By Lucy Wyman of Lancaster
As the horrific decimation of Gaza continues, and we recoil from yet another, indiscriminate shooting of innocents in Lewiston, Maine, it is tempting to call it ironic. I think that would be inaccurate and disingenuous. As long as we allow our military-industrial machine to participate in the slaughter of innocents elsewhere, we are also complicit in the slaughter of our family, friends and neighbors on our own shores.
I heard a middle-eastern journalist say recently, after talking about her recently killed colleagues, that “you have a saying there, ‘what goes around, comes around.’” I did not perceive that as a threat but an obvious outcome of the US participation now and throughout the world in the last fifty years in places we had no business to be: Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the list goes on. It’s inevitable that we will not continue to enjoy peace at home as long as we continue to support a global arms industry at home, one that continues to line the pockets of our elected officials.
I should not have been surprised to learn that there are no statistics telling us what percentage of mass shooters here, mostly white males, are veterans. Like the 1997 “Dickey Amendment which effectively bars the national Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from studying firearm violence,” this is to me just another indication of the reach our military has. David Swenson makes an effort in the article mentioned below to establish, at a minimum, “…veterans are over twice as likely to be mass shooters, and probably more likely than that.”
“Training people in the arts of mass murder, launching wars, and dropping people trained for wars and having suffered through wars into a heavily armed society full of economic insecurity and the industrialized world’s leading lack of healthcare.” https://worldbeyondwar.org/u-s-mass-shooters-disproportionately-veterans/
Has this brought us peace at home, or freedom? As I ponder the recent murder of eighteen good people in Lewiston, it is clear to me that it has “come around.” People are spooked. It is understandable that speaking out or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time is a legitimate concern. It seems no place is safe anymore, here, in our own country. So much for freedom.
To be sure, these violent, inconceivable circumstances may seem unrelated but if one looks at the root causes of both, s/he will find at least two very large pieces of the puzzle that cannot be ignored: the failure of our Congress to rein in the military, and the NRA, also an international arms merchant. Ultimately, they are one and the same. Fear mongering by the media and the unconscionable amounts of money flowing into the pockets of our of elected officials have not only blinded them, and us, to their malfeasance but, through this insidious, propaganda-driven paradigm, inured us all to the horrific death toll domestically and around the globe. One could even say they are making a “killing.” Business as usual has come home to roost.
Tax dollars that should be used to provide housing, health care, improved education, a clean environment and up to date infrastructure are instead being diverted to our almost trillion dollar defense budget. This has overwhelming, bipartisan support in Washington, even as we see the damage it is doing to our society. It is no wonder people are angry and fearful.
Until or unless we the people put a stop to this, it will continue. When the words “peace” and “ceasefire” become synonymous with “terrorism” then we should know that something has gone terribly wrong.
Disclaimer: Lucy Wyman is a board member of the New Hampshire Center for Public Interest Journalism, which publishes InDepthNH.org, and her views are her own.