"You WILL feel differently about guns!"
The death of founder Andrew Breitbart hasn’t slowed down his website’s ability to dig up provocative and embarrassing videos one bit. Its latest is a bit of off-putting rhetoric from Eric Holder, when he was the Clinton Administration U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., telling a D.C. audience that the long-term solution to gun control is to “brainwash” the public into opposing firearms. Holder said…
“What we need to do is change the way in which people think about guns, especially young people, and make it something that’s not cool, that it’s not acceptable, it’s not hip to carry a gun anymore, in the way in which we’ve changed our attitudes about cigarettes.”
He went on to outline steps that could be taken to “really brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way.”
Seeing this as a major “gotcha” for the embattled Attorney General, who is already facing growing criticism both for his oversight (or lack of it) of the Fast and Furious gun-smuggling fiasco and his evasive testimony about it before Congress, conservative critics are jumping on the 1995 statement to bolster calls for Holder’s resignation.
Your Ethics Quiz today: Is it fair to criticize a U.S. Attorney General’s statement that he wants to “brainwash” the public into rejecting a core Constitutional right, when the statement is more than 15 years old, and was made while he was in a different job?
My answer: No, it is very unfair.
I yield to no one in my belief that Holder is the worst of a long line of terrible Attorney Generals–maladroit, overly political, weak, overwhelmed. There is plenty in his conduct and record while holding his current office with which to tar him; using an old speech from a different context, in a different job, is hardly necessary, and this one was particularly benign.
Holder has a long history of sticking his foot in his mouth, and for any U.S. government official to employ the term “brainwashing” in relation to the public is inherently alarming, as it conjures images of Winston being threatened with rats eating his face in “1984,” Malcolm McDowell being forcibly purged of violent tendencies in “A Clockwork Orange,” and Laurence Harvey being turned into a presidential assassin in “The Manchurian Candidate.” Holder’s remarks make it clear, however, that he was talking about changing the culture, and changing the culture, as was indeed done in the U.S. regarding cigarettes, and also littering, racism, sexual harassment, homophobia, domestic abuse, sexism, and, of course, slavery, is a legitimate and indeed indispensable part of civilization. Changing the culture is a form of brainwashing, as individuals are all vulnerable to having their attitudes and even their core beliefs changed by association with their peers, communities and workplace environment. Positive role models help change cultures; powerful leaders help change cultures; knowledge helps change cultures. The lines between indoctrination and positive influence (as in the schools), and between propaganda and persuasive accounts of real events ( as in the media) can be filament thin, but they are a long way from what the Symbionese Liberation Army did to Patty Hearst.
Holder was talking about gun violence in a city where it has been a scourge for decades. He was right: laws and law enforcement won’t stop the gun deaths until kids aren’t raised to believe, as they do in parts of the city, that respect and power arrive with a young man’s first weapon. America is a violent, gun-loving culture, and that culture is strong and deeply entrenched in tradition, history and entertainment. If we want to reduce the number of guns, we have to reduce the popularity of guns, which means we have to “change the way in which people think about guns,” as Holder says. Calling that “brainwashing” was dumb, but Holder’s meaning should be clear to anyone who cares about being fair.
Elsewhere in the same speech, Holder suggests that role models like Marion Barry be recruited to carry the anti-gun message. The fact that Holder ever thought that the crack-smoking, tax-evading, corrupt-to-the-bone former D.C. mayor qualifies as a role model for anyone but future crooked politicians is much more damning than his careless use of the “brainwashing” to describe the necessary and legitimate process whereby society becomes more ethical.
Ethics Alarms 
I’d respectfully point out that Holder’s postion then was in many ways comparable to his present day one. Only the scale has changed. Nor, appparently, have his attitudes changed one whit. From one upward position to another, Holder has held to a far left position regarding federal power by both word and deed. A man’s past should not be held against him IF those former ways be departed from. Then arises the question of competance; then vs. now. This, too: It’s not the job of the U.S. Attorney General to “brainwash” anybody. His job is to enforce and prosecute according to federal law. And not selectively, either, but across the board. He has no more right to interpret the law than the federal courts have to make it.
I’m with you on the brainwashing. It was a poor choice of words, nothing more.
