Recent discussions on this blog and in the public media on subjects such as abortion, gun ownership, and opioids have something in common, and that’s a manifestation of overreactive absolutism that appeals to the politically active extremes who control each political party.

While I still believe a majority of Americans are at heart moderate, from what I see, that moderate majority is shrinking, for a number of reasons.

There’s a growing distrust of the other side, fueled by the extremists on both sides. The gun control/safety issue is one example. With almost 400 million firearms in the United States and the second amendment, there is NO WAY the “left” is ever going to take your guns.

So the question is really about how to increase gun safety and what restrictions are reasonable to reduce gun violence and the associated carnage. The only real use for an AR-15 with large magazines and anti-personnel rounds is to kill people. So equipped, it’s not a hunting weapon; it’s not a target or sport shooting weapon; it’s really not a self-defense weapon [how many people can or should sleep with something like that close at hand and use it accurately and effectively in the middle of the night?]. No homeowner needs hundreds of rounds for self-defense, and anyone who thinks that is either self-deluded or excessively paranoid, and might well be exactly the kind of individual not to be trusted with hundreds of rounds and a rapid-fire weapon.

When a teenager buys two AR-15 type weapons and hundreds of rounds in a few days, that ought to set off red-flags everywhere. The fact that local police in Uvalde didn’t want to confront a single teenager with that kind of weaponry should suggest just how dangerous it is.

Driving a car requires getting a license [and passing tests to assure minimum competency] and having a vehicle with features equipped for safe usage. It doesn’t stop millions and millions from not driving, and we still kill tens of thousands of people on the highways every year – but you don’t get to drive tanks and armed APCs on the highway.

Societies don’t work well without limits on excessive personal and corporate behavior, nor do they work well when everything is overcontrolled.

Yet on the question of firearms safety, somehow it’s all about the unfounded fear that the feds and the left are going to take away guns, rather than about what reasonable and practical standards and laws need be enacted for public safety.

Texas has more guns than any other state and also suffers more gun deaths annually than any other state. In addition, the states with the highest rates of gun ownership also have the highest gun death rates.

In the tragic Uvalde school shooting, while early reports stated that one armed school security officer was ineffectual against the shooter and allowed him to get into the school, later police statements indicate there was no security officer present and that police arrived fifteen minutes later and did not attempt to enter the school building after the shooter fired at them. More armed law officers arrived, and proceeded to dither around the outside of the school for forty minutes, breaking windows to help children escape, but not putting themselves in harm’s way, while the shooter barricaded himself in a classroom and massacred the teacher and 19 children, until a tactical unit arrived.

So all those guns weren’t terribly useful, or at least none of those upstanding personnel wanted to use them and risk their lives to stop further killing of children.

Yet Republican Texas politicians—and Republicans across the country – continue to claim that more guns are the answer when statistics clearly show that more guns are the major component of the problem and that more guns (and/or their owners) aren’t stopping the shooters.

These same Republicans claim they’re opposed to abortion because life in any state of development is sacred, and they’ll make it impossible for women to get abortions, often even if the pregnancy could cost that woman her life. Even where abortion is legal, they make it incredibly difficult, with all sorts of restrictions and requirements. Yet an eighteen year old can walk into a gun store and buy two weapons whose only real use is to kill people, with almost no requirements at all.

We don’t allow people to drive cars without licenses and driver’s tests, but you can buy a gun without either.

Interestingly enough, 62% of all U.S. gun owners are male, and 88% of all U.S. homicides are committed by males, three quarters of which involve a firearm. And, of all the women in the world killed by firearms in 2017, nearly 92 percent of them were women in the U.S.

The Republicans not only want to restrict women’s freedom to control their own bodies, but they also reject any measure that would restrict their right to weapons designed to kill people, including women and children.

The other day I ran across a tweet that read something like this:

Sometimes people use “respect” to mean treating another individual like a real person, and sometimes they use “respect” to treat someone like an authority. And sometimes someone who’s used to being treated like an authority reacts by actions that say if you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t respect you as a person, and that’s not fair.

When I read this my first thought was to agree. My second thought was that there’s far more to this.

Of course, all individuals deserve respect as unique people. That shouldn’t even be a question.

The real question behind this tweet is what “respect” do authority figures deserve and on what basis.

In loose terms, in western society, such respect for authority figures has historically been based on position and accomplishments. The office of the President of the U.S. deserves respect [even if you dislike the individual holding that office]. So do the offices of a Representative or Senator.

But paying respect to an institutional officer-holder can be difficult if that person holds views or has acted in a way contrary to one’s beliefs [or sense of decency]. The same is true of individuals who have great accomplishments. Mozart was a great composer, but from everything I’ve read, he was also a wastrel, womanizer, and arrogant little bastard, and Wagner was even worse. Many individuals with great achievements have or have had personal lives that were anything but exemplary.

