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Many Faces Of Violence In The US - Lessons For India
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Many Faces Of Violence In The US - Lessons For India
By Dr Meera Srinivasan, November 2013 [msrini2011@googlemail.com]
Chapter :
It is important countries that have legitimate criticisms of the United States, or are aware of the declining standards in the US - especially its cities, do not assume that they can conveniently ignore poverty, disparity, corruption, crookedness, sexism, classism and anti-intellectualism within their own societies. Evolved minds learn from others' mistakes, failures or arrogant mis-directions, as well their own...not just feel glum and glee at another's decline and fall.
Militarization of American society and psyche, that began more than a hundred years ago, continues to control much of the American foreign policy...not only in the Middle East but in other regions as well.
Some see the recent US B-52 bomber flying over two small islands, more like isles, center of contention between China, that calls the islands Diaoyu, and Japan, that calls the islands Senkuku, as a provocative behavior on the part of the Americans.
The question is: What is the necessity for the US military to fly this military aircraft, stationed in Guarm, at this time over this specific space...especially when negotiations with Iran are yet to be completed?
Some would call this US fear of growing Chinese power and influence in the region. Some would say this is America looking for a new military deployment as an old modus operandi for new employment.
The US military and security, that includes its intelligence, surveillance, border patrol, immigration and customs, law enforcement and the prison industrial complex, employs, domestically and internationally, one out of five Americans. Because of this very skewed ratio in employment, and its economic value, few Americans are willing to challenge the way their own government, and many related corporations, operate...creating a bizarre contradiction between spending that is out of control; frugality that is applied to mostly social programs...and a defense budget that remains bloated, unquestioned and much of it highly secretive.
America is not just a country of too many contradictions...but one of growing unhealthy extremes. A country known for pragmatism and action once is now a country that appears to be jumping from issue to issue without completion, thought or foresight, appearing impulsive, militant and provocative.
Unfortunately useful or insightful counsel from allied countries in Europe, Asia and Africa have been ignored and flouted by the US, while the American allies are being spied on and subjected to humiliating forms of surveillance.
Some comic books show America as an "out of control Frankenstein monster" that does what it wants, and at times, like a scared confused paranoid patient in a sanitarium, attacks the very people who liked it, understood it, supported it and worked with it. While these popular critiques are overly simplistic or sensationalistic, they do speak to growing extremes in certain foreign and domestic policies. Some would say that was bound to happen with a long skewed history of American enmeshment in the Middle East.
In American popular folklore ware wolves and vampires are fantasy creatures that are supposed to emerge from man-made societies built on exploitation, tyranny, genetic mutation, eugenics, scientific tinkering with nature without social values, and abuse of power by those without empathy, compassion and a sense of justice.
Ware wolves are anthropomorphic creatures, half man and half animal, who carry the carnivorous desire, impulse and predatory need of a wild wolf...with a man's cunning, insights and intelligence. They stalk their prey carefully, and later hunt them down viciously. Some say the circular cunning between Jewish American or Israeli Intelligence and Iranian Intelligence (so masterfully shown in the early episodes of the TV series Homeland), where agents craftily stalk those on the other side, compete for control and then quickly attack with sophisticated undetectable technology, is a good example of the ware wolf psychology.
Vampires are another popular fantasy horror creatures in the American folklore. They suck blood from unsuspecting or innocent people for their survival. Human vampires' existence, as the myth goes, depends on the destruction and death of others through a process that is both predatory and consumptive. Their behaviors of sucking blood from humans and other living species for survival become, over time, an addiction.
These fantasy horror creatures are presented as physiologically, neurologically and psychologically so unusual and grotesque that they survive only by consuming the life force of others. There is no room here for co-existence, negotiation, compromise or even mutually agreed upon parasitic existence. It is either "you sacrifice yourself by giving your blood and dying willingly", or "these human vampires take your blood forcefully until you weaken, shrink and disappear".
These popular American mythological creatures, now the subject of well known Hollywood movies and TV series, speaks to the dark urges, impulses, dysfunctionalities, deviances and unhealthy addictions within the American psyche and the Western Anglo men.
