“Politicians in Washington are in no position to talk about human rights worldwide before getting their own house in order. Hope that the day Americans can live free from gun violence and fear will come sooner rather than later.”
The above is from today’s Twitter feed of Hua Chunying 华春莹, the spokeswoman for China’s foreign ministry.
I follow her because she is very adept at pouncing on every American weakness. In fact, if our country ever did an analysis of our Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (a “SWOT” in business school/consulting speak,) her Twitter account would be a good place to start for the Ws and Ts.
As we look inward once again on America’s ugly exceptionalism in gun violence, perhaps it would be helpful to look outward as well. When a massacre occurs, especially one that kills young children, what does the rest of the world think?
They think that for all our wealth, for all our strengths in commerce and technology, for all our freedoms, we cannot keep our children safe. Our inability to address gun control makes us look weak and unserious. And barbaric.
And, as much as I hate to say it, when so many American children die every year from gun violence and we do nothing about it, we look like the worst type of hypocrites when we lecture other countries about human rights violations.
The bottom line is that the mostly Republican fetish for the Second Amendment decreases American power because it decreases our moral standing.
Hua Chunying’s words sting, so I’ll repeat them.
“Politicians in Washington are in no position to talk about human rights worldwide before getting their own house in order. Hope that the day Americans can live free from gun violence and fear will come sooner rather than later.”
" . . . what does the rest of the world think?" As a dual national, quite a few times it has been expressed/said to me that the USA is an empire and a retarded giant. It's not just our gun laws but the staggering amount of societal violence, endless wars, a republican system that does not provide us with the best and the brightest, foreign policy hypocrisy, general ignorance about the rest of the world, intractable racial issues, etc. But, on the other hand, we are still thought of as the land of opportunity, an idealized beacon of freedom, and that we make great things.
Very well said and completely agree.