As for the Marion Barry comment, I think you went a little off base. Marion Barry is a horrible person, but he his a leader in DC. Nobody should look up to Marion Barry, but he is an effective spokesmen to many of the poor and blue collar criminal elements in DC. I think that was Holder’s point. If we can get the people with influence with that segment of the population to denounce guns, then our anti-gun message can be spread.
Yeah, your Barry point has merit. I just think it is dangerous to hold up someone as an exemplar on one issue if you don’t trust him on others, especially when his judgment is routinely wretched. Marion was making speeches to school kids about drugs the same week he was caught on video smoking crack. .
Holder also recommended Jesse Jackson—I’m not crazy about JJ, but he fits the bill as a role model.
No complaints from me on your response. It’s a possible effective strategy to recruit people like Barry, but it’s bad thing to do in general.
Jesse Jackson drives me insane. Even when he’s on my side of a specific issue, his showmanship and exploitation make my side look worse than it actually is.
Impossible!
Since Holder’s stance on ownership of guns has resulted in the Fast and Furious scandal then yes,it should be held against him. While he hasn’t brainwashed anyone he has certainly gotten people killed. That statement made 15 years ago should have disqualified him from his present position if he cannot be relied upon to adhere to the laws of the land
I can’t seem to figure out what your argument is here. Holder’s statement had nothing to do with disobeying the laws of the land.
Also, you have a timeline error. That something occurs in the future does not change what should have occurred in the past.
Yes, the whole attempted connection between Fast and Furious and the brainwashing statement makes no sense to me. Is the theory that getting a bunch of Mexicans killed by a botched gun-tracing scheme was part of a mad scheme to sour Americans on guns? That Holder was cooking this up in 1995? That he inadvertently washed his OWN brain, which is why he now claims he didn’t know about FAF?
The way I understood it Fast and Furious was also to be used as a way to encourage gun control. It could be used as a way of circumventing the right to gun ownership.
I don’t know if F&F is as you understood it, Karla, but in any case I could definitely see a change in the reporting on the Mexican cartels in most media, once the Obama administration was sworn in. It wasn’t a subtle change, either. It was a new, in-the-public’s-face implication (and lie)that “If only the gangs/cartels did not have such easy access to all those guns they can get north of the border, there wouldn’t be so much violence.”
Of course, we know better. Even if the “E.U.” (Estados Unidos) suddenly became an absolute desert of firearms, the same gangs and cartels would be doing the same violence or worse, using guns obtained from other sources. The only difference would be that the violence in the E.U. would be greater, since 1) everyone in the E.U. would be unarmed and 2) there would be no other incentive to restrain violence in the E.U., such as there is now when the E.U. provides reliable sources of firearms (the gangsters know well enough not to pee in their own pool).
“Changing the culture is a form of brainwashing…”
Something about that does not compute. I don’t have my head wrapped around it enough right now to put it all into words just yet.
For now, I’ll just say that certainly, given sufficient brainwashing, a culture may indeed change. On the other hand, brainwashing even for the most high-minded reasons can bring the most intolerable unintended consequences…
He’s right of course. If we just made guns uncool, we could finally embrace grenade violence, car bomb violence, and poison gas violence like God and Eric Holder intended. Problem solved.
I think the quote is a telling one. It tells me that Eric Holder is a complete fool. When I was in high school, every single boy and half the girls carried a knife to school every single day (including me). It was allowed an there was nothing wrong with it. In my 4 years of high school (a school with 2500 students), not a single student had been stabbed. No one was aware of anyone being stabbed, ever, at any of the schools in town. On any given day in the parking lot, there were between a dozen and 50 firearms with ammunition, in the cars. No one was ever shot, no one ever had been. It was unthinkable.
Today, guns are vigorously banned as are the knives. The school is not safer. It isn’t the inanimate objects, stupid.
One of my classmates was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole at the age of 16. No one was shocked. We saw that one coming. We complained to the teachers about him, but they couldn’t do anything until he did something. He used a baseball bat, by the way, and the murder happened at his house. If only we had made baseball uncool, brainwashed society…
My experience exactly, Michael. I carried my old Boy Scout jackknife around with me forever. Every boy and man did. Today, they’ll go after your nail clippers. In the meantime, criminals roam the streets with every weapon known to Man.
