Challenge Our Violent Culture
“America is, by far, the most violent country in the world when measured against comparable, industrialized nations.” That’s the conclusion of a report by a conservative former California attorney general, Dan Lungren. Today, America is at war in Iraq, a war that the Bush administration began of its own choice, against a country that had not attacked us (and in fact did not threaten us). More than 3,500 soldiers and literally hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have lost their lives, with millions more displaced. We are also at war in Afghanistan against the Taliban. We patrol Bosnia, have troops stationed on the border of North Korea. We have military forces in over 700 bases located in over 130 nations across the globe. Our fleets patrol the world’s seas. We are the GloboCop.
The United States has witnessed more than 4,000 riots from the 1600s to 1992, according to Paul Gilje in Rioting in America. Some 2 million people have been killed or suffered serious injury, which is an average of over 5,000 a year for nearly 400 years.
But the deaths and casualties in war are far outnumbered by the slaughter wrought by Americans killing Americans. Some 10 million Americans were victims of violent crimes in the 20th century. We have suffered more Americans killed by Americans than our combined losses in the Spanish American War, World Wars I and II, Korea and Vietnam.
Americans have more guns and suffer more gun crimes. We sell more guns and military equipment than any other country. Our military budget is nearly half the military budget of the entire world.
Violence isn’t simply part of our history; it is embedded in our culture: TV, video games, music. A culture of violence invades our lives, from our homes to our schools and work environments. Moreover, violence has become entertainment, glamorized in the behavior of real and fantasy heroes.
The government, Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, is the great teacher. Our government teaches us to believe in the efficacy of violence. Ironically, violence is demonstrably ineffective. Our military has never been more powerful than it is today, and our country has seldom felt more threatened. Not one of the emerging security threats that we face — al-Qaida and stateless terrorism, catastrophic climate change, nuclear proliferation, growing inequality and economic dislocation, mass epidemics — has a military answer. Yet every one of the major candidates for president in both parties calls for increasing the amount of money spent on the military. Violence is our answer — but what was the question?
Dr. Martin Luther King challenged this commitment to violence, posing nonviolence as a more effective measure of change. You cannot bring democracy at the point of a bayonet, he argued. A society that spends more on military adventure than on social provision is a society that has lost its way.
Nonviolence is in retreat. We are at the end of a punitive era — an era that railed against controlling guns, celebrated military adventure, and ignored the rising death toll at home and abroad.
Now, in the wake of the Iraq debacle, with violence in this society once more on the rise, it is time to change course. We must challenge violence in America. We must build a culture of nonviolence, a culture that challenges the assumption that violence is the American way. We must ask: Has policing the world made us more secure? Has revoking gun-control laws added to the security of our neighborhoods? Isn’t it time for America to look hard once more at the violence that is at the center of our history and our present?
© 2007 Chicago Sun Times
Isn’t violence also what minorities fear when trying to be themselves, and confronted with a majority that puts on an adverserial facade?
Arrest the War Criminals. Seize their secrect files, learn about our so-called leaders invovlement in World Wide Arms scandal. Hundreds of Billions thru BAE. Gonzo is on the case as we speak.
“We must build a culture of nonviolence, a culture that challenges the assumption that violence is the American way.”
And America can begin this by ratifying and enforcing the UN Convention on The Rights of The Child by making corporal punishment and all violence, humiliation, and emotional abuse to children illegal. The cycles of violence begin anew in each generation when parents and other adults beat children; preventing them from doing so will make violence in america disappear, regardless of video games.
some people benefit quite handsomely from all this violence.
Violence must become as shameful as defecating in public is now. - from Boys Will Be Boys - Breaking the Link Between Masculinity and Violence by Myriam Miedzian - highly recommended!
Appreciate the effort Jesse ,you’re preaching to the choir.I almost want to say too little too late. Where IS the African American voice??? We need you and the Rev?Sharpton visible all the time, not when there is a crisis. Most young AA adults and an increasing # of whites think that its a rite of passage to do a “bid”, have several “baby moms” and dream of being a rapper. You know, money, power , respect. I live in a city ,one only needs to look no further than the crap that is on TEEVEE, the crap that is blaring out of cars and the crap that comes out of the mouths of babes to see that there is little or no hope.I truly feel sorry for those who are so caught up in an ” image”…….
