Violence Begets Violence in America

So, what do you make of a country where a third grader brings a gun to school to ward off bullies?

In Inkster, Michigan an 8-year old boy brought a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun to his elementary school two days in a row for protection, and to scare off three girls who were bullying him. The weapon was in the boy’s backpack and belonged to a relative. And surely somewhere in this nation of unacceptable levels of violence and gun worship, there are those who think that is a good thing, to arm children to protect themselves. More guns will make us all safer, right?

After the recent tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, America, it seems, is waking up to the need to stem the tide of violence in this country. But there is nothing new here. Whether we look at the shooting sprees and mass murder of young white men in the affluent suburbs or rural areas, or the epidemic of gun violence in communities of color in Chicago and elsewhere, violence is part of the fabric of America. 

From the beginning, this country has used violence to solve its problems. Years of dehumanization of others will do that to you. And this was always the case, from the enslavement of Africans to the genocide of the indigenous population, and from the regime of lynching in the Jim Crow South and elsewhere, to the acts of terror waged against civil rights workers, antiwar protestors and organized labor.

Speaking out against the Vietnam War in 1967, Martin Luther King said “I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government.” Dr. King’s words are even more relevant today than when he spoke over four decades ago.

The U.S. has the most powerful army, accounting for 58 percent of the military expenditures made by the top 10 military powers. With high gun accessibility and the highest rate of gun ownership in the world, America leads in deadly gun violence. Nearly 70 percent of U.S. homicides are committed with guns, and 70 percent of the weapons seized in drug war-ravaged Mexico are traced back to the U.S. Gun proliferation is bolstered by an anachronistic and obsolete Second Amendment, and promoted by gun manufacturers, who bribe lawmakers and hold the public hostage in the process.

Further, America’s love affair with violence extends to its overly-punitive, disproportionate system of justice. With one quarter of the world’s prisoners, the U.S. is the largest jailer in the world. Prisons are the largest repository for the mentally ill, with more people receiving mental health treatment behind bars than in hospitals or treatment centers. As budgets for education and social services are slashed and jobs are scarce, the American way is to lock up and even kill our perceived problems rather than to build up people and rehabilitate them.

Moreover, our continued reliance on the death penalty in the U.S. is a prime example of what happens when a society perpetuates a vicious circle of violence. While capital punishment was long cast aside in Europe,Canada, Australia and elsewhere, the barbaric practice still finds a welcome home in America - at least for now. The U.S. is part of an unsavory alliance of nations who lead the world in executions - including China, Iran,Iraq, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen. But the winds of change are blowing.

For a nation conditioned by violence, it is hard to break extremely old and equally bad habits. After all, people are comfortable with what they know, comfortable with what they were raised on. America can break the cycle of violence - however normalized it has become - and yet it must if it wants to break from its troubling past and become better than it was.

PTSD Creates Fort Hoods Everywhere

It is an understatement to say the recent massacre at Fort Hood, Texas is a horrible tragedy. Pundits have said much about the alleged shooter, Army psychiatrist Nidal M. Hasan. And they will likely say a great deal more about his motives, his state of mind, terrorism, and al-Qaeda.

I knew it wouldn’t be long before the usual suspects would be rounded up, and the discussion would degenerate into a talk about Islamic extremism and purging Muslims from the military. Hate crimes and scapegoating of the Arab-American and Muslim-American communities are the unfortunate consequences in such an environment. All of America’s young white male ex-marines did not bear responsibility for Timothy McVeigh and his bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, so why should the Muslim community shoulder a burden that does not bear their name?

We should be concerned that at this tragic moment, society will miss a unique opportunity to address the effects of war, and the problems of violence and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The National Institute of Mental Health defines PTSD as “an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened. Traumatic events that may trigger PTSD include violent personal assaults, natural or human-caused disasters, accidents, or military combat.” PTSD can cause many symptoms, such as flashbacks, bad dreams, difficulty sleeping, depression, emotional numbness, and feeling “on edge”.

