The recent killing spree at a bar in Thousand Oaks, California, by Marine vet, Ian David Long, was a chilling reminder of the war mentality promoted by our government.
Long walked into the bar and murdered 12 people, mostly young patrons, before taking his own life. He posted on his Facebook page before going to the bar, “Yeah…I’m insane, but the only thing you people do after these shootings is ‘hopes and prayers’ or ‘keep you in my thoughts’…every time…and wonder why these keep happening.”
Wonder if anyone in the government will hear that? Wonder if all the NRA supports got the message?
Ironically, the mother of one of the young people murdered at the bar told reporters she didn’t want anyone’s prayers, what she wanted was gun regulation.
Wonder if anyone in the government will pay any attention to that?
Ian David Long was not insane, but he certainly was profoundly disturbed. He returned from military conflict lost in a fog of unresolved rage and the damaging psychological effects of war.
Our government promotes, produces, and praises war and violence. We have been in brutal, bloody conflicts since 2001. Interestingly enough, our worst enemies since then have been our own people, most of them military vets mentally scarred from combat.
Prior to 911, the worst terrorist attack on American soil was perpetrated, not by Islamic radicals, but by Gulf War veteran, Timothy McVeigh. He was furious with how the Clinton government handled the Waco raid on the David Koresh compound. The FBI firebombed the building killing Koresh along with women and children.
McVeigh, a radicalized Christian, and a decorated war vet, took that personally. Something snapped within him and his fury was unleashed in his bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City. He saw it as an attack on a vile and wicked government.
Before his execution, he quoted Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, “Our government is the potent, omnipresent teacher. For good or ill it teaches the whole people by its example.”
That is a powerful truth, and a shaming indictment on government then and now.
These wars we have initiated and fueled across the Middle East, wars our government still today supports with billions of American dollars, wars that endlessly destroy the lives of our young men and women, are without question full of instruction. And what they tell us about our government is frightening and despairing.
Ours is a violent government. We are a violent people. Our politics is infested with a spirit of attack, acrimony, disorder, destructiveness. Our political leaders are examples of this spirit. Their divisive rhetoric, their assaults on the character of their political opponents, their scheming and plotting are calculated to separate and tear apart any meaningful cooperation. What we are left with is boiling anger in the country.
And into that whirlwind of chaos, we reap the rampage of ruined war vets, marksmen, excellent soldiers, but men trained to kill people, to take no prisoners, to destroy at all costs. And when there is little or no protection against their derangement, and even an atmosphere that irresponsibly tolerates it, then we are left with the poorest and most incompetent kind of instruction imaginable.
We are taught, not to reason but to react, not to be rational but to emotionally explode, not to be human but to embrace ego, selfishness, and even savagery.
Clinton, Bush, and Obama left us with a warring mentality in government. Is it any wonder that Trump carries it on with frightening deftness? And I’m not just talking about war battles. I’m talking about the spirt of war, to damage and destroy others.
There are, however, glimmers of hope, mostly in the women who are going to Congress. Perhaps we can get new instruction from them, and new examples, of how government can be a force for dynamic, healthy progress, basic goodness, and world peace.
If not, like ancient Rome, the end of our genius, brilliance, and humanitarianism is not far away.
© 2018 Timothy Moody
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