It is very interesting to see the reaction in the American media to the mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona last Saturday night (January 8). Some are taking the view that no one can be blamed for the actions of a clearly deranged individual. Others are saying that while the shooter was indisputably insane, both sides of the political spectrum need to take responsibility for heated political rhetoric in the last several years that may have inspired this demented young man to pick up a gun and shoot a politician, a judge and a number of others.
Bullshit. There is only one political party in America on one side of the political spectrum that has made a specialty of drumming up intensive hatred of the government and that has repeatedly encouraged people to consider taking up arms against the government. That party is the Republican Party, with its young Frankenstein monster the "Tea Party" movement never being told that it should calm down and be less angry and extreme. There is a very long trail here that simply has no counterpart in the Democratic Party or on the left-wing side of the spectrum.
Barry Goldwater, Republican candidate for President in 1964, made the famous statement during his campaign that "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." This was in the same time period when peaceful Civil Rights activists were being beaten by right-wing supporters of racial inequality and in some cases killed by lynch mobs in the South. Goldwater made clear where he stood by voting against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was much appreciated by Southern opponents of Civil Rights and desegregation. The South was the one area of the country where Goldwater did well in the 1964 election, setting the trend of solid Southern support for Republican candidates for President in nearly every election since then.
Ronald Reagan, running for President in 1980, made his first speech after winning the Republican nomination at a site in Mississippi just a few miles from an infamous spot where Civil Rights workers had been brutally slain in 1964. He talked of restoring "states' rights," an unmistakable reference to right-wing, Southern opposition to the Civil Rights movement, which made clear that his choice of location for his first major speech as Republican Presidential candidate was no mere coincidence. Reagan was laying claim to the heritage of violent opposition to the Civil Rights movement, and saw no need to pay homage to the Civil Rights martyrs of that region. Reagan would go on to coin the phrase, "Government is not the solution; government is the problem," which has ever since been the mantra of the anti-government conservatives.
In the 1990s, Republican politicians often shared the sentiments of the anti-government, gun-crazed militia movement, which was in many ways a forerunner of the Tea Party movement. Bill Clinton,a Democrat and a liberal, was demonized with outrageous accusations by right-wing, conservative politicians, including the claim that he had engineered the killing of his friend and aide, Vince Foster. Among conservatives and militia members in this era, there was much paranoia directed toward the United Nations, which they feared was setting up a secret government that would soon enslave Americans and take away their liberties. The mood of anti-government hatred and the glorification of anti-government violence reached its peak in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murray government building in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh in 1995.
Under President George W. Bush, right-wing hate and anger cooled down a bit, perhaps because Bush's continually expanding wars against Muslim nations provided an external outlet for conservative anger and paranoia. Though there was angry left-wing opposition to Bush's policies, especially his wars, it never led to the kind of mass cult of paranoia and violence that was typical of the Clinton era. With President Obama's election, there was a resurgence of 1990s-style anti-government sentiment and a renewed glorification of anti-government violence. Once more, wild, extreme accusations were made about a Democratic, liberal President, whose African-American heritage seemed to inflame conservatives into paroxysms of rage and paranoia. Sales of guns and ammunition skyrocketed. The right-wing media, which had been in their infancy in the Clinton era, were now well-tooled operations of mass propaganda and coordinated fear-mongering, and were able to terrify many Americans that the quite mild, liberal and pro-corporate policies of the Obama administration, such as a health-care reform effort that was quite disappointing to liberals and the left wing, were pushing the country to the edge of the apocalypse. The spring and summer of 2009 saw the rise of the Tea Party movement, with angry opponents of Obama and Democratic policies showing up at political rallies armed with guns and shouting out their paranoia and anger with red-faced fury. In Texas, an anti-government zealot flew a plane into a building. The FBI issued a warning about rising activity by right-wing extemists and militia groups.
Then came the 2010 election season. Republican politicians were eager to cozy up to the Tea Party, seeking to harness their passion and fury. Rarely did any Republicans, even those previously known as political moderates, speak out against the paranoid fantasies and violent rhetoric of Tea Party members and right-wing extremisists. Instead, they openly or implicitly endorsed such sentiments. Republican Congresswoman and Tea Party groupie Michelle Bachman urged her followers to be "armed and dangerous" in opposition to new energy policies under debate in Congress. Sarah Palin urged conservatives, "Don't retreat; instead, reload!," and placed gun-targeting cross-hairs on an internet map of Democrat candidates whose defeat she was advocating on a website. One of the candidates targeted on this map was Gabrielle Gifford, the Democratic Congresswoman shot in the head on Saturday night. Sharron Angle, the Republican candidate for Senator in Nevada, spoke approvingly of "Second Amendment remedies" and armed insurrection against the government.
