I was just reading an Australian news page and there was story of a mass shooting at a restaurant in North Carolina, another mass shooting at a church in Michigan, and the deployment of troops to "war-ravaged" Portland. I dunno, but this really doesn't scream of first-world standards. Is it really that bad in America?
Of course, the media is going to skew the perspective for maximum shock, outrage and click rate, but it really does seem that a lot of society is falling apart in the US and getting worse. Sure, sending in "the troops" might be a short-term measure, but if prolonged, doesn't that mean that the US becomes a police state? The troops sent to war-ravaged Portland are there to quell the protests targeting the ICE controlled immigration detention centres. Calling it a police state might seem extreme.
A police state is a system of governance where the government exerts extreme control over the population through its security forces, suppressing civil liberties and dissent to maintain power.
Or not.
Who'd have thought that if we encourage people to spend all their time watching the news, and we incentive the news to polarize the audience to maximize profit, and we turn politics into a competition of us versus them personality instead of policy, we would end up with more extremist groups. It is inconceivable and incredible to think that profit at any cost could turn people into extremists...
Or very predictable.
Essentially, it seems that all of the polarization has effectively created a lot of "terrorist cell" groups, each fighting for its own narrow purpose like zealots. And within these groups, there are individual extremists who take it that much further, enacting their own violent events independently. What the governments and corporations have "successfully" achieved through its divide and conquer strategy to maximise wealth and control over the majority, has decentralised violence down to the granular level. They have created a hydra with ever more heads, and the more they cut off, the more extreme they grow back.
Do you remember when the US went into Afghanistan to win the "hearts and minds" of the people? Twenty years of occupation and control - how'd that work out? Hearts and minds are not able to be won through force and coercion, all that does is create outwardly silent enemies, with internally boiling blood. And now, the US seems to be resembling the tribal conflicts of the Middle East more and more, and the government looks to maintain control in much the same way that the Middle East has controlled the people there. Is that they kind of country average Americans want to live in?
The Middle East has fought over many things but it is often dissectible across broad religious lines, where fundamentalists will be against the progressives, or some kind of tribal background difference. Even in the US the conservatives are still somewhat religiously aligned, but the thing is, there are many religions in the US that people will ascribe to, even though they are not organised religions at all.
People want to "belong" to some kind of group or movement and feel relevancy and meaning by identifying with something, anything, no matter how ridiculous it may be. And once they have chosen their identity of the moment, it gives them adversaries that they can see as threats and oppressors.
People love identity, because it gives them something to hate.
The challenge is that everyone has been taught to hate someone, and there is enough support to keep shifting people toward active violence, no matter the personal consequences. They can walk into a church with an assault rifle and open fire, or sit up on a roof with a long gun and assassinate, or walk into a classroom or restaurant with a handgun and take the lives of people they don't even know. And while they might all have their personal reasons for enacting the violence, it all comes back to the same place. People look at left and right, but that is not the root, because it is already divided.
To get to the root, we'd have to find the singular point, and that comes down to all of us. We are all part of the cause of the violence, because we are the whole. We might argue that we are inherently violent as a species, but to consider that this is a given that can't be changed, seems a little pathetic, considering how far we have come as a species in other areas. We must be able to overcome ourselves, but it isn't likely possible if we just keep repeating the behaviours of the past. Especially when those behaviours have led us to a world that is increasingly divided with each division feeling oppressed.
Everyone is oppressed?
It is a strange situation, isn't it? Because we have so many different kinds of groups, it is now possible that no matter what group, what person, everyone can claim to be a victim. Black people are victim, white people are victim, Christians, Jews and Muslims are victim. Men, women and children are victim. Gay, Lesbian, Hetero, Queer and all the other various slices of sexuality are all victim. Young people are victims and the elderly are victim. It is fucking endless.
A single group under the label "victim".
And every victim, feels justified to enact revenge on whomever they feel is the one who perpetrates the crime against their identity. And when they do, they are always celebrated for it by someone, somewhere. No matter how terrible the act of the perpetrator, there is always someone out there who says "the victim deserved it".
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
scorn
/skɔːn/
noun
a feeling and expression of contempt or disdain for someone or something.
The entire economy is being driven by contempt and disdain for others. The internet is filled with the scorn of the entire victim group. And the practical expression of the scorn is on a spectrum of violence. From trashing the car of a cheating partner, to running down random people on a street, to sanctioned genocide of a group people in an act of revenge.
Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Love.
How little there is in a world where everyone is a victim who feels entitled to harm their perpetrator.
Hell hath no fury. Heaven hath no fury. Only we do.
We are the root.
Taraz
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