the country, Blow expresses his belief that “it could begin to lower the body count, to lessen the amount of blood flowing in the streets.”
The problem, he asserts, is Republicans.
“Too often, [Republicans] seem to see the carnage as collateral — as if they could use the constancy and repetition of these killings to scuttle efforts to stop future killings,” he writes.
“Some Republicans may even count on Americans getting used to inaction, getting inured to the killing of children, getting numb to the relentless taking of life and no taking of action,” he adds.
Claiming that the issue of why gun violence has reached such levels is neither a “mystery” nor “complicated,” Blow blames the “insane gun culture” and the GOP’s refusal to “cooperate.”
“We are not addressing our insane gun culture and the havoc it is wreaking because the Republican Party refuses to cooperate,” he concludes. “There is death all around us, but for too many Republicans, it is a sad inconvenience rather than impetus for action.”
Last month, Blow said he would “say goodbye” to Twitter if Elon Musk were to take it over.
In March, he suggested canceling the popular Looney Tunes cartoon characters Speedy Gonzales and Pepé Le Pew — the former because it is “racist,” the latter for contributing to “rape culture.”
In response to the 2020 Republican National Convention (RNC), Blow mocked the notable amount of diversity featured in its speaker lineup that included about two dozen black, Hispanic, Asian, and also handicapped speakers.
“These Black and brown people at the Republican convention […] have a job to do: the erasure of racism, the clouding of it so that one may [reason] it away.”
Follow Joshua Klein on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.
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