In all of these ways, the Republican Party and its right-wing, militia and Tea Party allies have poured huge amounts of energy into creating mass hysteria, paranoia and anti-government, particularly anti-Democrat, anger. It is one thing to express opposition to policies, but it is something very different to give explicit or implicit approval to people brandishing guns and fantasizing about heroic violence against politicans and the government.
The Tucson shootings were aided and abetted by the Republicans and the right-wing in America. There is nothing equivalent on the Democratic or left-wing side of American politics. It is time to call a spade a spade and not pretend that there is equal blame to go around on both sides. There is only one side that is dedicated to pushing fear, hatred and violence. Those who have made their careers and even considerable fortunes by feeding these flames of fury, fear and violent fantasy need to be held responsible.
Furthermore, it is time to realize that the massive amount of violent fantasy and imagery in our culture is a sickness. It plays into a worldview that the only solution to any problem is through heroic violence. Consider how government is represented on American television shows. It is portrayed as useless, corrupt, evil. The only government agencies shown in a positive light are those engaged in violence: police and soldiers. Almost no other part of government is represented in an appealing manner, while violent vigilantes and brothers-in-arms are continually glorified.
So, if you were a deranged young person like the shooter in Tucson, you would find massive encouragement in American culture and right-wing politics for becoming a gun-toting, tyranny-resisting hero in your own twisted fantasy of violent manhood. We need to start speaking out and turning away from this. We need to start valuing our government officials and public servants, in contrast to the right-wing campaign now under way to villify teachers and others on the public payroll. They are not our enemies. They work for us. Are they perfect? No. Are we perfect? No. Do they deserve to die for trying to do their jobs? What do you think?
Peace. That is not a wimpy, foolish thing. It is sanity. We need it. Badly. We do not need more glorification of war, weapons, violence. We have already had too much.
Showing posts with label guns. Show all posts
Showing posts with label guns. Show all posts
The United States of Punishment
Readers, this is something I have been wanting to comment on for a long time: a growing spirit of meanness, even sadism, in the thought, behavior and culture that I feel is becoming stronger and stronger in the United States. This country has a lot of problems right now, but it seems to me that there are not a lot of people interested in actually THINKING about what our problems are and trying to solve them TOGETHER. No. What many, and I fear most Americans want, is just to beat up on someone. You can see it in reality television shows and on that internet voyeur known as You Tube, where the great fun is to watch some misguided average Joe or Jane humiliated and ridiculed. You can see it in our obsession with celebrity, in the delight that so many take in seeing the famous brought low.
You can see it in our criminal "justice" system, where there is much more support for punishing the people locked away, even for very minor offenses, than for rehabilitating them so that they will have a snowball's chance in hell of living a normal, productive life when they get out of prison. Why rehabilitate them? Better to let them remain criminals so that we can enjoy locking them up again and again and feeling superior to "those people."
You can see it in the anti-immigrant, anti-Hispanic sentiment that seems to be growing in popularity. Look at that one more closely and you will find things like Hispanic people being beaten up and even killed, not in the Deep South, mind you, but on Long Island, just a few dozen miles from diversity central (NYC). You can see it in the popularity of police drama television shows, which give the people a steady dose of a very particular view of American society, in which there is no hope of improving society, only the adrenalin rush of hunting down criminals and locking them up. You can see the real-life ramifications of this media indoctrination in the way states like California have, for many years, been pumping much more money into prisons than schools. Did you know California used to have free university tuition? Not anymore, but plenty of free services for the thousands upon thousands in California prisons, a situation mirrored in states across the country. Priorities are clear! Why educate people when you can punish them? Is THIS the American dream? Most modern democratic countries have abolished the death penalty. Not here! It is a dear and cherished tradition!