The question is not whether such deviances, dysfunctionalities and unhealthy addictions exist in other countries or cultures. They do...But why are they so widely accepted as normal in American culture, and even passionately defended as an essential part of American psychology of success by those in power?
While it is true that crime in the US might have fallen in the last ten years, it is still much higher than most societies - especially so-called developed nations. Shootings, attacks with weapons, murders, kidnappings, molestations, rape and actual enslavement of children and women (a shocking trend) is still very high in the US, and is the highest among developed nations. There are hundred thousand disappearances of children, teens and young women in the US every year. More than fifty percent end in death, rape, molestation, or all three.
Mass shootings that mostly occurs in public spaces or work places, and result in the death of three or more people, are no longer a rare event. They occur every six months or so...and even result in the deaths of very young children and school teachers. Columbine School shooting, Virginia Tech mass murder, Oakland college assaults, Aurora Theater killings and Newtown school massacre...are just a few that have garnered international headlines. Newtown shooting, that occurred in December of 2012, resulted in the death of twenty-one first graders, and eight teachers and school staff. Since then there have been at least five mass shootings in the US.
Lot of violence among family members that end in murder or murder-suicide are not recorded as mass shootings in many police records, but as domestic violence. Domestic violence is also high in the US, and growing. While only serious injuries, murders and police reported events, involving family members, are documented as domestic violence...lot of family violence are rarely reported or well documented (as is the case in many developing countries, including India).
The difference between domestic violence in the US and domestic violence in other countries is that family violence in the US, that includes spousal abuse, results in "higher numbers of murders and acute injuries" because of the involvement of weapons, usually guns. Due to high level of gun ownership, and easy access to guns, guns of all sorts are often used in many domestic disagreements, quarrels and disputes.
While it appears like a no brainer to know that "removing weapons" from people, families and their homes would reduce gun related violence, including domestic violence, the gun lobby is so powerful that it controls public opinion, legislation and community priorities on these matters.
Current laws favor gun manufacturers and sellers, and helps them maintain their multi-billion dollar industry.
One must add, as a caveat, that there are socially legitimate uses of guns, like for hunting, sport, self defense...that does not always result in the murder of innocent people. But the attitude behind gun purchase and ownership, whether a gun is actually discharged or not, carries a distorted view that "gun related activities are mostly fun, safe, helpful and necessary".
Those who question and oppose the gun purchase and ownership feel, while owning guns has been common in American history and culture, and the Constitution itself has protected this so-called right, the current excessive buying of guns, and sales of assault rifles and military-style combat weapons, are fairly new. This new trend, growing in the last twenty years, has baffled many social scientists.
Some see this growing ownership of guns, especially assault weapons and machine guns, as increased success in salesmanship and marketing by the gun industry. Some tie this growth in gun sales and popularity of assault weapons to the growing violence in some cities and small towns. Some connect it to a growing "militia mentality" that perceives the government as "the new enemy".
With lack of transparency from some government departments, particularly with the recent exposure of the secret surveillance of innocent American citizens and civilians, the need for ordinary Americans to arm themselves against those they "do not know, do not understand, do not agree with and do not trust" has grown. Some of this need might appear "absurd and extreme", as they are...but some of it comes from a long American history of civil unrest, civil war, civil disobedience, civic discontent, civic unrest and civic uprising...fought with guns.
As they say among the older circles, "The men of the South pointed a gun at their own father, brother, pastor and son to defend slavery. The good guys from up North needed to take up guns to protect themselves and abolish slavery. Guns in America have done good and bad for the people. It is only a tool...in a society where divisions, disparities and discontent wanes and waxes. Who will hurt and harm with a gun; who will benefit and gain from a gun and who will do good for the larger society with a gun has varied in the past, and is yet to be determined in the current social climate".
Some would say the excessive design, manufacture and popularization of killing-tools, like a sword or a gun, constructed to injure, disable and murder living species, speaks to a distorted or a dysfunctional nature.
And those who research gun purchase, gun sales and gun violence overlook the psychology behind gun ownership and gun use.
In the old and new American agrarian country guns were and are used for hunting, sport, self defense and rite of passage for boys. In the rugged American west guns were a tool through which differences were settled, justice was enforced, stress and outrage were expressed, and vengeance and vendetta were sought. American city cultures have used guns to enforce the law, deter crimes and commit crimes (including its use in many gang and mafia activities).
