{"id":135072,"date":"2019-06-10T12:00:06","date_gmt":"2019-06-10T11:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=135072"},"modified":"2019-06-07T10:55:52","modified_gmt":"2019-06-07T09:55:52","slug":"time-bombs-a-meditation-on-walt-whitmans-200th-birthday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/06\/time-bombs-a-meditation-on-walt-whitmans-200th-birthday\/","title":{"rendered":"Time Bombs: A Meditation on Walt Whitman\u2019s 200th Birthday"},"content":{"rendered":"
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31 May 2019 is Walt Whitman’s 200th birthday. A friend observed it’s better he’s not seeing what’s happened to his country.\u00a0 (Photo: cc)<\/p><\/div>\n

31 May 2019 – <\/em>Trickle-down theory applies here. America has a death penalty. America has the largest military in the world and in history. America will not stand being crossed. These moments of spasm and orgy are threads in a cultural fabric. Americans have a right to be enraged because of being crossed or challenged or humiliated.<\/p>\n

Of course the question to be asked and rarely answered: what prescription drug was this current killer on? Without an answer to that, the basic anthropological truth about human beings is they will strike depending on the perceived depth of a threat or insult. The intensity of the strike is ratcheted up based on a cultural\u00a0citizenship where the phrase “shock and awe” has become a national cornerstone. It’s a phrase concocted because Americans would get it and accept it and in some cases make it part of their interior\u00a0weapon stash.<\/p>\n

The hardware is always debated. The core nuclear reactor is the subtle and\u00a0pernicious permission to access this aspect of human nature. Prior to a duel the classic phrase is\u00a0“I demand\u00a0satisfaction.” This phrase has not been\u00a0retired in America. It’s not pistols at dawn it’s a weapon of war whenever.<\/p>\n

One has to assume within these human time bombs is a hiss or a scream of “I hate everybody.” Or “I’ll show you if it’s\u2026the last thing I do.” A gun settles scores. A gun satisfies the rage of indignation.\u00a0There must be a sense of relief as a killer sees his targets fall dead. Is it that Americans feel more of a right to that feeling than other nationalities?<\/p>\n

When we strap\u00a0ourselves in at a movie we hand ourselves over to the fantasy of killer justice. The antagonist will get either a bullet in the head – or an arrow in the chest and \u00a0in a crowded theater\u2014cheers. Each audience\u00a0member wants to be that person who\u00a0delivered justice. Above all else – this is how you get justice. Kill.<\/p>\n

Today is Walt Whitman’s 200th birthday. A friend observed it’s better he’s not seeing what’s\u00a0happened to his country. He was a wound dresser during the civil war so he knew what men tend to do to each other.\u00a0I suppose a war of sorts is in progress here – the enemy gets chosen not by\u00a0geographical location but by a roulette wheel of sudden psychotic combatants. Background checks? First question. Are you a human being? Yes. Sorry\u2014no gun for you.<\/p>\n

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Bill C. Davis<\/strong><\/a> is a playwright.\u00a0 His personal website here.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 commondreams.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

31 May 2019 – Today is Walt Whitman’s 200th birthday. A friend observed it’s better he’s not seeing what’s happened to his country. He was a wound dresser during the civil war so he knew what men tend to do to each other. I suppose a war of sorts is in progress here – the enemy gets chosen not by geographical location but by a roulette wheel of sudden psychotic combatants. Background checks? First question. Are you a human being? Yes. Sorry\u2014no gun for you. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":135073,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[290,260,444,70,1101,75],"class_list":["post-135072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-culture","tag-history","tag-nonviolence","tag-usa","tag-walt-whitman","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}