gun control as a foreign policy issue - not that the "adults" care

Democracy is still a great instrument of popular control, which means that it has to be constantly policed and the issues at stake rigorously trivialized by the “serious” people (who have now taken to calling themselves the adults lately – perhaps the unrelenting riducule aimed at the serious people during the 00s on the internet, which has been echoed by Paul Krugman, has been taking effect). Thus the role of the email scandal that surrounds Clinton’s years as secretary of state. It is a zero of a scandal – I mean, in contrast with the scandal that has not arisen because Dick Cheney erased 30,000 of his emails. One of the great unknowns of the Obama years is whether we would be in much better shape, politically, if the Obama Justice department hadn’t taken that massive dose of oxycodine and decided to give a pass to all Bush administration officials and Wall street, occasionally waking up to jail some journalist for publishing unclassified material about this or that random atrocity. In any case, Clinton’s emails are a red herring’s red herring.

However, unless Bernie Sanders brings it up, the press will never ask a question about the real scandal of Clinton’s term of office, which is the unprecedented amount of weaponry sold, under the State Department’s aegis, by the US to forces around the world. Unprecedented except for WWII – one has to go back that far to find comparable numbers for the 160 billion dollars worth of arms the US has sold. It is the equivalent of a nuclear bomb, but more dispersed. The 400,000 people dead so far in the Syrian war? Look at the bullet holes, and you will see a lot of American pride there, eviscerating their flesh. All to stop that evil terrorism! Although, of course, what it does is sow chaos, thus allowing more terrorism, thus allowing more arms sales. A truly virtuous circle.

That is a scandal. That should be a crime. And that is, of coursde, a non-lieu – something that will not come up in the presidential campaign at all. Gun control at home will come up – gun control abroad will only come up as a good thing for our industry. After all, the “adults” know that this is only of interest to fringe groups, probably on the extreme left or something.

After all, what could go wrong with selling bombs to the Saudis?