Within the American atmosphere which rises far above our heads—one layer atop another—there exists one special layer many people can’t see or prefer to ignore as though it never existed. That is the layer we must call the American Cloud of Violence.
Many Americans are dumbfounded by the amount of violence that is occurring so frequently in our country these days. To top it all off, in recent months several mass shootings have occurred to greatly accentuate our sense of shock with its admixture of disbelief, horror, and sorrow.
Perhaps the first and most challenging question to ask is “What is to be done?” That’s a tough question, apparently, and one which I will not attempt to address here. There is often a second question, equally troubling, that also escapes easy answer, which is “Why?”
Even a quick glance at comparative statistics reveals that other nations do not suffer anywhere near the same number of murders as the United States. I don’t have any magic answers for either of these questions but as regards the second, I’d like to offer a few thoughts.
Today when people and the press discuss violence, they generally are referring to the latest murder on the street or the latest mass shooting spree in a theater, school, or other crowded public venue. Lone murders with a single victim are still reported, of course, but the nation’s attention only seems to be truly aroused and riveted by the stories of mass shootings.
We know (or at least can surmise) that some of the shooters are troubled individuals. They may have had a hard life, been victims of abuse themselves, or suffer from some sort of emotional and intellectual shortfall: mentally ill or otherwise warped personality.
Of course, not all shooters are certifiably crazy, certainly not within the parameters of the legal system. If they knew the difference between right and wrong at the time of their deadly actions, they can be found “sane”.
(This designation may befuddle those of us who can never think of murder and mass slaughter as the actions of a sane person but we must keep in mind that the legal definition of “sane” is more narrowly construed than the general public’s version of “crazy”).
I would suggest that there is another kind of violence to consider: that which permeates all of American history. We like to flatter ourselves and boast of our economic progress with a cutting-edge technology that is truly amazing, whether civilian or military. And that’s all true—as far as it goes.
The fact is, such boasting is hardly honest self-reflection and seldom does justice to the larger picture. When people ask “Why does America have so much more violence than other nations?” a good place to start would be with our history. Ask yourself which other countries can match us in this regard:
First and foremost, we have a long and bloody history when we consider how Europeans used brute force to wrest land away from Native American nations and tribes. It started in the early 1600’s and didn’t stop until the late 1800’s and in some aspects continues on even today.
Second (as if that wasn’t bad enough) we have the long and bloody history of slavery. It’s not easy to summarize the grotesque and psychotic nature of the violence of many American slave-owners, other than to say it was as bad and persistent and cruel as one can possibly imagine.
People today hear the word “violence” and they think of a criminal, weapon in hand, breaking the law by robbing a store. That’s a violent crime, to be sure, and society has a right to condemn and prosecute the offender.
At the same time, we conveniently choose to ignore the fact that a great deal of American violence has always been committed by people in positions of power, who repeatedly (and immorally) gave themselves a free pass time after time.
Indeed, there was hardly ever an act of aggression or oppression against Native Americans or Black slaves that could not be rationalized, no matter how cruel, petty, gratuitous, vindictive, or just plain bestially malicious such acts were.
These many violent strands within the history of the American nation itself—and its rise to prominence as a world power—is inextricably woven into this Cloud of Violence with all of its horrendous whippings, rapes, murders, and massacres once tolerated as “legal”, “normal” and “sane”.
I shall not attempt to go into all of the details of this relentless and merciless campaign of endless brutality against Native Americans and African-Americans. The specifics are simply too gory and I do not have the time or space to do them justice now; further, I do not wish to be accused of indulging in horror stories merely for the sake of their shock value. Yet for the last several centuries, almost any kind of violence could be perpetrated against Indians and Blacks with the perpetrators having little fear of arrest or prosecution.
The wars of conquest against Native Americans were brutal campaigns of near-genocidal subjugation; they included horrific massacres: Pequot, Kingsley Cave, Sand Creek, Wounded Knee, to name but a few. This is not to speak of the unwonted violence wrought by settlers who murdered Native Americans with impunity, knowing that no legal action would ever be taken against them.
As for slavery, what can one say of a system that attempts to strip an entire race of its essential humanity? A system that would not treat Black slaves as human beings but as property, where bloody whippings were commonplace alongside many other types of humiliating degradation and violent punishments?
If Americans are looking for the causes of today’s acts of violence, I suggest they start here, with a truthful account of the “approved” and “legal” violence perpetrated against millions of Native Americans and African Americans over the last three centuries.
This long bloody and brutal record has never been equaled in modern times nor any attempts made to atone for the worst of it: no apologies, no reparations, no programs to elevate their descendants into a position of opportunity and equality alongside other American families whose ancestors never suffered from a similar fate.
For Black Americans, their historical memories are saturated with a sad and bloody truth. Their ancestors were sold or kidnapped into slavery in Africa, followed by a horrific Middle Passage where many tens of thousands died before the oceanic crossing was completed. Bodies were thrown overboard when the situation warranted it, as in escaping British ships aiming to capture the slavers (“slave ships”) to end to the slave trade.
The gory trans-Atlantic Middle Passage was followed by chattel slavery in the Americas with maiming, murder, rape, and whipping commonplace—to say nothing of the daily brutality used to enforce the regimen of slave labor itself. The horrendous nightmares and screams, the despair and despondency, the slaves’ whispered prayers for mercy were to fall on deaf ears; their tearful pleas for compassion were to go unheeded time and time again.
All of this violence rose into the living breathing atmosphere above our heads; all of this misery and suffering, pain and heartache rose into the American Cloud of Violence. There is no wind or storm so strong that can ever dissipate this atmospheric Layer of Violence that has become an indelible part of the story of America.
