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We're going to argue about gun control. Chances anything actually gets done are slim. 

We're going to argue about white supremacy. Chances anything actually gets done about that aren't even slim. They're basically non-existent. 

We're not even going to argue about the connection between masculinity and gun violence or masculinity and white supremacy, much less the triangulation which creates the storm of violence we're now existing in and the threat it poses to the future. 

We won't explore the unquestionably real connections between the path to radicalization and how much the methods of radicalization mimic the prescriptions for varieties of mental health issues like depression, anxiety, body dysmorphia, eating disorders, and so on. Self definition. A new internal narrative. Community. All of those diagnoses, along with the suicide rate, are rising at previously unheard of rates among men. There shouldn't be any doubt that many of the men finding their way into the extremism of the far right are doing so in an attempt to treat the symptoms of the failed concept of masculinity they've been raised on and expected to adhere too. They're reacting to their inability to meet those standards and norms, because they understand that to not meet those standards of masculinity makes them more likely to be victims of the violence of masculinity. 

We'll talk about mental illness, as a way to not actually talk about many other things, and we'll do so without even the very slightest bit of understanding of what it is like to live with a mental health diagnosis, what the realities of violence and mental illness are, or basically any understanding of what the realities of living with a chronic mental illness are in the United States. Most of us can't even recognize that the term "insanity" has absolutely no medical usage. It's a legal term, in total. A doctor may be asked if a person meets the legal definition, but that definition has no medical baring or weight. Despite the fact that this is referenced in basically every single case involving an attempt to use an insanity plea as a defense, the majority of people don't even understand this, but they're definitely going to argue the merits of making mental health the center of a discussion about gun violence. How often do we still see jokes portraying mental health professionals admonishing the use of words like "crazy" or "insane" as if this part of preventing "straight talk," when in reality, they're part of trying to have a conversation based on concepts and words that have meaning for health and treatment? 

We won't talk about the connections between mental illness and traditional concepts of masculinity. We might throw the suicide rate around as an excuse to focus only on the topic of gun control, but we won't actually drill down into how it is or why it is gun violence, including (but in no way limited to) suicide, is an overwhelmingly male phenomenon. Women have always been more likely to be diagnosed with depression (in part because we haven't recognized gendered behavior norms mean it presents symptoms differently between men and women), and they aren't committing suicide via gun at anywhere near the levels men are. Guns are as available to everyone who wouldn't fit into the category of heterosexual, cis gender male, and someone, none of those other populations get close to the same levels of gun violence. Trans men are not committing gun crime at anywhere near what they should be, if "testosterone" was the answer, as so many like to claim. If the answer was really that "testosterone" was really the thing which was making men so much more prone to violence, wouldn't have at least one or two trans mass shooters? A Google search produced one story, which explains how rare it is. 

Don't get me wrong. Introducing legislation related to universal background checks, training, proficiency tests, all good things. I support making changes to how gun ownership is regulated. That it is the only thing related to gun violence which is ever discussed isn't just disappointing, but also short sighted and myopic. Not to mention, it's a well trodden cycle already. We have a shocking act of violence, an attempt to kill as many people as is possible, then we have a giant screaming match about gun control, and nothing happens. I can remember this going back to 80's when there were mass shootings by disgruntled postal workers, and the phrase, "going postal" became part of the American vernacular. We've been doing this dance since then, at least. 

It's kind of amazing that following the revelation of some nasty racist rhetoric by Ronald Reagan on the phone with Richard Nixon, Reagan's biographer this week came out and expressed shock, saying he'd never found anything to suggest racism in his research on Reagan. We've had one actually meaning full piece of gun regulation since the 70's, and it was based on the model Reagan championed after lawfully armed Black Panthers showed up at the California State Capitol while Reagan was presiding as governor. 

It took Reagan being caught calling heads of state from the African nations "monkeys" for people to be comfortable referring to Racist Ronnie as a racist. It wasn't the championing of Second Amendment rights, as long as it's not The Black Panthers exercising them. It wasn't the references to "welfare queens." It wasn't the interview with one of his chief strategists, Less Atwater, which later revealed Atwater detailing exactly how he had chosen the strategy for Reagan to run on would be to focus on stirring white racial resentment against Black folks and other minority communities. 

Take into account that Reagan made his way into the White House on white racial resentment and a "straight talking" cowboy persona, and you can begin to see the connection between US racism and US/Western masculinity. They are inexorably connected. In American politics, tough talk is always about those people who in one way or another question or threaten patriarchal white supremacy. To confront it or ask questions about it is to "complain" which isn't something men do. What they're doing is "talking straight." What everyone else does is complaining. 

Do we not recognize that it was at exactly the time we had the cowboy president, talking about welfare queens and targeting minorities through The War on Drugs was when we started to see mass shootings becoming something part of the new normal? If not, why? We've historically looked at the rise in violent crime as a result of the popularization of crack cocaine and the many of the turf wars that resulted, but that seems to be a backwards understanding. Between the mandate to police forces to occupy communities of color (in some cases, those policies came after other methods had already begun to show results in reducing crime), a tough talking cowboy persona in the White House, and a political machine which acknowledged using racial resentment as its central organizing theory, maybe the drugs weren't responsible for the rise in crime during the 80's. Maybe, just maybe, the diagnosis of drugs as the problem was itself an act of that racial resentment, and the occupying police forces and "straight talking cowboy" were just putting that racial resentment into practice more thoroughly. 

We're certainly seeing a rise in specific kind of violent crime now that we have another similar environment. The essential difference is that today has a much less talented con artist to sell that racial resentment. It doesn't seem to matter though. It seems there are so many of us so thirsty for it, we genuinely don't care how heinously ridiculous it's representative is. 

I do use "we" purposefully. Like racism is for white people, these horrendously damaging and terrible concepts of masculinity have been passed on to all of us, and we are all going to have to contribute to undoing the damage they've already done and preventing them from doing more damage in the future. 

I know, plenty of you out there take real issue with this idea that the traditional masculinity or toxic masculinity is really what is at the base of all this, but think on this: there were two mass shootings this weekend. One of the accused perpetrators posted a white supremacist manifesto. The other apparently kept a "rape list" through most of his academic career. 

To that effect, I've been working on a book about primarily about the failures of masculinity and the ways they shape violence, extremism, contribute to mental illness and so on. This has been the major reason I've been publishing less here on Patreon or on Medium, and that will continue as long as I am trying to focus on finishing that project.