Modern media has become extraordinarily effective at uncovering such personal behavior and often magnifying it to the point that it seems difficult to respect anyone. But the reaction of too many people is to ignore the faults of those they like and magnify the faults of those they don’t like, rather than assessing authority figures on their demonstrated professional performance and expertise.

The greater problem with this media emphasis on fault-finding is that it combines with the look-it-up culture that allows people to think they know more than they do to grind down respect for professionals in almost every field. What makes this worse is the Dunning–Kruger effect, i.e., the cognitive bias where people with the lowest knowledge or ability at a task are the ones most likely to overestimate their abilities, otherwise known as Monday morning quarter-backing, and so often the least qualified individuals are the most negative and critical, and social media magnifies their impact.

As a result of these factors, over the last forty years, virtually every occupation has less public respect than in previous years. While one can certainly make a case that a lack of respect for Congress, politicians, news reporters, and car salespeople should be lower, is there any real case to say that everything is worse?

Roughly two years ago, I wrote about a friend who committed suicide because the medical profession denied him the opioids he had been taking for years, despite the fact that he had managed his pain successfully at the same levels for years without increases in dosage.

While this is not a personal problem for me, I’ve seen this problem increase among people I know, and from what I’ve observed and from the statistics, the problem has continued unabated, and there are scores of articles in both medical journals and government publications, as well as a number of studies, that show, among other things, that reduction or elimination of opioid pain medication dramatically increases suicide rates among those with chronic pain.

There have been successful lawsuits against doctors and medical providers for failing to provide adequate pain relief to patients who then committed suicide. Another study of more than 100,000 veterans on pain management medications showed that among those who had their dosage reduced or eliminated, the suicide rate increased 50%.

While the rate of opioid overdose deaths has also increased, almost all of the increased overdose deaths were the result of using illegal opioids, which makes perfect sense. When people suffering acute chronic pain are denied relief, many of them will look for any way possible to dull that pain. That’s also why alcohol use/abuse goes up among chronic pain sufferers who turn to suicide, although most of the medical literature has it backward, often claiming that excessive alcohol use contributes to suicides among those with severe chronic pain. No, people in pain are more likely to turn to alcohol to reduce or dull pain.

Yet the crusade against opioids and overdoses continues, partly because no one is really addressing the root cause – and that’s pain.

Is anyone out there really looking hard for a non-addictive, inexpensive, and effective painkiller able to eliminate or reduce severe chronic pain?

Probably not, at least not until they can charge at least $1,000 a pill for it.

As I’ve said for years, the “leaders” of the Democratic Party are their own worst enemies.

What has made Republicans so effective is that they’ve concentrated on key issues that worry their supporters – and made them personal and simple. The libs are baby-killers. They’re going to take your guns. The lefty commies have taken over education and are teaching subversive stuff to your kids. They’re also flooding the schools with gay pornography and black propaganda. They want to swamp the U.S. with immigrants who will do your job for less. To pay for all this, they’ll raise your taxes just like they have before.

Simple, direct, and wrong – because truth is complex and nuanced, and the Democrats have tried to explain why. But if you’re explaining, you’re already at least half-losing.

So how about… the GOP sold out to the fat cats who pay you starvation wages. Or, the GOP pushes murder and death for pregnant women [since in fact the leading cause of death for pregnant women is murder]. Or maybe, the far right wages war on women and outlaws abortion to get cheap minority labor and adoptable white kids. The right opposes free trade to keep prices high and subsidize fat cat companies. [And if the Democrats worked on it, they could probably do better than I did, and if they don’t they’ve got a real problem, because what they’re doing now isn’t working all that well.]

In addition to over-explaining, the Democrats have too many issues and seemingly can’t focus on the ones that are the most important, while over-emphasizing the trivial. Stop worrying about pronouns and language when you don’t have adequate pay and equal rights. And don’t come up with stupid slogans like “defunding the police” when, despite all the problems, minority communities don’t need fewer police, but better police and other support services.

Democrats also can’t organize for the long run. They can create rallies for important issues, but can’t match the GOP in doing the day-to-day, week-on-week organizing, and the grinding and boring groundwork. Part of this is because much of their constituency is either working so hard that they don’t have time, or too young and doesn’t know how to work, and often too ignorant of how grassroots politics works.

And while the Democrats can raise money, they don’t always spend it wisely in supporting electable candidates, as well as candidates who can legislate and not just pontificate.

None of this is new. So why doesn’t the Democratic leadership actually lead?