With such popular, favorable and almost affectionate attitude to guns...banning guns, limiting gun purchase or ownership, and regulating guns among civilians is a hard battle for many anti-gun activists in the US. And as some Americans hear more about government surveillance, secrecy and manipulation...more determined they are to own guns and defend their right to freedom, independence, privacy, and to fight what they perceive is a possible tyranny.
President Obama's struggle to bring in appropriate gun regulations, after the Newtown massacre and few other mass shootings since then, by finding the perfect middle ground, where all opposing views and conflicting needs can be balanced and adequately negotiated, has failed.
With this history, reality and social psychology we have to wonder if the weapons, that were responsible for the annihilation of native communities in American history and enslavement of Blacks and colored people, would become the instruments of self defense in future America as social priorities and profiles diverge?
Victory for the vulnerable, the exploited, the unsuspecting and the indigenous has been either absent, or very limited, in the history of the United States. Not only were many natives tribes of North America hounded, hunted and exterminated, but the few who survived, or cooperated and collaborated with the Anglo European invaders and colonizers, were thrown into badlands, known as reservations...where they slowly declined in rights, self determination and basic dignity.
Many native communities of North America, like the Aborigines of Australia, ended up in acute poverty or on welfare: uneducated, addicted to drugs and alcohol and/or living off of handouts and charity. They collectively lost their confidence, pride and appropriate control over their own land and resources. With their communities destroyed, cultures decimated, families dysfunctionalized, economies ruined and their psychology weakened ....the natives struggled to take charge of their own lives.
Slavery was another organized institutionalized violence in the US...the consequence and shame of which are still apparent. Blacks were torn from their families and villages, shackled and forcefully taken, through fear, intimidation and torture, to a region of the world far from their home and continent, that they would never be able to flee even if they won their freedom.
And winning freedom from slavery in the United States required a civil war between Anglo men who believed in slave labor and those who wished to abolish race based indentured servitude. Even the men who wanted to abolish slavery believed in one way or the other in the inferiority of the Black race, while fighting for a cause that was considered "fundamentally American": that all men are created equal under God and the American Constitution (that is supposed to protect every citizen and legal resident).
After the abolition of slavery institutionalized violence against Blacks continued in the form of Jim Crow laws. Blacks were denied equal education, equal access to work, equal pay, equal opportunities, equal ownership of land, property and business...and equal rights. Before the civil rights movement Blacks, even those who fought side by side with their own White brothers, in the World Wars, Korean war and the Vietnam war, could not ride the same bus, attend the same school or college, nor go to the same restaurants and public places as the Whites .
And at the time of the civil rights movement, in the 50s and the 60s, even Anglo women had limited rights compared to Anglo men. Though American women, by the 1970s, had won their right to vote, go to public schools and colleges and seek employment...what was available to women, beyond wifehood and motherhood, beyond care giving and caretaking and beyond domestic chores and home duties....was very limited.
Women in the US, just two generations ago, like women elsewhere, got married young, had children young and primarily served male needs, ambitions and aspirations. They could be a suburban house wife, a rich doctor's spouse, a successful engineer's secretary, a well respected scientist's assistant, a professor's aid...but few could easily, successfully and comfortably become a doctor, an engineer, a scientist or a professor themselves.
Even the kind of work women could do in the community provided little security, self satisfaction, happiness, liberation or salvation. Many women were stuck between being bored, unhappy, abused or enslaved wives at home, and/or being over worked, neglected, infantilized and exploited women at work.
As Blacks and women in the US say, "Racism has not thoroughly disappeared in the US, and sexism keeps rearing its ugly head frequently." The concerted effort by Conservative political leaders even today to curb or eliminate safe and affordable reproductive options for women is a case in point.
Violence against women and people of color, direct or indirect, individual or institutional and obvious or subtle, has been both historical and political...and is deeply embedded in the social and cultural reality of America.