For Native Americans, the cruelties and sufferings they endured would fill many books, each page soaked with the tears, sweat, and blood of men, women, and children who were not allowed to live in peace and enjoy their way of life.
The racist myths developed to try and rationalize these aggressive land-grabbing thefts are still with us today: the “heathen” and the “savage” are falsely presented in our history books so the “victors” can offer up a greatly distorted self-serving tale of what happened: a story that is essentially a lie from start to finish.
In fact, thousands of Indians were pushed off their lands; villages and crops were destroyed; women were raped and the tribe’s bravest warriors killed by the mechanical trigger action provided by superior weapon technology.
European diseases ran rampant through the villages and during their death marches; whole tribes were forced into submission, the survivors relocated to the worst land no one else wanted. On these poorest reservations they were allowed to suffer and die from starvation and illness.
All promises were broken and treaties disregarded as though they never existed—deceit and treachery were constantly practiced until defrauding Native Americans became its own game, its own recognizable form of the greedy aggrandizement of wealth, aided and abetted by the arbitrary abuse of power.
Much of this mistreatment will make a person ill if they dig deep enough and get down to foundation truths. The massacres committed by European-Americans are without reason, justice, or mercy; soldiers and organized armed civilians senselessly slaughtered innocent women and children.
Even Christianized Indians and peaceful Indians were murdered just the same as those “hostiles” fighting to hold on to their land and their way of life. And all of this violence, too, rose above our heads and remains within the American Cloud of Violence. I can go on; there are many other groups of Americans who suffered legally sanctioned violence at the hands of their New American Masters.
Indeed, nearly every colored minority, every working class stiff, every oppressed woman, and every activist who ever protested for civil and constitutional rights against an unyielding dominant social structure, has faced violence.
It is the American way not to allow any of these groups quick or easy access to their fundamental human rights but to oppose with ferocious intensity all such attempts to achieve even the slightest equality with the dominant social class.
All of this violence keeps rising into the atmosphere above our heads, into the American Cloud of Violence. I could go on but this blog is long enough as it is.
The point is, the next time you or your friends or anyone else appears mystified by the amount of violence occurring in America today, just remember one thing: American history.
This is a history replete with brutal oppression and violent subjugation of conquered and enslaved peoples. You must remember our nation’s history and all of its endless violence perpetrated against Black people, Native Americans, women, colored minorities, workers, organizers, activists, and all the rest.
The violence today is not an anomaly, not some unexpected hiccup or unrecognizable phenomenon departing from an idealized (but falsified) American norm of peace and good will.
Today’s violence includes acts that fit perfectly into the American continuum of death and destruction of innocent lives. Today’s American violence accurately reflects its historical origins where every page of the nation’s story is blood-soaked with the injuries and deaths of tens of thousands of Americans.
To make matters worse, this one-sided and rationalized bloody story is reproduced endlessly in our movies and television shows, in our books and magazines, our newspapers and textbooks. The history of these bloody tales is so awful, so long, so, constant so unremitting—that it is hard for a normal American to keep his or her life in balance.
That being true, what effect will the American Cloud of Violence have on the minds and emotions of less stable individuals coming from broken homes, from dysfunctional relationships full of physical and emotional abuse, living lives all too often augmented by the demons of booze and drugs?
What does the Cloud of Violence do to all those unfortunate individuals suffering from the mental ravages of delusion or rage at being bullied, ignored, taunted, and humiliated? Just like the rest of us, they grew up in a world breathing in the fumes and noxious toxins emanating from this Cloud of Violence every day of their lives!
What do Americans expect is happening to their minds–our minds–when all forms of our cultural media show tens of thousands of pictures of violent bloody scenes every hour of every day, year after year?
Listen, America! Did you think there would never be any consequences or repercussions for three centuries of this brutal violence against minorities? Did you think Americans could continue to pretend forever that none of it ever really happened, and that somehow this foolish pretense would win the day against the legacy of reality?
The harsh truth is not the frequency of murders and mass shootings that we are witnessing; the harsh truth is that we have no reason to be surprised by such continuing violence. We have lived our whole lives under the American Cloud of Violence. We have been breathing its poisonous vapors for years and years.
Surprised? Hardly! Violence begets violence. If anyone should understand that basic fact, Americans should. No matter how hard we whine or complain or wish life in America could somehow be different, the American violence of the past will not leave us alone. We can pray and hope and plead but we cannot change or undo this bloody past.
The next time you hear anyone discussing violence–trying to understand why other countries don’t experience as many murders and mass shootings as America does–I suggest you point them toward a path where they might one day find an answer by whispering two words: slavery and genocide.
Maybe when they’re ready they will even be able to see and understand what is meant by the American Cloud of Violence. It may seem invisible above our heads; it may be that meteorologists have not yet recognized it as a legitimate meteorological phenomenon, but I tell you it exists and that it is there.
“American history” is not the whole answer to the two questions posed at the start of this blog, but it is at least part of the answer and must be recognized as such; to ignore our violent past or to pretend that it is not part of the answer to any degree, is to condemn ourselves and American society to an endless cycle of violence that can never be broken.
The first step is to admit the truth of our own violent history. We must do so honestly and start to atone for our own nation’s sins before we can find a meaningful way to take the next step, whatever and wherever that vital life-saving second step may turn out to be.
And maybe someday, against all odds, that ever-present Cloud of Violence always floating above our heads will finally begin to dissipate, and “peace and tranquility” will return to earth once more.
