A Simple Thing

Here's a simple thing you can do...

When considering the murders and multiple shootings at Planned Parenthood in Colorado...

...Simply say, "I condemn the violence."

 After having to watch the constant loop of the horrific shooting death of Laquan McDonald...

 ... Simply say, "I condemn the violence."

While trying to understand why the city of Chicago is powerless to stop dozens of children from being murdered each year...

...Simply say, "I condemn the violence."

While trying to absorb the atrocities of American bombs destroying a Doctors without Borders Hospital, and Russian bombs claiming the lives of 500 civilians, including 100 children in a bombing campaign in Syria which is just weeks old...

...Simply say, "I condemn the violence."

While we hear each day that a Palestinian has stabbed an Israeli civilian at a bus stop, or driven their car into a crowd, and we see the swift retribution of the IDF which weighs little distinction between children and fighters, even as leaders on both sides remain calcified in their inaction...

...Simply say, "I condemn the violence."

As terrorists attack in Paris, Beirut, Tunisia, and Kano, Nigeria...

... Simply say, "I condemn the violence."

As the UAE fields a force of Columbians, several hundred strong, in a program once managed by the American Mercenary company "Blackwater", to allow the Emirates to carry the fight against Iran in Yemen...

...Simply say, "I condemn the violence."

At every moment when we are tempted to believe that somehow our violence has some noble qualification greater than that of the other...

... Simply say, "I condemn the violence."

Having thought about this, read some responses, and heard more news out of Colorado, simply, as I wrote condemning the violence seems wholly inadequate. I do not mean to suggest that it is not a step and a valuable one towards something like a “beloved community”.

I’m trying to get at something and don’t even know if I can.

As I thought about the first few words and started to write yesterday I was trying to address something, a feeling, a sense of something that I wished to push back against. Does it really matter that the site of the crime was a Planned Parenthood medical facility? Well, yes, and no. Yes, of course, because after months of politicians claiming PP was harvesting parts of aborted fetuses for sale and profit, it cannot be classified as an odd coincidence that this lunatic chose this facility in Colorado Springs. And no, because the face now broadcast across the world is the face we have seen before. Here is another in a long string of mass murderers with crazy hair and dead eyes. These events-- New Town, Aurora, Charleston, and Oak Creek, and on and on and on—all demand some accounting, but out of that we are seldom allowed reconciliation or understanding.  

So, part of what I wanted to say is that it just doesn’t matter what caused this guy to unload on health care givers and young women seeking medical care. Our society is entrapped in a vortex of mass shootings, and so whatever we learn that gives some understanding to the events in Colorado Springs will matter little because another event with other supposedly knowable-- and one would think preventable-- motivation and circumstances is right around the corner.  

The argument seems to be that if only Fiorina and several Republican Congressmen had not uttered their fatuous lies, than three people would still be alive. It mirrors statements that suggested the climate of racial hostility in the country, much of it attached to the President, was the cause of the church shooting in South Carolina. In regards to Charleston, I drew that conclusion myself. But that seems so inadequate now. While there is truth in claims to these connections, in the wake of so many incidents they feel like half-truths. So much so that one has to wonder if not these incidents than what else? So there’s that as my friend Pete would say…

And then there’s this other thing I was trying to get to and missed wildly. Most of us are able to righteously condemn the violence we abhor. But in general we have a tolerance for much more than we should. Rather than condemn violence as method of reconciliation, we condemn that violence, the violence of the other. I will not go through all the examples I sited yesterday, but it’s fair to say our tolerance level is pretty high. We find it easy to condemn here, and explain there. I am not sure we ever had it, but if we were on path, we have lost our way. We have been driven by fear and misery to strike before being struck, and to see the other as somehow less worthy of human understanding.

There is no need for those who oppose Police violence to shy from the overwhelming challenge of crime in poor communities. If there’s one understanding I have held from reading Ta-Nehesi Coates it is the literal understanding that police violence and gang violence are two sides of the same coin in poor communities. For Coates, a young kid in Baltimore, both had to be navigated just as they are by kids in Chicago today. As a society, we can claim to want to do something about the violence, but these are hollow pills until we do something about the circumstances of extreme poverty, including red-lining and other discrimination, inadequate educational opportunities, healthcare, employment and so forth. While the Police must be reformed, suggesting that as a one stop solution to the problems of our cities is a lie.

On the world stage there is near uniform support for bombing campaigns in Syria. The President who has called for nearly 6,000 raids previously is being pressured to step up and do more. Russia, with no compunction to limit civilian casualties, has been roused to reign destruction in cities and towns that were already unrecognizable from what they were just a few years ago. From our arm chairs we look at Paris and demand our leaders call out the bombers. But isn’t that violence too? Are children spared when cities are levelled? In the US and the West, with the exception of a few liberals speaking in opposition, ground troops are being considered again. Our temper it seems always outlasts our memory. When will it end? Or to put it less philosophically, what is the end game? How do any of these militarist scenarios play out differently than those that came before?

And if we’re going to give peace a chance, or at least leaven some aspects of the current strategy with real commitment to hearts and minds, what would that look like? Perhaps we start with condemning the violence, no matter how inadequate that seems, all of it. At minimum we might acknowledge how each hurt builds towards the next. Then rather than pointing to all the institutions which facilitate such tragedy, and there are many that deserve such opprobrium, looking inward and demanding the same judgment. Maybe we would not hurt, but what hurt is done in our name? Are we silent in the face of it? Or do we speak in the name of peace? Demand change? Demand justice? Can we ask for the guns to go silent even for a day?