MSNBC, July 7, 2016.\u00a0 Instead of Rachel Maddow performing her nightly magic trick, which involves transforming five minutes of information into forty-five minutes of infotainment, it was the polished and soothing Brian Williams announcing a \u201cnational crisis\u201d\u2014a sniper in Dallas was shooting cops. \u00a0The Dallas slaughter\u2014five dead officers, seven more injured\u2014was especially poignant, Williams informed his viewers, because it happened close to Dealey Plaza, where President John Kennedy was assassinated, 43 years earlier.<\/p>\n
I was reminded of an Olympic telecast, the network commentator filling valuable airtime with details of, say, how Team USA\u2019s javelin thrower is dyslexic and her mother is back home fighting cancer, and meanwhile, the gold medal-winning throw receives no coverage because the splendid champion hales from the wrong country.\u00a0 Attach your lapel mic, look sincere, fabricate sentimentalism.\u00a0 The U.S. bobsled team lost their luggage at the airport! \u00a0The injured Dallas officers were rushed to Parkland Hospital, same as Kennedy!\u00a0 The newscaster tells us which stories matter, why we should care, and misses the crucial issue.<\/p>\n
In this instance, \u201cnational crisis\u201d is a revealing phrase.\u00a0 The Dallas police officers were patrolling a public protest march organized in response to the recent deaths of Alton Sterling, in Louisiana, and Philando Castile, in Minnesota\u2014two more black men shot down by police officers.\u00a0 So far this year, police officers have killed 509 people.\u00a0 At least 123 (24%) of the victims are black, though blacks represent only 13% of the national population.\u00a0 The cases of Sterling and Castile sparked renewed outrage because of a familiar trope: videos appear to show that the officers involved had no justifiable reason to shoot either man.\u00a0 Meanwhile, the city of Chicago has already seen 338 homicides this year\u2014that\u2019s 12.5 per week\u2014well on pace to surpass last year\u2019s total of 468.\u00a0 Considering such carnage, does the murder of five police officers on a hot Texas night really constitute a \u201cnational crisis\u201d?<\/p>\n
Yes, if you understand that \u201cnational\u201d refers only to a privileged group.\u00a0 \u201cNational interest\u201d means corporate profits.\u00a0 \u201cNational security\u201d primarily means protecting the ruling class from the rest of us.\u00a0 Police forces are the guardians of property and maintainers of order, the thin blue line between the restless masses and the pampered few.\u00a0 Thus, the skillful targeting of police officers is, by corporate media definition, a \u201cnational crisis.\u201d\u00a0 It sparks \u201cnational outrage\u201d and demands a \u201cnational response,\u201d including President Barack Obama cutting short a trip to Europe and rerouting to Dallas.\u00a0 Why to Dallas and not Chicago?\u00a0 \u201cThere has been a vicious, despicable, and calculated attack on law enforcement,\u201d the president said.\u00a0 \u201cPolice were doing their jobs, keeping people safe during a protest\u201d\u2014better understood as \u201ckeeping people in line.\u201d\u00a0 The progressive reputation of the Dallas police chief notwithstanding, most anyone who has participated in a public protest march knows that a large police presence usually has little to do with protecting the protestors from harm.<\/p>\n
But if we understand \u201cnational crisis\u201d literally rather than euphemistically, we can say that the Dallas shooting was but one brief episode in a deadly crisis that permeates the U.S.A.\u00a0 Call it by its real name: Violent Solutions.<\/p>\n
A child growing up in this country\u2014assuming access to the appropriate electronic screens and other forms of public education\u2014receives endless instruction on how killing and maiming solves problems.\u00a0 Cursory history lessons suggest that massive slaughter secured \u201cnational independence,\u201d ended slavery, and stopped Hitler, while failing to point out that almost everyone loses in war and that each war leads to the next.\u00a0 Movies, television shows, and video games teach that killing is heroic, justifiable, entertaining, non-traumatizing, and socially redeeming.\u00a0 Soldier-worship is rampant onscreen, from recruitment advertising to the NFL\u2019s cynical \u201cSalute to Service\u201d to the noncritical use of \u201chero\u201d to describe anyone sporting the right uniform and a gun.\u00a0 (Trying to tie himself to warrior prestige, Brian Williams has lied repeatedly about his Iraq War experiences.)<\/p>\n
What do the influential voices of the so-called \u201cleft\u201d have to say on the matter?\u00a0 Jon Stewart spent years on television criticizing U.S. wars in his opening segments, then gushing over military guests after the break.\u00a0 Entertainment millionaires tweet out their slangy denouncements of death and destruction, then make another blockbuster film romanticizing death and destruction.\u00a0 Which do they think is more influential?\u00a0 President Obama, who accepted the Nobel Peace (sic) Prize, in 2009, by insisting that \u201cthe instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace,\u201d has ably demonstrated what he had in mind, \u201cpreserving the peace\u201d in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Pakistan, and Yemen.\u00a0 \u201cTurns out, I\u2019m really good at killing people,\u201d he supposedly told aides.\u00a0 Does he think he gets to be the only one?<\/p>\n
