Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found
In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report
^5000The mainstream imperialist media lie CONSTANTLY. Literally 24/7. And it's getting worse. All of them do it: radio, tv, the newspapers, the movies. The internet. No exceptions. The corporate Big Lie is pervasive and totalitarian. CBS does it. NBC does it. ABC does it. CNN does it. FOX does it. NPR does it. And of course the NYTimes and WaPo do it. Thousands of "diverse" voices telling you the same lies. Enough to convince anyone.
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What Johnstone fails to mention, and it is a prevalent problem amongst those who try to explain the wave of violence that has always permeated the US social scene is that the country was based on conquest, violence and decimation. It is much like any corporation (under Federal laws in 1776 the country was incorporated under a regime that is constantly replaced to secure a safe basis for the oligarchy), namely that its original character remains in force during its existence. Gun culture is a perfidious part of the US nation’s make-up, like religiosity and xenophobia. Reading early records, one encounters the strong argument that the Judeo-Christian wrathful God has ordained this behavior, which is daily reflected in delusionary propaganda arguments still used by the servants to power. In such a poisonous atmosphere, which is indeed not perceived by the public that lives within it, one can hardly expect a rational solution, despite the many efforts by radical journalists.
Mr Pavimentov makes a cogent case for America’s violent, genocidal genesis being a huge factor in the peculiarly American phenomenon of random mass shootings. That said, we must recall that Western Europe itself spent easily almost 2000 years mired in constant brutal warfare with savage killings on all sides, such violence ignited by the most abject and dishonorable of human motives, the desire for personal and tribal aggrandisement. Afte rthe Roman Empire, Europe produced a series of “empires” grounded in constant internecine fighting and bloodbaths, we call this chapter in human history “feudalism”. The artistic legacy of feudalism, castles, statues, etc., and music make us forget the true horrors of feudalism, but they are there. If anything, the US today, due to the primacy of grotesque inequality is replicating such system, wth Bezos and his ilk the new barons, albeit of a new “modern” kind. Maybe America, assuming the planet lives long enough to see it, will emerge fromt his brutal period into a more “civilised one”, as Europe did (despite the barbaric world wars the ruling classes enmeshed that civilisation), but that is not a good bet in my book, just a possibility.
The variables come raining down when it comes to gun violence in the U.S. It’s one of the prominent issues, along with endless wars and grotesque levels of inequality of all sorts that makes this society exceptional.
Violence is as American (read U.S.) as both cherry and apple pie, the former being an observation from the fight for civil rights during the 1960s.
Having written about several gun massacres, and having been in the military and a war resister during the Vietnam era, I agree with all of the links Caitlin Johnstone makes between war, militarism, and gun violence. When a culture of endless wars is “normalized,” and domestic violence and more generalized violence is ever-present, then the connections of a society at war permanently, war profiteering (and domestic gun sales), and machismo, or the frontier ethos, all come into “play.” Mental health is yet another issue and deserves close attention when gun massacres such as the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School are considered.
A personal note: One of my students from the community college where I taught was gunned down during a weekend when he returned home for a visit in 2015. He and his friend were murdered near his family’s front door. I don’t think that this crime has ever been solved, but what was remarkable about the horror of this shooting was that the college where the student was a scholar/athlete made almost no mention of his death.
There are still many illusions about the US expressed even by such scholars as Prof. Chomsky as if a better management would cure the social ill. Though individually US citizens are much like other people and display compassion and loving care, as a collective they repair to positions of power and violence. There are great differences with Western Europe, though that continent has over time been as cruel and anti-human as has been recorded since history began, because the human condition appears to be always that of strife and competitive territorialism, from Mesopotamia, Egypt, India to China. Nowhere however has tribalism reverted into the kind of individualistic isolation as seen here in the center of Capitalism which has allowed for a personal anti-social behavior that asserts its rights to be judge and executioner over fellow human beings. Canada and Switzerland which are quoted as having a greater distribution of weaponry over their citizens, retain a sense of responsibility of the individual for the societal whole, a real sense of belonging. Because of its history as a competitive colony for exploiting as it were fallow lands, the US has retained its flavor of intense isolation of each struggler for new land and many individualistic rights do not make for a harmonious whole. It is why propaganda has been developed to tie the populace into a false sense of belonging and why insecure grandstanding is such a basic feature of life in the US. The hollowness of conscience has been well noted by scholars and is evident in much of the speechifying of its governmental flunkies. Nothing short of a renewed sense of purpose i. e. on how to shape a rationally more equal society with the goal of civic responsibility from all towards all, but unavoidably couched in tribal terms will diminish the epidemic of violence that prevails and increases every day.
And that was why the US was such a perfect foil for Capitalism, namely the forced isolated individualism of the struggle for survival in new territories. Despised Europe could mostly protect its citizens from that by its agrarian feudalist tribalism (though there one finds the roots for Fascism), which gave purpose to the so-called nationalist ideal, first propagated by the French revolutionaries. Every US soldier brought abroad to protect US interests is submitted to facing a real shared brotherhood that exists in the freedom fighters defending their lands and which annihilates their feelings of individualized un-freedom. No wonder they collapse emotionally and start doubting the indoctrination that brought them to their beliefs in righteousness, thus causing a violent reaction to what they perceive here as overwhelming general blindness. Veterans are main victims of the national psyche and unfortunately cannot express their insights because of intense conditioning. To try to induce socialism over that mental roadblock, is to recognize that this isolated individualistic competitiveness makes revolutions well-nigh impossible. A revolution in tribalistic consciousness needs to be brought about first, a major but not entirely impossible task.
We don’t shoot our friends. Why can’t we all be friends? Oh, because capitalism.