You can see it in our national government's foreign policy spending priorities, in that the amount of money devoted to peaceful foreign projects is far dwarfed by what is spent on the military, not only our several ongoing wars that have ripped apart whole societies and left shattered cities, psyches and limbs in their wake that will take decades to heal, but also our "peaceful" military presence in so many countries around the world, which sends a clear message that we are ready to stomp on anyone who disagrees with us or fails to support our military objectives and corporate business interests. Remember that what kicked off both of our most recent wars was a desire to PUNISH: punish the Afghans for 9/11 (even though all or most of the terrorists were Saudis), punish Saddam and Iraq for anti-American weapon programs. Call it "war on terror," call it "nation-building," but I would argue that the root motive is punishment of dark-skinned, non-Christian, uncooperative foreigners.
You can see it in how every city and even very small towns in the USA always have military parades, which for some reason often feature police as well as soldiers, but nothing to honor artists, teachers, or people in non-punitive helping professions. It was a hard-fought battle in this country to establish Martin Luther King day as a national holiday, for the obvious reason that he was a man of peace, as well as an African-American, and in the view of many, THAT AIN'T AMERICAN!! Do you know which state held out for years on accepting the holiday? Same state (AZ) that is now set to implement a law that will give police carte blanche to harass and arrest Hispanics suspected of being illegal aliens. It is also the state with a cruel and humiliating prison system, in Maricopa County, that happens to be immensely popular with the general population, to the point where the head of this police state, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who his fans call "America's Toughest Sheriff," has his own reality television show.
I can't wait until someone finally puts on a show that will televise live executions. "Live from Death Row," sure to be a big hit in the near future! Fun for the whole family, taking America back to the days when people would bring picnic lunches to watch hangings and lynchings. I am not joking about that last point: executions and lynchings were popular entertainments in the not-too-distant American past.
We just love Love LOVE to have someone to beat up on, someone to bomb, someone to throw into prison, someone to hate. And, final irony, some of those on the right-wing side of the political spectrum seem to be gearing up and gunning up to take up arms against our democratically-elected government--and they think of themselves as patriots. The obsession with guns, the fear that you will need to defend yourself in a John Wayne movie always showing in the little cinema in the back of your mind, where does that come from? I suspect it goes back to the culture of the American frontier, when "the west was won" by white Americans shooting and killing Native Americans and taking their land. A great victory, right? Or maybe it was the time not long past in the Jim Crow South when the white man could shoot blacks with impunity? Maybe there is a bit of guilty conscience, fear of payback from people no longer cringing in fear?
What is it that many right-wingers and conservatives shout nowadays? "TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK!!!" Back to what, exactly? They never say...Perhaps the good old days of white supremacy, the KKK, lynching of blacks and gays? I for one have no doubt that there is an ugly racial undercurrent running through the so-called Tea Party movement. First a black man is elected president, and then sales of guns and ammo shoot through the roof. What is that about? And what was it that made Bush so popular for several years post-9/11? His promise to "punish the evil-doers." I wonder, will Obama now be tempted to attack Iran to bolster his own popularity?
I am afraid. I fear that this country is becoming an increasingly harsh and brutal police state. I fear that young people today are being raised in a culture which values and validates violence and aggression over all things, that sees compassion, compromise, gentleness and intelligence as disgusting, undesirable, effeminate qualities. A culture that believes the ONLY solution to social problems is to beat people down, shut them up, lock them up. A mindset that has no doubt that the ONLY solution to international conflicts is to use force to beat and bomb foreign people into submission to our will. A mentality that asserts that the ONLY way to be a man is to be a tough-as-nails, ain't never backin'-down, fist-fightin' gun-totin,' brute (A REAL MAN!!) Women too are encouraged to be more aggressive, more selfish, more mean, maybe pack a gun in the purse along with the lipstick. Now there's some great feminism for you! Real gender equality, all through the magic of gun ownership! And now, thanks to the Supreme Court, it is going to be easier and easier for every American to carry a gun wherever they want! Finally, we will all be SAFE. This is surely what the forefathers dreamed of when they set sail for America: a nation where guns will one day outnumber brains.
