Kenosha Shooter Kyle Rittenhouse

[Belacqua]

an even worse gun system

I think Marx's idea of commodity fetishism goes a long way toward explaining American gun idiocy.

As you know, Marx describes commodity fetishism as the illusion that a thing you can buy possesses qualities that only a living person can actually have. 

So for example, a person can be sophisticated, by having had certain kinds of experiences and certain kinds of subtle wisdom. A watch, for example, can't be sophisticated; it can only tell time and look nice. But a watch becomes a fetish when we start to think that it contains sophistication, and that if we buy it we are buying sophistication. 

The actual use value of the watch is to tell time, and a Casio is probably as good as a Rolex. But the exchange value depends on its being a fetish -- we think we are buying sophistication or some other human quality. Likewise cars, fashion, etc. We select them largely for the fetish value.

Likewise, a gun has only one use value -- to kill people. It is a tool for killing people. But in the US it has become an extreme fetish, in which people think that by buying a gun they are purchasing things like power and freedom. In fact, a gun doesn't have or bestow freedom. Only a person can have freedom, if he can do what he chooses. But since the economic and political systems in America keep most people largely unfree, we substitute fetish (fake) freedom instead. Buy a gun and feel you're purchasing freedom, although you're not. 

I think that poor idiots like Rittenhouse are fetishists. He got the idea that by carrying his gun around he would have certain human qualities, like freedom or power or patriotism or security. But in the end the gun was only a tool for killing, and that's all it did.