Update Below**
I, like every other person lately, have been talking about violence, guns, hate speech, religious, racial and political tribalism; these are things I stand in opposition to. And I know that makes me different than many folks out there. If you want a gun, use guns, own guns you also then condone, encourage, and likely propagate violence. Violence is violence, be it against humans or other animals. If you eat meat (the flesh of other beings) you condone, encourage, propagate, promote, necessitate violence. These are denigrations and devaluations of other living beings. I am against this.
Most of you who own a gun in the belief that it is for your protection are likely "against" violence too--but primarily just when perpetrated on you. There is no protection in small scale escalation. The singular human is not a super power armed with nuclear weapons--there is no uneasy truce as a consequence of mutually assured destruction. Uncontrolled passions pull triggers as often as those who commit premeditated murder.
As I continue to say, this country has a birthright that is blood-soaked and god-soaked and I do not believe these can be separated in many minds. We are vengeful and petty; often very small-minded. Our politicians, in the wake of "senseless" violence speak of our "better angels" but these are few in number and appear to be absent in many of us. And while I know that this has always walked among us through history, I would propose that atrocities are often a product of madmen-leaders run amok who visit death upon their own populations; it's hard not to feel as if this mentality is walking among a very large number of our citizens...that we have many mad-men and mad-women walking among us. I would never in my life express pleasure at the murder of anyone and yet this is now a kind of national chorus for many people.
But this is our core. We are founded by killers and mercantile opportunists. We are founded upon the slaughter the native population. We tell ourselves tales of "escape from religious persecution" while continuing this practice once settled in this land. We have burned and hanged many of those who spoke of a different god or different order. We have enslaved and murdered millions. We came through civil war, more blood-soaked, more god-soaked, to change one practice, but not ourselves and not our beliefs. We continue aggrieved and murderous--always a victim, always having been wronged by the other, yet always yielding a more powerful weapon. We murder abroad with impunity. This is incontrovertible; interpret as you will to fit your tribal perspective it will not absolve you of the past. It is yours. This is our Deep. It is a chasm that separates the minds and souls among us. Some stand against our violence and some embrace it. I know what I stand for and what I stand against.
I beg you to spend some time with the links below; I then beg you to send them to your all of your friends, but especially those on the other side of the deep; then I beg you to try to have a real conversation about these things. Why the call to violence everywhere? This is partisan. You cannot find this kind of murderous aggression in a liberal mind. It is abhorrent and frightening and if you don't think so then we stand for a different world; we are on opposite sides of this divisive rift in our humanity.
Homegrown
One Side of Our Mouth
Tribal Genocide
**Update
Arthur Silber says as much with more passion.
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