Thoughts on Dallas, Baton Rouge, et al

I've been trying to grasp why the shooters in Dallas and Baton Rouge did what they did – mass violence against an other that they saw as oppressing them.

Understanding never implies justification. It means I want to crawl inside their minds and try to see why they did what they did.

Let's face it – when the founding fathers saw that they had no recourse against the British, they resorted to violence. We call it the Revolutionary War. Things didn't go so well in the second round – the War of 1812 wasn't so glorious.

The Civil War was a result of the southern states saw that they had no recourse over the issue of slavery. It was on the way out no matter what. They chose to give it up the hard way and have been fighting against the results of the Civil War ever since. We call it “Jim Crow.”

We were lied into World War I by Woodrow Wilson's propaganda machine to fight a people that did not want to fight us.

The only way to end World War II was violence,  or never to have stuck our noses into World War I.

Every time we perceive a threat to us and our “way of life” we respond with violence.

Look at what we did to the First Nations peoples. We did it so well that Adolf Hitler modelled the concentration camps used to attempt exterminate the Jews after them.

It's ingrained in our culture. Look at the literature we feed our children. Starting in elementary school on up.

Look at the “blockbuster” Hollywood movies – violence solves all. Chuck Norris, Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, Steven Segal, Jean Claude van Dam, and the list goes on.Sylvester Stallone anyone?

When the United Sates feels threatened – it sends in the military, which it goes out of its way to glorify in the news, in the movies, and pretty much everywhere you look.

If the US has a problem with a country and they don't want to “listen to our voice of reason” - in come special forces and the drones.

In high school or in college and don't have the money to complete your degree or even get started? Join the military.

So I was not really surprised when I read & heard that both shooters were African American and Iraq or Afghanistan war veterans. They were doing what we trained them to do – kill the people that they saw were a threat to their safety.

In this case it was their fellow Americans. And they were police officers.

Given how the police treat African Americans and the reported (and I wonder how much goes unreported) violence against them – in particular the heavily reported street executions of African Americans - left them with only one response. And it's what America always does when it feels threatened. They – and America- resort to violence.

Sad to say, it's part of our country's psyche. And if we want the killing to stop than as a society we need to stop glorifying the use of violence as a solution to every problem that comes along.

British police are taught de-escalation tactics in response to hostile individuals. They have a lower mass shooting rate (statistically measured) than we do. Maybe we could learn something from them?

Maybe we could learn something from Jesus and the Bible? (His name is/was actually Yeshua/Joshua. Jesus is a bad translation of the Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English.) After all, I hear so many conservatives and Bible thumpers say that this is a Christian nation. Well, prove it. Get out of those pews and do some loving towards “the least of these.” Jesus/Joshua said to “love one another (as he) loved us.” Well, show me the love. I hear it from the pulpit on Sunday and nothing like it on Monday through Saturday. (BTW: That's where it matters the most and I must say that there are people that practice peace and love.  The Quakers come to mind  There are others I'm sure.)

We need to change as a society and go beyond the words of condemning violence. Yes, sometimes we need a strong military to put down someone like Hitler. That is an exception.  We should never use it as a rule.

But it was violence that got us into this hole in the first place.

And more violence is never going to get us out of it.

And in Cleveland we have what is being called “Four Daze of Rage” as the Republicans anoint Trump as their presidential candidate. Hillary – another war hawk will be anointed in Philadelphia (the city of brotherly love – how ironic) not soon after.

Somehow I have no hope that this change will come from above.

So we have to do it at the bottom and work our way up – putting out of power those that embrace violence and putting into power those that seek alternatives to the mindless violence that has put us into this never ending nightmare.

I fell angry and sad for the victims of police violence.

I feel angry and sad for the police that have been gunned down in the last two weeks.

I feel angry and sad for the shooters that saw no other way because we as a society taught them no other way.

I feel angry and sad that we failed all of them by failing to show them a better way.

They all are the victims of our failed violent society and culture.

When will we ever learn?

Will we ever learn?

Where have all the flowers gone?

Long time passing.