CGTN
A society that provides guns to its citizens but not healthcare. A society in which lethal violence has been elevated to the status of a virtue and where compassion is considered a vice. A society born in violence and sustained by violence throughout its history. A society defined far more by white supremacy than by the democracy and human rights it presents itself to the world as being a standard bearer for.
This is the U.S., where mass shootings have become such a regular occurrence, they allow the rest of the world to ponder the social implosion they represent at a time when the land of the free has never been more at war with itself.
The latest instalment of mindless slaughter occurred at an elementary school in Texas. The shooter was just 18 years old, the same age as Payton Grendon, the young man who carried out the mass shooting in Buffalo which left 10 black people dead on May 14.
In Texas the gunman Salvador Ramos was killed by the police at the scene. By that time he had managed to kill 19 students and two teachers. Not only were those lives are destroyed, but the lives of their loved ones are also seriously damaged.
These regular mass shootings are the most brutal symptom of a culture in which lethal violence and war have long enjoyed hegemonic status in American popular culture; the ability to engage in gun culture is viewed as connoting strength, courage and freedom. Hollywood amplifies these cultural values with an unending stream of movies in which the ability to kill and do so without compunction is presented as heroic and honorable.
In Hollywood films, they kept imparting the message that we are America, the best there is, and no other country comes close. When this message is imparted to mentally challenged young men who have developed a grudge against society to the point of feeling like victims and living in a society where it is now easier to obtain an assault weapon than it is baby formula, you have a recipe for disaster.
This is not to claim that Hollywood is solely to blame for this phenomenon. Hollywood is a mirror, reflecting back onto America and the rest of the world who and what America is, what it stands for and from where and what it derives meaning. The U.S. happens to be a country I know well, having spent a number of years living there. Most of that time was spent in and around Hollywood, and the last time I visited the place in 2016 I was struck by how much the place had deteriorated.
An ocean of broken humanity colonized its mythical gilded streets, the homeless and mentally ill victims of social values that involve punishing failure and worshipping success with nothing in-between. All across America the abandonment of the poor, the downtrodden and the sick to their fate has been so brutal and cruel that its human consequences given new meaning to Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. America’s poor are a colonized people, be assured, which is why Malcolm X’s assertion that, “You can’t understand what is going on in Mississippi if you don’t understand what is going on in the Congo,” remains one of his most cogent.
U.S. President Joe Biden gave the obligatory solemn speech in response to the Texas slaughter. He put a call for action to tighten up the nation’s gun laws and urged Congress to finally stand up to the gun lobby. America government’s incompetence and inability to take the decision and action necessary to deal with the epidemic of gun violence bespeaks a broken political system.
What does it say when you have a system unable to do what is necessary to protect the nation’s children while they’re at school, due to the opposition of members of Congress who are funded and bought by the gun lobby, yet can sanction the sending of billions in military aid to Ukraine and other countries without any hesitation or opposition whatever?
It says that the U.S. is broken. It says that the U.S.’ real enemy is not Russia or China. It says that the U.S.’ real enemy is itself.
Crazy Horse was an Indian chief and warrior. Just days before he died while resisting imprisonment, he said the following: “The Red Nation shall rise again, and it shall be a blessing for a sick world; a world filled with broken promises, selfishness and separations; a world longing for light again.”
Giving where we are today, who could possibly disagree?