The Bush-Cheney-Obama wars, begun in 1989, have militarized much of U.S. society.\u00a0 The U.S. occupation and destruction of communities in southwest Asia and north Africa have led to violent blowback on U.S. soil\u2014terror for terror.\u00a0 In the name of \u201cfighting terror,\u201d the Pentagon hands out leftover instruments of war to police departments which already view urban populations as threats to be controlled, not citizens to be protected and served.\u00a0 Citizens frightened by onscreen violence rush to buy guns and (don\u2019t forget) ammunition, and find few obstacles to ownership.\u00a0 Often overlooked, the U.S. terror machine produces a pool of trained and traumatized killers who struggle to regain their sanity and humanity after they reenter a society where opportunities for health and well-being are limited.\u00a0 To put it simply: U.S. war veterans are often a threat to themselves and those around them.\u00a0 They bring the terror home.<\/p>\n
Turns out, Timothy McVeigh also was really good at killing people.\u00a0 The U.S. Army taught McVeigh to kill people and sent him to Iraq, in 1991, to practice his craft.\u00a0 After leaving the military, he became upset about what he considered state terrorism, most notable the federal assault on the Branch Davidian property near Waco, Texas, in 1993.\u00a0 McVeigh saw a problem, and, like the outstanding soldier he was, sought a violent solution.\u00a0 \u201cYou learn how to handle killing in the military,\u201d he told a friend.\u00a0 \u201cYou learn how to accept collateral damage.\u201d\u00a0 On the second anniversary of the Waco massacre, he detonated a powerful truck bomb in Oklahoma City, shredding a federal office building, killing 168, including 19 children, and injuring over 600.<\/p>\n
Now we learn that the Dallas shooter, Micah Johnson, was a military man.\u00a0 In high school, he joined the R.O.T.C.\u00a0 He later spent six years in the Army Reserve, deploying to Afghanistan in 2013-14.\u00a0 Like McVeigh, he was a loner, was angry about perceived injustice, and had been taught violent solutions.\u00a0 According to the Dallas police chief, Johnson was upset about the shooting of Sterling and Castile and \u201cwanted to kill white people, especially white officers.\u201d\u00a0 Unlike McVeigh, Johnson was not a combat soldier.\u00a0 To improve his killing ability, he had enrolled at something called the Academy of Combative Warrior Arts, whose website promises \u201cAnswers For Today.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is not to say that every military veteran with a beef will turn to murder.\u00a0 But we should not be surprised when it happens.\u00a0 Or when a resentful student shoots up a school.\u00a0 Or when an alienated individual slaughters bystanders in a theater or night club or sporting event.\u00a0 The killers have been encouraged.\u00a0 President Obama, who was in Warsaw plotting increased N.A.T.O. militarization of the Baltic countries, called Johnson a \u201cdemented individual.\u201d\u00a0 In truth, a society that lauds violent solutions, one that has room for militarized police departments and private warrior academies, is demented.\u00a0 Johnson was following Obama\u2019s lead.<\/p>\n
To curtail the epidemic of mass shootings and police homicides, U.S. citizens must address a variety of factors, including racism, insufficient gun regulation, and a depleted public sector.\u00a0 Democratic politicians are good at talking<\/em> about such things; Republicans are mostly in the way.\u00a0 We must also correct a deeply-engrained culture of violent solutions\u2014a culture which politicians from both parties mostly embrace.\u00a0 That correction begins with promoting nonviolent conflict resolution in homes, schools, and places of work.\u00a0 It means relearning, with Rep. John Lewis, the forgotten lessons of the Civil Rights Movement.\u00a0 One of them is this: When the masses use nonviolence, the politicians will follow.<\/p>\n ___________________________________________<\/p>\n Timothy Braatz is a novelist, playwright, and professor of history and peace studies at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, California. His publications include <\/em>Surviving Conquest: A History of the Yavapai Peoples; From Ghetto to Death Camp: A Memoir of Privilege and Luck; Grisham\u2019s Juror; and <\/em>Peace Lessons (forthcoming).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" To curtail the epidemic of mass shootings and police homicides, U.S. citizens must address a variety of factors, including racism, insufficient gun regulation, and a depleted public sector. We must also correct a deeply-engrained culture of violent solutions\u2014a culture which politicians from both parties mostly embrace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglo-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76295","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=76295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76295\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}