Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Dan DeWalt, who writes for ThisCan’tBeHappening.net.
In the aftermath of the most recent mass killing in Colorado, media voices agreed on at least one point: This tragedy will not prompt any serious discussion about any aspects of guns or gun control. The NRA has so successfully intimidated Congress and the White House that no politician will even try to start a debate on the subject. We hold this truth to be self evident: Next to their cars and trucks, Americans hold a special place in their hearts for guns.
Hollywood will never stop glamorizing the macho man, the artful killer and the gory glory of violence portrayed as entertainment. Authorities will continue to follow each tragic event with heartfelt platitudes about repairing the damage done to their localities by these killings. But they will also work to find some reason why the latest killer had his own particular problems and therefore is an aberration not requiring us to rethink any aspect of our love affair with violence in general or of the failings of our current social structure.
On the other hand, regular citizens are genuinely sickened and distressed by these killings. People spontaneously organize vigils and pull together as neighbors and do what they can to help the victims and each other. But everyone knows and understands that these killings are now part of the modern American landscape. For whatever reasons, they will continue to happen with some regularity. This is deeply sad and perhaps fatalistic to a fault, but it seems to be true.
There are other sources of violence with which we have to live, but which evoke an entirely different response from the Establishment, if not from citizens. The most glaring is the presence of terrorism in the world and more recently, on American soil. The reality is that as long as our government uses tactics of violence to achieve its goals, whether it’s incinerating Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, murdering Afghan and Pakistani civilians, or aiding and abetting coups throughout the world that overthrow elected governments and replace them with authoritarian regimes who use U.S. guidance to torture and repress their citizens, we will be repaid with individuals or groups who seek vengeance using terrorism as their methodology. When Timothy McVeigh blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City, authorities responded to his ideologically motivated attack as merely another act of a crazed loner, making it easier for the country to move on without reflection, much as we do now with each mass killing that comes our way.
As we witness the slow and tragic unravelling of our social fabric and the American myth of ever expanding prosperity, we must be willing to take an honest look at what our society has become. The first step in searching for the right answers is to stop asking the wrong questions; they can remain the domain of the corporate media and the power elite.
But when the attacks of Sept. 11 came, there was a different response entirely. Not that there was any reflection about why we were attacked; about the clear statements and threats both before and after the attacks that laid the motivation for them squarely at the doorstep of U.S. foreign policy. Instead, the government used these attacks to install sweeping changes in our laws that purported to prevent future terrorism, but which instituted drastic changes to our way of life that have compromised our constitutional rights and changed our society for the worse. Speaking of their new “Islamic terror” enemy, our leaders told us that “they hate us for our freedoms.” No doubt they despised the decadence and licentiousnessof the West, but they attacked us largely in retaliation for our maintaining the U.S. military in Saudi Arabia after the end of the first Iraq war as well as for our support of Israel in its opposition to the Palestinians.
But these same leaders then did exactly what they claimed the “enemy” wanted us to do; they started reducing our freedoms. They stoked the fires of fear as much as they could, to keep us from protesting too loudly about the draconian measures that they now use: spying on us, searching us without warrants, limiting free speech to “zones” that ensure that it will not be heard by those for whom it’s intended, right down to murdering us by drone if we are deemed – without benefit of trial or defense – to be an enemy of the state. None of these measures make us any safer. Our foreign policy continues to recruit and inspire a growing number of enemies in the Islamic world.
The only way that we could realistically reduce our risk of future attacks would be to change our status and foreign policy. When we are no longer a super power and we stop undermining Islamic regimes, when we change the balance in our relationship between Israel and Palestine, then we could see a reduction in those levels of hatred. The army of Jihad would shrink and perhaps even dissipate. However, the military-industrial-political complex would have to find a new rationale for its anti-American war economy.
Our foreign policy will not change any time soon so, despite the best efforts of the newly emboldened security state, there will most likely be another successful terror attack in America some day. Instead of allowing the government to use such an event to manipulate us into further hating“the other,” we need to do instead at least two things: We must take back our constitutional rights that have already been highjacked by propaganda and corporate/government collusion, and, as well as consoling, grieving and caring about future victims, we must work now to dismantle the corporate driven permanent-war-footing economy and foreign policy that is strangling our country at home and making us hated abroad.
Why any American is driven to commit mass murder is a much harder question. Certainly our society fails many of us in a myriad of ways. Individuals can be unbalanced and unpredictable. Our glorification of violence and love of guns cannot but play a role. These are much more valuable issues to be probing than the current crop of distractions like “Why do they hate us?”, or “Why don’t they do what we tell them to?” or even “Who are the finalists in ‘Dancing with the Stars’?”
As we witness the slow and tragic unravelling of our social fabric and the American myth of ever expanding prosperity, we must be willing to take an honest look at what our society has become. The first step in searching for the right answers is to stop asking the wrong questions; they can remain the domain of the corporate media and the power elite. We have to ask our own questions. Then we have to discover for ourselves the answers.
