In the Aftermath of Tragedy

Friday's mass killing of elementary school children and teachers was certainly tragic.  But the media-fueled frenzy to the incident brings to light some disturbing aspects of American culture.

Every time an incident happens that briefly cracks that façade of complacent consumerism under which we live, Americans enter into a moral panic of existential proportions.  The problem is that, for most Americans, the violence that our society depends upon is completely externalized: it occurs only in our gang-ridden ghettos or on the outer fringes of our Empire, and never within the cozy comfort of white suburbia.

Every time some middle-class psychopath engages on a mindless killing spree, we are suddenly reminded that something is rotten in the state of suburbia and that violence does exist within our midst.  But we remain blind as to how interwoven our everyday lives are with violence.

In the past year, President Obama's drones have killed upwards of 200 children in Pakistan alone.  Civilians, including children, continue to be slaughtered by American bombs in Afghanistan, their deaths as mindless and tragic as those in Newtown, Connecticut.  Thirty thousand children starve to death each day around the world, while Americans gorge themselves to the point of obesity.  Young women and children destroy their health working in factories and sweatshops throughout the developing world, so that we can purchase yet another cheap garment, yet another electronic gadget. Americans are even oblivious to the violence that takes place against animals in order to put meat on their dinner tables.

As Americans, we all have blood on our hands, at all times.  Yet we choose to remain blissfully ignorant of the costs of Empire, of the costs our lifestyle exerts on the rest of humanity.  Instead, we only care when it is our fellow American suburbanites who are murdered.  And then we turn our pathetic eyes to the government, and beg them to protect us from ourselves by further restricting our freedoms in the name of increased public safety.

America, imagine what it would be like to have a Sandy Hook massacre every single day.  Then maybe, just maybe, you could begin to sympathize with the people of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and elsewhere, and you might begin to understand for a moment why groups like Al-Qaeda can rely on a boundless army of recruits.

It's well past time to wake up.