I don't believe that violence and aggression will make this world a better place. I think we are WAY off track and completely losing sight of the need for gentleness, calmness, compassion and civility. If it were not the fact that something deep in me resonates strongly with the gods and traditions of the European Pagan heritage, I would be very tempted to take up Buddhism. I greatly respect the Buddhist path of self-control, self-reflection and non-violence. I would like to believe they can also be found in Pagan tradition, but I know many disagree. In American Asatru, there are many who primarily relate to this tradition as a warrior path. I don't want to begrudge anyone the right to their own views and interpretations, particularly military veterans who have a need to validate their battlefield experiences, but I feel that there is just too much war-mongering going on, to the point where other priorities and possibilities are lost. I mean, come on! "Hail Thor, Hail War, Let's drink some beer then drink some more!" Wow, now THAT is really spiritual! Come on, please. Anyone who studies any Pagan tradition, whether Norse or Celtic or Slavic or what have you should realize that warrior machismo is not the only thing going on in these religions. There is so much about nature, about sensuality, about peace, about friendship, about art, about beauty. I fear that the warped priorities of modern American society are being read back into ancient Paganism, and then held up as Pagan virtues that all should honor and obey.
Well, I for one am NOT going to play along with this. I worship the sky, the earth, the trees, the ancestors, and I don't need guns or weapons or fantasies of violence to feel right with MY Paganism. I do NOT accept narrow definitions of "tribe" that would cause me to turn away from my brothers and sisters of all races and ethnic backgrounds. I do NOT see the military punishment of foreign populations and disruption of their societies as honorable or worth emulating. I believe that there are more pleasant and productive forms of travel than military invasion. My Paganism is wide and loving and embracing, not narrow and hateful and punishing. I want to see a Paganism that teaches peace and co-existence, not a glorification of war and aggression. Those things have their time and place, I don't doubt, but that place is not everywhere and the time should not be everyday and every minute.
What kind of world do YOU want to live in?
You can see it in our criminal "justice" system, where there is much more support for punishing the people locked away, even for very minor offenses, than for rehabilitating them so that they will have a snowball's chance in hell of living a normal, productive life when they get out of prison. Why rehabilitate them? Better to let them remain criminals so that we can enjoy locking them up again and again and feeling superior to "those people."
You can see it in the anti-immigrant, anti-Hispanic sentiment that seems to be growing in popularity. Look at that one more closely and you will find things like Hispanic people being beaten up and even killed, not in the Deep South, mind you, but on Long Island, just a few dozen miles from diversity central (NYC). You can see it in the popularity of police drama television shows, which give the people a steady dose of a very particular view of American society, in which there is no hope of improving society, only the adrenalin rush of hunting down criminals and locking them up. You can see the real-life ramifications of this media indoctrination in the way states like California have, for many years, been pumping much more money into prisons than schools. Did you know California used to have free university tuition? Not anymore, but plenty of free services for the thousands upon thousands in California prisons, a situation mirrored in states across the country. Priorities are clear! Why educate people when you can punish them? Is THIS the American dream? Most modern democratic countries have abolished the death penalty. Not here! It is a dear and cherished tradition!
You can see it in our national government's foreign policy spending priorities, in that the amount of money devoted to peaceful foreign projects is far dwarfed by what is spent on the military, not only our several ongoing wars that have ripped apart whole societies and left shattered cities, psyches and limbs in their wake that will take decades to heal, but also our "peaceful" military presence in so many countries around the world, which sends a clear message that we are ready to stomp on anyone who disagrees with us or fails to support our military objectives and corporate business interests. Remember that what kicked off both of our most recent wars was a desire to PUNISH: punish the Afghans for 9/11 (even though all or most of the terrorists were Saudis), punish Saddam and Iraq for anti-American weapon programs. Call it "war on terror," call it "nation-building," but I would argue that the root motive is punishment of dark-skinned, non-Christian, uncooperative foreigners.
You can see it in how every city and even very small towns in the USA always have military parades, which for some reason often feature police as well as soldiers, but nothing to honor artists, teachers, or people in non-punitive helping professions. It was a hard-fought battle in this country to establish Martin Luther King day as a national holiday, for the obvious reason that he was a man of peace, as well as an African-American, and in the view of many, THAT AIN'T AMERICAN!! Do you know which state held out for years on accepting the holiday? Same state (AZ) that is now set to implement a law that will give police carte blanche to harass and arrest Hispanics suspected of being illegal aliens. It is also the state with a cruel and humiliating prison system, in Maricopa County, that happens to be immensely popular with the general population, to the point where the head of this police state, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who his fans call "America's Toughest Sheriff," has his own reality television show.
I can't wait until someone finally puts on a show that will televise live executions. "Live from Death Row," sure to be a big hit in the near future! Fun for the whole family, taking America back to the days when people would bring picnic lunches to watch hangings and lynchings. I am not joking about that last point: executions and lynchings were popular entertainments in the not-too-distant American past.