Can I get a shout out to IMPEACH CHENEY!!!!
I believe it was Jesus Christ who said ” that if you lived by the sword, you will die by the sword.” It is only ironic that he himself at Armageddon (Jehovah’s Righteous War to rid the earth of all wickedness) is going to “sickle the nations with a sword.” All governments are guilty of killing millions upon millions, with the USA having taken part in most of the “bloodshed that masses clear up to heaven”, moreso than any other nation. Thanks to the Chinese who invented gunpowder, people have been living in fear every since. Capitalism has allowed people to reap huge profits from weaponry invention, distribution and sales. Many arm themselves in self-defense, out of fear, just to have a measure of peace. Jesse, Martin did try to change the course of history to no avail, and deserves a resurrection in God’s Kingdom. The real “Prince of Peace” will soon be given a command to end our suffering. Too bad that the people are too blind and deaf to see the written warning and hear the trumpet sound. They will pay for their sins dearly and the “meek and righteous shall inherit the earth.”
These fools have been fighting over it for too long! For them there is no hope! As for us, we will see when all of the wicked are cut off, including the Globalcops!
Great piece of writing Rev Jackson, stirring stuff, -and, a full-on challenge to the very core of the ‘Killing Kulture’ that is America today.
I do wonder though, have you yet been able to convince your friends, (Mr & Ms B. Clinton), that the US addiction to weapons and insane warfare are an abomination, and a veritable curse upon this troubled planet?
Somehow I get the feeling not. But that is no reason to give up trying I guess…
CLARIFICATION– the word “said” should come between the words “already” and “somebody.”
When our politicians insist on putting power in the hands of unethical capitalists whose concern is profits over people, what can you expect? As someone mentioned above, “some people benefit quite handsomely from all this violence”.
” We have met the enemy, and he is us ” Pogo
The U.S. is a signatory to nine multilateral treaties that it has either blatantly violated or gradually subverted. The Bush Administration is now outright rejecting a number of those treaties, and in doing so, places global security in jeopardy, as other nations feel entitled to do the same. The rejected treaties include: The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), the Treaty Banning Antipersonnel Mines, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), a protocol to create a compliance regime for the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM). The U.S. is also not complying with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the Chemical Weapons Commission (CWC), the BWC, and the U.N. framework Convention on Climate Change.”
Project Censored 2005
Right on, Rev. Jackson.
The only candidate I’m interested in supporting is no-strings-attached, Dennis
Kucinich, and his department of peace.
We’ll never have peace without investing in it, researching it, studying it - the same as we do war. The question is: What will make us more secure? More war? or peace?
Isn’t it worth the investment?
Support Dennis Kucinich for president and his Department of Peace.
As I already said in a comment on a different article, somebody messing with the wrong brother man on this thing. When somebody start pushing the head of the RPC around, somebody else gonna start pushing back by telling the truth about the gun nuts and gun violence in the USA and this whole culture of violence.
Great research, ezeflyer. Where did you find all of those treaties? Did you know that under the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution, all foreign treaties are the supreme law of the land? The POTUS swore to uphold the U.S. Constitution but the reality is he is a scofflaw who breaks treaties as a matter of routine as your list suggests. The invasion of Iraq also violated the UN Charter, which is also a part of the supreme law of our land. A breach of the Presidential Oath is grounds for impeachment.
Rev. Jackson: Your stature continues to grow. You have an important role to play in American society and you are playing it well. I hope that all of us who read these posts will support your organization financially so that you can keep it going.
I second the motion for supporting HR 808 for the creation of a Department of Peace to stem domestic violence.
And support the movement to impeach to help slow international violence.
Jesse Jackson: “We must build a culture of nonviolence”
Question: How?
Recommendation: Start by learning nonviolent/compassionate communication (NVC)
Visit:
http://www.cnvc.org
or
http://www.decadeofnonviolencehouston.org/decade/ccc/learningNvc.htm
Namaste,
WagePeace
There is no profit in peace…