On Violence

This essay is not designed to diminish in anyway the tragedies of the recent past.  The horrors of watching a young man too scared to be carrying a gun shooting a man whose family is there to watch his murder is beyond reason.  It is truly absurd because we have a ringside seat to a snuff film.  The news media cranks up its reporting, which I think is partly to blame, given the twisted thinking of some who think their miserable lives can be justified by sometime in spotlight.   The gunning down of five police officers becomes a reason to roll out the pundits who wring their hands and talk their usual nonsense about everything.  Yet, is it the story that is important or the need to feed the 24 hour news cycle?  

The Orlando shooting was a case in point.  The bloviators began trumpeting their claims of the greatest mass murder of all time.  I guess the Indian massacres are now beyond the grasp of these so called experts.  The history of this country cannot be separated from violence.  While the talking heads talks their talk, one must remember every page of our history is written in blood red.  That minorities are the primary victims in the savagery of this nation, and yes we are all an insane thought away from being a statistic.

I don’t know about you but the haunting images of hanged young black men while whites stand their looking with their scorn countenances are as haunting of any of the recent photos or movies.  As Billie Holiday sang,

Southern trees bear a strange fruit

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root

Black bodies swingin' in the Southern breeze

Strange fruit hangin' from the poplar trees

Violence is what we Americans are about.  I know it is sweeping generalization but let’s not talk about violence as if it is anomaly.   It is who we are.  Our diplomacy seems always tied to some military action.  Now we fight wars remotely.  The police department in Dallas struck a blow to policing by blowing up the suspect.  That is not to say that this violent person needed to be stopped.  But were there any options before that?  Just like those fellows in Minnesota and Baton Rouge, what happened to the stun guns?  What is it with this shoot’em up, blow’em up mentality?

The sad reality is that we are a violent nation.  It is our way.  It has been that way from beginning and continues to be.  Isn’t it ironic that Dr. King, a non-violent activist, was gunned down?  The statistics on shooting and deaths are staggering.  On an average day 36 people will be killed.  So let’s not fool ourselves into thinking this business of deadly violence is new or novel.  The fact that people are aware of the violence hopefully will bring some change.  As for me, I am cynical when it comes to change in the culture.  Violence is who we are.  What is striking is that there are so many of us who really aren’t violent.

But rather than just point a finger at Americans, it seems there is a persistent and pernicious tendency for humans to wreak havoc on ourselves and the world at large.  We are cruel by nature.  Some will argue that it is not our nature, but history shows us otherwise.  The more serious immediate concern is that there are too many humans on this planet.  Perhaps if we were truly rational sentient beings, there would be hope.  That isn’t the case.  We tend to separate ourselves with religious beliefs and political disagreements, to name the two primary ones.  We stand in horror as we look upon our violent experiences as foreign to us.  In reality, this is who we are.  The change needed to make a correction in this chain of never ending violence is nothing short of a complete transformation.  While some may see a path to this end, I see a road strewn with bodies of those who engage in violence and those who are victims of it.  Fact is as wise men have said in many ways and in many forums, you can rid the world of violence with violence.  All I see are guns and hate and firm convictions that do little but separate us from each other leaving all in the grips of that which we abhor.