1. We already knew Eric Holder was an idiot. This is as clear as clear can be, as clear as it was that Alberto Gonzalez, Bush’s Holder, was also an idiot.
2. I tend to agree that anyone who thinks the US will ever be anti-gun is either an idiot or a hopeless optimist.
3. The basic premise, however, is sound, as the examples I cited show. Watch Mad Men. Fooling around with your secretary and drinking three martinis at lunch was indeed once thought to be cool—now it’s the mark of a jerk.
4. It’s not just crime…the US culture does not recoil from violence generally. War. Revenge. Protecting your home. The Duke, punching bad guys in the face. Football. Ultimate fighting. Videogames. It isn’t just that we see guns as a useful tool…Americans, more than most, like the idea of shooting things and people (for the right reasons, of course.) If that could be changed (I’m not advocating it), it might make a difference. I think this is all Holder was talking about.
“US culture does not recoil from violence generally.”
Largely true. Still, I think General Patton’s old speech line of, “All real Americans love the sting of battle” was more correct and accurate when he first said it, but is not nearly as true today. I think the (perhaps) distinctive (among peoples of the past couple of centuries) widespread American immigrants’ and migrants’ frontier-life-necessitated, self-sufficiency-driven, pugnacious spirit is getting mal-leisured, bred, mal-educated, and mal-governed out of the U.S. populace more quickly than many of us may want to admit. I do believe that change will very likely continue, and it will come with severe (if only gradually perceptible) costs to those who live to see it.
My guess and my hope is that you are wrong. Generally American culture swallows incoming foreign attitudes, not the other way around. There are always going to be the bleeding-heart strain that mourns Osama bin Laden, but our kids kill hundreds of bad guys a week online, and John Wayne, not John Denver, still is among the most popular movie stars, despite the disadvantage of being dead for 30 years. Hip-hop celebrates violence, often the bad kind. Latino culture is more American than European. #1 we want to see an end to bullying, but #2 we want to see the bullied kid learn karate and beat the crap out of his tormenter to teach him a lesson.
Jack, I “lost lock” on understanding you here – more in the COTD thread.
I’m seeing a problem here that’s as insoluble as “what to do with the homeless.” It comes up again and again: defending the right to bear arms against teaching non-violence — okay, that’s simplistic, but I think you know what I mean. Since arguments on both sides have been validated, their proponents feel duty-bound to reiterate them.
Granted, consensus is a no-go in our culture. You win or you lose: compromise is a dirty word, and a win/win situation, while given lip service as a goal (e.g. good sportsmanship), is not an acceptable outcome. Thus neither argument, in theory or in practice, takes a step further in solving in the short-term the problem of what to do with an increasingly violent society (schools, families, criminals, celebrities, etc.), a society embedded in an ever-shrinking, increasingly threatening world. Thinking that these guns/no guns arguments have some pragmatic use keeps us, so to speak, backward.
I think most people recognize that neither one is a solution. Thus arises a majority position that is even less satisfactory than the polarization. The old laissez faire policy, in no particular order: (1) it’s okay to beat my child because I was beaten and, see, I’m just dandy — I am the judge of what is violent; (2) Nobody agrees on what works or they keep changing back and forth so I’ll just go on doing what I’m doing (3) whatever isn’t working is the fault of things beyond my control or that I don’t understand (schools, corporations, the law, the police, the neighborhood; (4) “History repeats itself” — we can wait it out; (5) there is/will be a study group, organization, politician, or superhero who will come along and fix it; (6) I have chosen to trust this or that news source, guru, relative or buddy to decide for me; or, as corollary, send around a petition and I’ll sign IT or put IT on the ballot for me to vote for … whatever “it” is; and (7) I have/don’t have a gun, so I’m already on the right (correct) side, and that’s the end of it.
I have seen consensus work. It’s a slow — even ponderous –, careful, thoughtful, often uncomfortable, GIVING process that requires all participants to find out and understand, in a colloquial sense, where everyone else is coming from, regardless of status. It involves recognizing and sharing responsibilities rather than asserting rights. It is one of those decision-making processes that need to put society before the individual. It’s not at all American. (But then, of course, it won’t work here, will it? Too bad.)
Couldn’t disagree more, Penn, but a great comment—and the Comment of the Day.