In India, while racism may not exist, and some may consider casteism a form of racism (though caste is not connected to skin color or appearance), classism and sexism remains extreme, and more acute than the US today. Many American liberal activists fear that if America continues the way it does it would become another Third World nation like India...with beggars, including pot bellied starving children, swarming around with their hands held out pleading for a few paisas and some food, with mediocrity and corruption widely prevalent and protected at the top. This might be an exaggerated image of modern India...but it is a growing American fear.
There are those, outside and inside the US who feel, rightly so, that the fight for middle class is directed, at times, by a narrow and skewed definition of American middle class, and an unfair wealth generation. Homes with three or more cars; highways that require constant management and repairs; an aging population that requires security and health care; expensive health services for the rich and the well insured; social programs and government bailouts that benefit the wealthy, the crooked or the savvy; a large national and local budget for security...are all examples of a society with an unsustainable middle and mobile class.
Added to the institutionalized racism and muted sexism is the emerging concern with police brutality against ordinary people across the US. Excessive use of force, or excessive use of guns, that cause injuries, disabilities and deaths to thousands of innocent civilians have sky rocketed in the US.
Blacks, immigrants, poor people and others, discriminated or disempowered historically, have always suffered police authoritarianism and brutality more so than Whites, the middle class and the rich in the US. Higher reporting, better documentation, more direct recording of police conduct or misconduct (through videos and hidden cameras), and the greater public demand for transparency, have helped to reveal and publicize police violations and violence.
Once the exclusive burden of Blacks and poor communities and neighborhoods, today police violence, brutality and violation of human rights are affecting middle class and White communities too. The new TV series, "Orange is the New Black" (2013), referring to the orange jumpsuit that many prison inmates are expected to wear, speaks to the authoritarianism, tyranny and militarization of the American law enforcement, as well as growing number of crimes being committed by Anglo working and middle class families.
A recent report in the US showed that many middle class wives, mothers and teens are resorting to prostitution to maintain their lifestyle...which includes three or four cars, nice shoes, expensive handbags and extravagant vacations. The same report talked about working class families, unemployed men, middle class couples and financially strapped White Americans taking up the manufacture of meth and other illegal drugs, as well as trafficking in narcotics, for economic survival or security.
Many Americans are indulging in illegal activities to survive, pay off their debt or get rich quickly. Only a few among the middle and upper class criminals are getting caught and convicted. In fact financial crimes are almost a Medal of Honor, and rite of passage, among the wealthy and among those in big corporate America. In the US it has always been a thin line, often broken, between financial savviness, innovativeness and crookedness.
The American judiciary has allowed, through its own racism, sexism, prejudice and partiality, a lot of perversities in the status quo to continue and grow. It has, on many occasions, protected or acquitted criminals and murderers. George Zimmerman's acquittal, after stalking and killing a young unarmed teenager in cold blood in public in Florida, is a case in point.
After the murder the police who investigated the crime scene did not arrest Mr. Zimmerman. It took a large national protest from Blacks parents of teens, concerned suburban families, community leaders and other civilians to push the police to arrest George Zimmerman, and put him through the right legal and judicial review to decide his innocence.
In the end George Zimmerman's acquittal, after an intense trial, had little to do with his innocence, and much more to do with the "Stand Your Ground law" that allowed many shooters to argue legally, though not ethically or truthfully, their "self defense rights" to get away with murder, and a racist jury that disliked and distrusted the young Black victim, Trayvon Martin, from the start.
In places like Florida justice for many Blacks, Browns, immigrants and poor people is very limited. It is also most of the time selective and skewed. Even second degree burns on innocent customers and civilians, caused by small businesses due to their recklessness and carelessness, will not be adequately addressed, redressed or compensated for...because the system at the top works for the well connected - the "good old boys" (really the bad old boys), criminals and crony professionals (with little ethics, standards and honesty) - like in many Third World nations.
Unfortunately many immigrants, in their eagerness to come to the US, survive here and succeed economically, play right into this status quo: its exploitations, deceptions, violations and violence, and, knowingly or unknowingly, hurt innocent civilians or customers.
If one moves further south in Florida there are different kinds of organized and institutional violence to contend with. This is the new so-called "border problem" that runs across the Southern territories. There have been headline news on the growing tension between the US and Mexico in the border areas that has escalated into a crowd of Mexicans throwing stones at US border patrol officers. The officers have retaliated with machine guns on what they perceive as "unruly mobs".