We just love Love LOVE to have someone to beat up on, someone to bomb, someone to throw into prison, someone to hate. And, final irony, some of those on the right-wing side of the political spectrum seem to be gearing up and gunning up to take up arms against our democratically-elected government--and they think of themselves as patriots. The obsession with guns, the fear that you will need to defend yourself in a John Wayne movie always showing in the little cinema in the back of your mind, where does that come from? I suspect it goes back to the culture of the American frontier, when "the west was won" by white Americans shooting and killing Native Americans and taking their land. A great victory, right? Or maybe it was the time not long past in the Jim Crow South when the white man could shoot blacks with impunity? Maybe there is a bit of guilty conscience, fear of payback from people no longer cringing in fear?
What is it that many right-wingers and conservatives shout nowadays? "TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK!!!" Back to what, exactly? They never say...Perhaps the good old days of white supremacy, the KKK, lynching of blacks and gays? I for one have no doubt that there is an ugly racial undercurrent running through the so-called Tea Party movement. First a black man is elected president, and then sales of guns and ammo shoot through the roof. What is that about? And what was it that made Bush so popular for several years post-9/11? His promise to "punish the evil-doers." I wonder, will Obama now be tempted to attack Iran to bolster his own popularity?
I am afraid. I fear that this country is becoming an increasingly harsh and brutal police state. I fear that young people today are being raised in a culture which values and validates violence and aggression over all things, that sees compassion, compromise, gentleness and intelligence as disgusting, undesirable, effeminate qualities. A culture that believes the ONLY solution to social problems is to beat people down, shut them up, lock them up. A mindset that has no doubt that the ONLY solution to international conflicts is to use force to beat and bomb foreign people into submission to our will. A mentality that asserts that the ONLY way to be a man is to be a tough-as-nails, ain't never backin'-down, fist-fightin' gun-totin,' brute (A REAL MAN!!) Women too are encouraged to be more aggressive, more selfish, more mean, maybe pack a gun in the purse along with the lipstick. Now there's some great feminism for you! Real gender equality, all through the magic of gun ownership! And now, thanks to the Supreme Court, it is going to be easier and easier for every American to carry a gun wherever they want! Finally, we will all be SAFE. This is surely what the forefathers dreamed of when they set sail for America: a nation where guns will one day outnumber brains.
I don't believe that violence and aggression will make this world a better place. I think we are WAY off track and completely losing sight of the need for gentleness, calmness, compassion and civility. If it were not the fact that something deep in me resonates strongly with the gods and traditions of the European Pagan heritage, I would be very tempted to take up Buddhism. I greatly respect the Buddhist path of self-control, self-reflection and non-violence. I would like to believe they can also be found in Pagan tradition, but I know many disagree. In American Asatru, there are many who primarily relate to this tradition as a warrior path. I don't want to begrudge anyone the right to their own views and interpretations, particularly military veterans who have a need to validate their battlefield experiences, but I feel that there is just too much war-mongering going on, to the point where other priorities and possibilities are lost. I mean, come on! "Hail Thor, Hail War, Let's drink some beer then drink some more!" Wow, now THAT is really spiritual! Come on, please. Anyone who studies any Pagan tradition, whether Norse or Celtic or Slavic or what have you should realize that warrior machismo is not the only thing going on in these religions. There is so much about nature, about sensuality, about peace, about friendship, about art, about beauty. I fear that the warped priorities of modern American society are being read back into ancient Paganism, and then held up as Pagan virtues that all should honor and obey.
Well, I for one am NOT going to play along with this. I worship the sky, the earth, the trees, the ancestors, and I don't need guns or weapons or fantasies of violence to feel right with MY Paganism. I do NOT accept narrow definitions of "tribe" that would cause me to turn away from my brothers and sisters of all races and ethnic backgrounds. I do NOT see the military punishment of foreign populations and disruption of their societies as honorable or worth emulating. I believe that there are more pleasant and productive forms of travel than military invasion. My Paganism is wide and loving and embracing, not narrow and hateful and punishing. I want to see a Paganism that teaches peace and co-existence, not a glorification of war and aggression. Those things have their time and place, I don't doubt, but that place is not everywhere and the time should not be everyday and every minute.
What kind of world do YOU want to live in?
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