Art is Feared

Here is a Fahrenheit 451-like news story informing us that hundreds of police, firefighters, paramedics and even utility workers have been trained in several states to hunt for "suspicious activity" (both legal and illegal) and report their findings into secret government databases:

Terror Watch Uses Local Eyes

On the list, as reported by the local watchdogs, was:

• Graffiti showing a man holding an AK-47 rifle.


On a related note: Guns Don't Kill People. Art About Guns Kills People, an article from the Philadelphia Weekly, reports on the censoring of plaster casts of guns from an art show, and attempts to explain the art fear:

It’s easy to dismiss this knee–jerk need to protest violent culture as mere political correctness. I think it’s more than that. I think it’s actually a form of primitive magic.

Just as the witch doctor or the tribal wise woman makes an image of the evil that needs to be eradicated and destroy (in the superstitious belief that this would make the real evil go away), so modern conservatives—absolutely convinced none of our problems could possibly be systemic—are forever casting around for images of evil to ban or destroy, in the magical belief that this will somehow eradicate evil in the real world.

The problem of gun violence seems enormous, but the solution is blindingly simple: Forget gun control, eradicating poverty, using suburban taxes to improve inner city schools, ending the segregation that blights all big American cities. Let’s just get rid of all the horrid films and books and games and—poof!—all the nasty things in the real world will disappear as well.

Another piece of art using guns as subject matter: