Many would say America is a land of extremes - a violent country begun in Revolution, divided by Civil War, riddled by tommy guns in the days of Prohibition, racked by endemic murder in the slums, and ready to use its mighty military arsenal at the drop of a hat.
No doubt, but not alone in such extremes. Over a million people died during the partition of India when Muslims set upon Hindus and vice versa as they made their way across the Hindu Kush. Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao, and Hitler were responsible for tens of millions of deaths through genocide and war.
Some observers blame the mayhem on the men behind it; others suggest that the populace is always complicit. Historian Goldhagen has persuasively argued that the Nazi extermination of the Jews was a well-known fact and that ordinary Germans did nothing about it. The sweeping Communist reforms of Mao and Stalin could not have been made possible without the complicity of their people.
The power of individuals even as canny, amoral, and bloody as they may be can only go so far. It is right to say that India, China, Russia, Cambodia, and Nazi Germany were violent nations.
Critics argue about the nature of the endemic inner city violence in America. Some say its is a lingering result of slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation which deprived the black man of his freedom, dignity, and means and forced him into anti-social behavior as a protest, behavior tolerated and encouraged by the entitlements of liberal white progressives.
Others blame the culture of the inner city itself - a ghetto of former slaves who themselves were enslaved in Africa and never evolved beyond the Paleolithic. American slums are latter day jungles with no sense of Western moral accountability and responsibility only to tribal norms. Still others lay the dysfunction to liberal entitlement - the flooding of the inner city with millions in blood money, an easy guilt-assuaging give away with no accountability and none intended.
The Wild West is often cited as the source of American violence. In the old West the only rule of law was the six-gun, and disputes were settled at the end of a barrel. When rugged individualism, Manifest Destiny, and uncompromising territorialism combined, it was the perfect storm. The West was the crucible for universal American violence.
Of course the argument would not be complete without introducing the element of firearms. They are the real cause of the pervasive violence in America, say progressives and only if they are eliminated, peace can reign. Others disagree and point to cities like Washington, DC a city with some of the nation's strictest gun laws but is awash in illegal weapons and gun-related murders. Supply and demand - the demand for guns and the national ethos of violence trump supply any day.
So, it doesn't take much to light the fuse of violence in America. It is there all around, in every corner, nook and cranny. Black men are killing each other at record rates in major metropolitan areas. Mass murderers are storming schools, post offices, and churches and slaughtering hundreds of people at a time. Serial killers have been a feature of America for two centuries and they are still on the loose.
Perhaps most noteworthy of all is the persistent assassinations that have occurred throughout the nation's history - Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy were murdered; and attempts on the life of Ronald Regan, Gerald Ford, and Donald Trump are in recent memory. Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King were murdered by an assassin, and George Wallace severely wounded and crippled.
Most recently a conservative activist, Charlie Kirk was assassinated only for his views. He was no national leader, no prominent political figure, no rising star that threated the Right or the Left. He was simply an outspoken, articulate, persuasive man who espoused a conservative agenda and whose mission was to spread the word among young people.
This, even more than political assassinations is a seminal point in American violence. The political climate has become so feverish, so divided, and so characterized by venomous hatred, than hundreds, thousands of unstable, credulous, desperately unhinged individuals feel that their acts of murder are justified. If Donald Trump is the incarnation of evil that progressive Democrats say he is, then his removal from power by whatever means is justified.
The reign of terror of ISIS was based on the same principle. Their loyalty was to Allah and to no secular authority, and anyone who denied their right to establish a fundamentalist Islamic Caliphate should be killed. The Koran itself is very clear and unequivocal about the duty and responsibility of the faithful to rid the world of the infidel.
Progressive Democrats today feel they are responding to a higher authority - a moral code which has as its objective the elimination of evil from the world. Donald Trump and his MAGA supporters are not simply political opponents but exponents of evil.
The resounding defeat of the progressive Democratic ticket in last year's presidential election only fueled the fire. Unexpectedly defeated, they were blindsided by a populist former President who had millions of passionate supporters. While they cheered him and his avowal to cleanse the country of woke socialism and return it to the Jeffersonian origins of the past, progressives had only fury and self-righteousness in their armory.
The heat was turned up even higher on Trump - his evil was there for all to see. He was returning black people to the cotton fields, sending gay and transgender men and women to the gulag, despoiling the environment with crony capitalistic energy exploitation, and tossing the poor to the wolves.
No holds barred - anything goes in the fight of good against evil. Not only the cabals and claques in Congress, black mayors of major cities, Democratic governors but ANTIFA - a far left, self-described 'anti-fascist' and 'anti-racist' movement, the hardcore enforcer of the progressive agenda, a union of violent underground militias - are joined together in what can only be seen as a revolutionary, terrorist movement.
MAGA - Make America Great Again - Donald Trump's signature line during his campaigns and his Presidencies - is not a movement per se but the will of the majority of Americans who voted for him. Of course there are militant conclaves in the Idaho panhandle vowing the same kind of insurrectional justice as ANTIFA. Every political movement has its militant offshoots and so does American conservatism,, but none so dangerous as ANTIFA
Because America is such a violent country and devoted to the radical upsetting of the established order through violence, it is no surprise that the old Democrat-Republican contest has been replaced by a MAGA-ANTIFA one. Although the two may never be engaged on the battlefield, they represent what is at stake in the political arena. The lines have been drawn, the twain shall never meet, and America is most definitely at a turning point - the name of murdered Charlie Kirk's organization.
The MAGA faithful are Walmart greeters, car salesmen, roofing contractors, plumbers, and truck drivers - men and women who have joined together what they see as a humiliating turn to abject politics - politics without real patriotism or moral purpose.
The ANTIFA thousands are militant in mind, spirit, and attitude. They cannot wait for electoral reversal or political reform. Trump and his allies must be destroyed now, completely and irrevocably.
The perfect Hollywood movie - The Gunfight at OK Corral Redux, a final, winner take all resolution. As it should be in America, country of legend, Al Capone, and the Wild West. Not ideal, certainly, but idealism has no place in history. It either is or it isn't.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.