Okay, so it’s Monday morning, and, as is our wont, my daughter and I started our morning (before she goes to work) drinking sustaining beverages and watching John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight. We love that show, with its deep dives into public policy issues we had never previously given much thought to. Oliver’s a comedian, not a journalist, but the show’s unique value is how carefully it manages to be both comedy and journalism; solid, well-researched information, decent policy analysis, but also really really funny.

Anyway, here’s what happened this morning. Oliver did a long story about NRA-TV, something I had never even known existed. It’s a TV network for the NRA. It’s a pro-gun (and pro-gun-sales; it’s essentially a series of extended informercials). It’s deeply deeply weird. Lots of programming directed towards women, advertising clutches and purses with room for your concealed weapon. And ominous. All about the many many dangers average Americans face and need to be prepared for. Here’s NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch:

They use their media to assassinate real news. They use their schools to teach children that their President is another Hitler. The only way we stop this, the only way we save our country, the only way we save our freedom is to fight this violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth.

And this kind of absurd paranoia pervades NRA-TV. And if you’ve ever spent any extended amount of time in an on-line debate with gun advocates (guilty!), you’ve seen its effectiveness. It’s always about protecting ‘our freedoms.’ Obama was (and remains) a favorite villain; he was trying to ‘destroy America,’ and was barely prevented from doing so by ‘patriots.’ And, of course, it’s all nonsensical. American freedoms were never threatened, and aren’t threatened now. Or it’s about self-protection, shooting down ‘violent criminals,’ the whole ‘the best answer to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun’ folderol. At a time when violent crime is decreasing. Look at Chicago, they’ll shriek, adding ominously ‘that’s where Obama’s from.’ And it’s true that in the 1960s, the murder rate in Chicago was unacceptably high, and though it’s been declining, 2010 was a bad year, with a murder rate of 16 per 100,000. That still makes murder an exceedingly rare event, but not rare enough. Of course, the NRA folks who worry most about it tend to be middle-aged, middle-class and white. The murder rate in Chicago is 10 times higher on the South Side than in the suburbs. If you live in Englewood, yeah, not a safe place. Drug gangs are a constant infestation in some neighborhoods, and that’s a dangerous trade. But even in the worst areas of Chicago, violent crime is an exceedingly rare event. The United States is still not a terribly dangerous place. I’m an old, white, suburbanite; my neighborhood is super safe. It really is.

The NRA’s basic argument strikes me as consisting almost entirely on abstractions. We’re fighting for ‘freedom,’ for ‘our rights.’ The Parkland kids, on the other hand, have very specific legislative goals–background checks, an assault weapons ban–which have wide popular support.

Anyway, we watched the John Oliver piece about NRA-TV, which was mind-blowing, and then, after some discussion about how amazing it was, we decided to channel-surf. And AMC was showing the recent movie version of the musical Les Miserables. And, as it happened, the movie was showing the cafe scene, in which Marius and Enjolras and all the other revolutionaries sing “Red, the blood of angry men, black the dark of ages past.” You know the scene. The lyrics strike me as worth remembering:

The time is near, so near it’s stirring the blood in their veins, and yet beware, don’t let the blood go to your brains. We need a sign! To rally the people, to bring them in line! It’s time for us all to decide who we are, do we fight for the right to decide to a night at the opera now? Have you asked yourselves what’s the price you might pay? Is it simply a game for rich young boys to play? What’s the price you might pay? Is it simply a game for rich young boys to play? The color of the world is changing day by day! Red: the blood of angry men! Black: the dark of ages past! Red: a world about to dawn! Black: the night that ends at last!

Stirring stuff. And well sung, by a very attractive young cast. But watching it again, especially after watching the NRA segment, it occurred to me how completely abstract and unrelated to reality their revolution really is, certainly in the musical, and also in Hugo’s novel. These are young, privileged, rich students. They destroy the hard-purchased furniture in a poor neighborhood to build a barricade. And get themselves killed. For nothing. They’ve got guns, and their guns make them a threat to civil order, and, it turns out, the government forces have better guns, and are know how to use them effectively. It’s a stupid, stupid revolution.

And it was. Les Miserables is not about the French Revolution of 1789, nor is it about the revolution of 1830. It’s really about the much smaller revolution of 1832, which started when reformist general Jean Maximillien LaMarque died of cholera. The main issue had to do with the succession, following the events of 1830, in which Bourbon King Henri X was deposed, when the Chamber of Deputies formed a constitutional monarchy, and put liberal reformist Louis-Phillipe on the throne. This angered Republicans (the far-left liberals of the day), who didn’t want any king at all. Fair point, but a constitutional monarchy with a figurehead monarch surely gave them 90% of what they wanted. Anyway, the revolution of 1830 failed, and the subsequent revolution two years later was even less effectual. They got a bunch of young hotheads killed. That’s what they accomplished.

Here’s my point, and I don’t claim it’s a profound one; the dumbness of NRA-TV, the propagandistic evocation of ‘rights’ and ‘freedoms’ and ‘American values’ (bringing it all back to gun sales) echoes the dumbness of the Les Mis revolution. It hurts me to say that. I love the novel, love the musical, loved the movie. (I even liked Russell Crowe!) But, come on. Some attractive, presumably bright rich boys started a huge ruckus, got themselves killed, accomplished nothing. Louis-Phillipe wasn’t a terrible king, and voluntarily ceded most of his power to become king. Stirring music and powerful lyrics can’t hide the fact that they’re doing something really stupid. Promoting violence for the sake of abstract principles (which aren’t actually even particularly threatened), is the very definition of pointless. And that, friends, is the clenched fist of truth.