Secondary trauma involves the emotional and psychological effects of working with traumatized people. Therapists, social workers and others who associate with victims of violence can develop symptoms of PTSD. As for an Army psychiatrist such as Hasan, listening to the horrific war stories of his clients on a daily basis must have taken its toll.

As Sandra Bloom and Michael Reichert point out in their book Bearing Witness: Violence and Collective Responsibility, we live in a violent culture that promotes trauma and organizes around trauma. Sadly, we pass that trauma to the next generation, and create a vicious cycle of violence. And society is like the psychiatric patient who must hit rock bottom and show life threatening symptoms before crying out for help. “Our entire culture is doing the same thing - manifesting such extremes of pathology that we can no longer deny that something is pervasively wrong,” the authors suggest. “We manifest this cry for help in our rate of firearm deaths, crimes of violence, and in the epidemic of child-on-child assaults.”

In a nation where Columbine-style school shootings are virtually commonplace, and aggrieved employees “go postal” and mow down their coworkers as a matter of course, Hasan is by no means alone. And as a repository for violence, the military is not dealing with untreated mental illness among its ranks. That Hasan was a mental health professional underscores the military’s failure to deal with a widespread problem.

PTSD afflicts 300,000 veterans from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, perhaps as many as 15% of returning soldiers. Yet, many do not receive the medical treatment they need. Last year there were 128 confirmed suicides by army personnel and 41 by marines, the highest on record. The suicide rate among soldiers in Iraq is five times higher than in the Persian Gulf War, and 11% higher than during Vietnam. In fact, the military suicide rate is higher than the overall U.S. rate, the first time since Vietnam.

Further, stress-related homicides by soldiers - at home and abroad, active duty and after they return home - amount to a crisis situation that does not receive the attention it warrants. Crime has been on the rise on military bases since 2003, according to a recent U.S. Army study. The study also found that soldiers who experienced more combat, and whose units sustained more casualties, had a higher risk of developing mental illness, criminality, and conduct problems.

Prisons are repositories for the mentally ill that eschew rehabilitation and treatment. Consequently, these institutions create sicker people and better criminals in the process. Above and beyond the inherent madness, violence and criminality that institutions of war already represent, the U.S. military seems to assume a similar role. And the ticking time bomb originates not from the jacket of an al-Qaeda suicide bomber, but from within the ranks of the U.S. armed forces.

In the aftermath of Fort Hood, more time spent on gratuitous anti-Arab and anti-Muslim scapegoating is more time that PTSD is not addressed among veterans and active-duty personnel. Additional Fort Hoods are in waiting. However, the larger issue is that society must deal with the mental health effects of trauma and violence - not only on the battlefield, but at home on the streets of America. Violence begets violence, and war is terror, whether it occurs in Iraq, Afghanistan, North Philly, East L.A. or Chicago.

(From BlackCommentator.com and Huffington Post.) 

The End of the American Empire: Rotting From Within and Without

By David A. Love
Published by The Black Commentator
Color of Law column
March 8, 2008

The day of the dollar is over. The euro is in, and the world is making it increasingly clear that it will no longer participate in propping up U.S. hegemony. Amid a weakening dollar and rising oil prices, OPEC considers dropping its ties to the American currency. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez - who said the “empire of the dollar is crashing,” and is providing 112 million gallons of oil to poor American families who cannot afford to heat their homes - and Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - who called the dollar “a worthless piece of paper” - have concluded that they do not need the dollar, and agreed to set up a joint Iranian-Venezuelan bank. Meanwhile, China - which holds over $1 trillion of U.S. debt - must decide whether it is time to cut and run.

And European and Canadian tourists visit the U.S. and spend as if they’ve traveled to an underdeveloped nation.

