#NeverAgain… Until next time
Do the #NeverAgain school children really stand a chance of changing America?
Well, Donald Trump said that he has heard them. We know that because he has it written on a piece of paper. There is still room to hope, however, that America will be better for their tears, their bravery, and their indignation. That doesn’t mean much will change today or tomorrow. Certainly, nothing will change in order to prevent the next school shooting. There is, however, perhaps for the first time, an appetite for stricter gun laws – and the challenge presented to America’s youth is to change a system in which the pragmatics of politics are set firmly against them.
If they hope to change America, they will first have to change Washington, and that will not be done until they can turn their passion and anger into cold, rational politics backed by cash. Plenty of cash. There is a sad truth about American democracy that these stirrings of popular discontent will do nothing to alter the law without money behind them. Since the Citizen’s United ruling of 2010, America’s political landscape has been increasingly dominated by the presence of big money. It was Mitt Romney who uttered the now infamous quip at the 2012 Iowa State Fair: “Corporations are people, my friend” and so it has proved as the ruling ushered in an age of corporate cash shaping the political landscape.
America might have some of the most beautifully constructed political documents in the world, a constitution that is a model for so many others, but it also has SuperPACS that trump (no pun intended) any article of democracy. There is little room left for conviction once money compromises candidates on the floor of the Congress. That isn’t bribery, of course, but the normal democratic process whereby an elected official reflects the will of their most committed supporters. Yet Marco Rubio was being disingenuous when he said last night that “the influence of these groups comes not from money; the influence comes from the millions of people that agree with the agenda, the millions of Americans who support the NRA and who support gun rights groups.” It’s disingenuous because it’s only partly true. The NRA does not speak for all of America’s gun owners and, certainly, does not properly reflect America’s complicated relationship with guns.
The corruption of money in politics was, of course, what Donald Trump was meant to change. He shouted about the “swamp” and “crooked Hillary” and what’s easy to forget is that he was partially right. There was always something unwholesome about the Clintons, about the way Sanders’ campaign was neutered by the so-called “superdelegates”, and about the way the Democrats ignored the glaring truth about their deeply divisive candidate. K Street had also become too powerful with too many in Congress acting as stooges for lobbyists. This was also the genius of Putin’s strategy as he set about meddling with America’s democracy. He could see that Washington had laid itself open to influence from outside. When Robert Mueller’s final indictments are handed down, it’s fairly certain that we’ll see this played out daily on our screens. Easy cash remains the real villain of the Russian piece. Rumours that Moscow funded Trump through the NRA have been around since January when McClatchy first reported that the deputy governor of Russia’s central bank is in the frame for channeling money to help Trump.
It’s the obvious reason why Trump will ultimately do nothing about America’s gun laws. He will, of course, go wherever the morning breeze pushes him, but a concession here and some muttered sympathy there will amount to nothing in the long term. In the immediate future, serious legislation would flounder in the House, where Republicans have a convincing majority. As we’ve seen with the fate of the Dreamers, Congress has a remarkable ability to be seen to do things in a way that actually gets very little done.
And so it is with guns. Like the Woman’s March and the #MeToo movement, #NeverAgain is a welcome sign of a generation committing itself to civic causes, but it is also an expression of political impotence in the moment. The fate of gun laws in America is tied to the fate of the Republican Party, who have done little to win favour among the young, black, female, and/or immigrant. The children now standing up against the NRA are not simply facing off against one of America’s fiercest lobbying groups. They are facing up to the reality of politics in America. The gun problem is a generational challenge that might need a restructured political system to fix. It is to be hoped that this generation remembers this anger when it comes time for them to vote.