In the last few years there have been growing complaints that Mexican citizens, living close to the border between the US and Mexico, have been shot and killed by US border patrol officers for reasons other than illegal migration, nefarious activities or suspicious conducts. US border control authorities have called such actions "mistakes, oversights or collateral damage when conducting raids against cartels or unauthorized border crossings". Mexican government and its border residents have called this "callous policing, reckless conduct by those who carry weapons and patrol the border...and outright racism against Mexicans".
Some have worried that growing violence by border patrol officers is a reactive and a provocative behavior...from a new breed of highly militarized ultra-Right security agents.
The number of Mexican citizens shot and killed by US border patrol guards, authorized to carry military combat weapons, is growing, say activists and investigators concerned with border issues (http://www.propublica.org). Propublica, an American online magazine committed to investigative reporting, has several articles on the growing militarization of the US-Mexican border, and excessive use of surveillance and intelligence technology in controlling and managing the border, as well as areas 100 miles north of the border. Such military and surveillance technology includes radars, drones and long distance tasers (that can inflict high level electric charges on people's bodies - either immobilizing or killing them).
Many Anglo Americans in the South, especially near the border areas, though conservative and religious with strong anti-Federal government beliefs, fear what they see as a "Latino, Hispanic or Mexican takeover of their communities". This new migration, they claim, is radically changing the cultural and social profile of their communities, and their sense of "peace, security and stability".
Hispanic Americans and Hispanic legal immigrants see the attitudes of many Anglo Americans near the border areas as "ethnocentric, racist, supremacist, and nationalistic". Many Mexican Americans have legitimate reasons to be afraid of the American police, including border patrol, who instead of ensuring their security, and fair enforcement of the law for the benefit of the public, are harassing and assaulting many legal immigrants - some who just happen to look Latino.
This militarization of the border and the law enforcement system has many civil rights groups worried about growing tyranny and fascism in the United States. Unfortunately, those who are worried about tyranny, oppression and suppression by the State are unable to successfully challenge the State without appearing paranoid, racist, sexist, aggressively supremacist, violently nationalistic and religiously nutty.
As they say, "Intelligent issues, appropriate reasoning and necessary social or judicial responses not only gets weakened by those with power and authority in the US, but it also gets compromised by the growing conservatism, religious extremism, racism, sexism and nationalism on the ground and at the grassroots". Those with legitimate concerns, and appropriate need for justice, compensation and redress, are beaten down by certain corrupt people in power and prejudiced people at the grassroots.
It is most extreme violence, brutal violence, gun related violence and criminal violence that gets a lot of attention and headlines in the US. But there are more subtle forms of violence: institutionalized violence, legal forms of control and brutality, organized and publically sanctioned aggression, psychological abuse, financial violence...that are rarely talked about by the press ; addressed adequately by the judiciary and debated openly by those in power and in politics.
About the author
Dr. Meera Srinivasan has a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, and has taught at several private and public universities in the US at the Bachelors and Masters levels. She earned her B.Sc. in Statistics from Bombay University, and her Masters in Medical and Psychiatric Social Work from the prestigious Tata Institute of Social Sciences. She also has a post-graduate training in counseling from Australia. She has many academic papers and published articles to her credit. She has also presented in numerous conferences and seminars. She has lived in four countries (India, Thailand, Australia and the US), and has traveled to over thirty nations. Her commitment to social research, social development, mental health and social justice have played a big role in her personal life, professional work and public activism. She has won several awards for her professional contributions and community work. She has been praised very highly for integrating cultural and social diversity, in a complex and nuanced way, to her mental health and social work theories, analysis and practice.
Also read
1. Social Interpretation of Navratri for self awareness and self development by Dr Meera S
2. Differences on Women’s rights and choices between the U.S., India and the Middle East by Dr Meera S
3. The Decline of the US, and what India can learn from this
4. Collection of articles on Indian Women
1. Social Interpretation of Navratri for self awareness and self development by Dr Meera S
2. Differences on Women’s rights and choices between the U.S., India and the Middle East by Dr Meera S
3. The Decline of the US, and what India can learn from this
4. Collection of articles on Indian Women
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