The idea of an America that controls the world, and exploits the world, economically, militarily, culturally and politically, is one that is best relegated to the dustbin of history. Accordingly, we should celebrate all efforts to bring about the demise of that concept, so that the international community can breathe more freely, and so that America may gain a sense of humility and justice.

It seems fitting that we have Bush himself to thank for precipitating this decline. In seven years, through his antidemocratic policies, a crippling and senseless war in Iraq, and the human rights abuse commonly known as the war on terror, he has single-handedly accomplished what no other before him has done: bring down the U.S. before the eyes of the world.

As is the case with all declining empires, the rot is both internal and external. In ancient Rome, like modern-day America, military spending, contracting out government services, corruption, and enormous wealth inequality ultimately did them in.

As the self-described world police officer, snooping into other people’s business with over 700 overseas military bases in over 130 countries, America is bleeding money and fuelling resentment. Many U.S. citizens, uninformed and uneducated with regard to its country’s exploits around the world, are apt to believe Bush when he tells us “they hate us for our freedom.” Outsourcing much of its dirty work to Blackwater, Halliburton and other private corporate contractors, America chooses to rape and pillage Iraq in high-tech fashion, outside the reach of the Constitution. War profiteering is conducted under the guise of defending freedom and democracy.

Today, with corporations given free rein through a deliberate policy of tax breaks, deregulation and upward wealth transfer - not to mention the job outsourcing and downward push on wages brought about by globalization – bestow economic benefits for a few robber barons and empty hands for the rest of us are the logical result.

Americans always were told that they lived in the greatest country on Earth, a model egalitarian society. But a report by The Pew Charitable Trusts sheds light on the fallacy of the so-called American Dream. According to the report, America is less upwardly-mobile than Canada, Denmark or Finland. In the land of opportunity, your birth, more than in other countries, determines how you will end up. The wealthiest among us are likely to remain wealthy, and the poorest are also likely to remain poor. While only one-third can be considered upwardly mobile, the rest are either treading water or falling behind. And one-third of Americans are downwardly mobile, earning less than their parents and slipping down the income ladder.

Not surprisingly, as the proverbial canary in the coalmine, African Americans are particularly vulnerable. Only 31 percent of Blacks born to middle-income parents make more than their parents, compared with 68 percent of Whites. And nearly half of Blacks whose parents were middle income end up in poverty, compared with 16 percent of Whites.

And as the Children’s Defense Fund recently reported, prison is the only universally guaranteed program for youth, as the U.S. prepares its poor children, disproportionately Black and Brown boys, for a life behind bars. With a cut-rate education system, few opportunities and an environment of violence and deprivation, many children are programmed for a cradle to prison pipeline. One child in six lives in poverty, and over 9.4 million children are without health insurance. One-third of Latino babies and one-half of Black babies are born into poverty, and one-quarter of Latino children and one-third of Black children are poor. With $100 billion spent on the Iraq War each year, a total of $450 billion so far, a mere $75 billion a year would eradicate poverty in America. Repealing the tax cuts for the richest one percent would provide $57 billion. But do we have the will, in a nation that refuses to do anything unless someone makes a profit from it?

Instead of focusing on the real problems, we allow the distractions to drive the debate. Rather than point the finger at a predatory economic system that is eating its people alive - and causing millions to lose their jobs and homes - many find convenient scapegoats, including Mexican immigrants, the LGBT community, beneficiaries of affirmative action and the Muslim world. The scapegoat industry is a full employment program for such caustic talking heads as Lou Dobbs, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and other standard bearers for intolerance and hatred. What if the Angry White Men, for once in their lives, actually acted in the true interests of all and broke bread with the rest of us, including the angry people of color who also want a better life, and know that something is wrong with America?

Nothing will or should save the American empire, but perhaps Americans can save themselves and make the nation something it never was - fair and just, truly equal, and respectful of the world. What we need is Dr. King’s “radical revolution of values,” in which the U.S. becomes a “person-oriented” society rather than a “thing-oriented” society. Now let’s get to work and make that happen.