{"id":215000,"date":"2022-06-13T12:00:23","date_gmt":"2022-06-13T11:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=215000"},"modified":"2022-06-12T05:08:35","modified_gmt":"2022-06-12T04:08:35","slug":"usa-the-collateral-damage-comes-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/06\/usa-the-collateral-damage-comes-home\/","title":{"rendered":"USA: The Collateral Damage Comes Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>8 Jun 2022 – <\/em>\u201cThey were at places that seemed safe \u2014 but few spaces in North America are guaranteed safe anymore.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is CNN<\/a>, doing its best to stay atop US mass shootings and keep the survivors (by which I mean us<\/em>) informed. Yeah, 13 gun massacres this past weekend, at strip malls, nightclubs, graduation parties \u2014 with 16 people dying, many more injured \u2014 and the total number of such shootings so far in 2022 is 246.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe country is on pace to match or surpass last year\u2019s total, which is the worst on record . . .\u201d<\/p>\n

The national \u201cdebate\u201d about this seems, well . . . trivial. Should the sale of assault rifles be banned, at least for teenagers? Should we have background checks? I\u2019m not opposed to such laws; they would probably help ease the problem. And I writhe in agony and disbelief every time I hear news that, following the latest headline-grabbing mass shooting, gun sales skyrocket. But the time is now to begin expanding the context of the American \u201cgun debate.\u201d<\/p>\n

We\u2019re at war with the world \u2014 which includes ourselves.<\/p>\n

And waging war, preparing for war, begins with a fervid, unwavering belief in \u201cthe enemy.\u201d It may be the most simplistic belief on the planet The enemy is out to get us and we have to kill him. Indeed, we must<\/em> kill him. It\u2019s our duty. This is the belief that sustains our ever-expanding defense budget \u2014 the latest being pushed by President Biden is $813 billion \u2014 and it\u2019s the belief every lost soul with a gun brings with him to the shopping mall, the classroom, the church . . . or wherever.<\/p>\n

If we want to curtail mass shootings on the home front, we have to address, collectively, the national assumption that conflict and disagreement are the same thing as war, and that waging war \u2014 killing people \u2014 fixes all problems. We have to salute, as a people, something other than glorified murder.<\/p>\n

Fifteen years ago<\/a>, in the wake of the horrific mass shooting at Virginia Tech, in which 32 people were killed (I\u2019ve written more than 50 columns about mass shootings over the years), I quoted Lauren Abramson, director of Restorative Response Baltimore<\/a>: \u201cWe live in a culture where people are very much disconnected from each other. I think that\u2019s incredibly dangerous. The more connected we are, the safer we\u2019ll be.\u201d<\/p>\n

What if such awareness were geopolitical? Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine is the latest indication that this is not the case. It has provoked an increasingly militaristic response from the West, which has sent billions of dollars\u2019 worth of weaponry to Ukraine and has pressured Volodymyr Zelenskyy not<\/em> to negotiate with Putin.<\/p>\n

As Chris Nineham<\/a> writes: \u201cIt is first and foremost the Ukrainians who will suffer from this approach, as the conflict turns into a terrible war of attrition. But the war has global implications and the risks of a frightening military clash between nuclear armed great powers are higher than at any time for half a century.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo understand this situation and to be able to challenge it, we have to see beyond the West\u2019s simplistic story that this is a war between the western values of freedom and democracy and Russian despotism.\u201d<\/p>\n

If we cannot, if we refuse, to see beyond this simplistic story, yes, it allows us to continue believing it. But that belief \u2014 that the wars we wage are good \u2014 keeps us blind and stupid, unable to transcend the country\u2019s growing pandemic of violence. Disconnecting ourselves from \u201cthe enemy\u201d may put the enemy in a cage, but it puts us in a cage as well, and the cages grow smaller and smaller. It\u2019s me vs. you!<\/p>\n

\u201cThe U.S. has slaughtered millions of the globe\u2019s inhabitants, including women and children, in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, Syria and Libya, as well as in numerous proxy wars, the latest in Ukraine,\u201d Chris Hedges<\/a> writes, noting that this is our national mythology: \u201cthe divine right to kill others to purge the earth of evil.\u201d<\/p>\n

And when this myth permeates the population, \u201chow can this mythology not be ingested by na\u00efve and alienated individuals?\u201d Hedges asks. \u201cKill them overseas. Kill them at home. The more the empire deteriorates, the more the impetus to kill grows. Violence, in desperation, becomes the only route to salvation.\u201d<\/p>\n

I repeat: \u201cThe more connected we are, the safer we\u2019ll be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Four hundred million guns in the USA are not the route to connection. But there\u2019s only one way that number will begin to wane, and it is not bureaucratic. People want to feel a sense of power, and for a huge swath of the population, guns are what give them the feeling of power, even if guns also create disconnection and magnify a sense of fear.<\/p>\n

What Abramson told me about, in 2007, was a program called Restorative Justice, which her organization facilitated. I had never heard of it before. Some years later I started becoming deeply involved in Restorative Justice and have written about it a great deal. Basically, it\u2019s a way to talk \u2014 and listen \u2014 to one another . . . deeply listen, without snark or judgment, as people speak their truth. They sit together in a peace circle, in a state of what I have called vibrant equality, and often find a sense of commonality where there had been only disconnect and conflict.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not saying this is a quick fix to the American problem of violence, but rather, that Restorative Justice and similar programs, which create connection, not division, need to be part of the context in which we look at ourselves and our burgeoning mass murders. The violence we\u2019re loosing on the world, and on ourselves, has deep roots. We have to acknowledge this, and begin digging deeper into our souls.<\/p>\n

When we wage war, the collateral damage always comes home.<\/p>\n

______________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Robert C. Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based peace journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His book, <\/em>Courage Grows Strong at the Wound (Xenos Press) is still available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0Go to Original \u2013 commonwonders.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

8 Jun 2022 – 13 gun massacres this past weekend, at strip malls, nightclubs, graduation parties \u2014 with 16 people dying, many more injured \u2014 and the total number of such shootings so far in 2022 is 246. The country is on pace to match or surpass last year\u2019s total, which is the worst on record.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":77939,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[867,101,100,2524,1335,715,99,70,481],"class_list":["post-215000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tms-peace-journalism","tag-anglo-america","tag-cultural-violence","tag-direct-violence","tag-mass-murder","tag-mass-shooting","tag-massacre","tag-structural-violence","tag-usa","tag-warfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215000","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=215000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215000\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}