Power and Violence: The Gears that Grind Us
The political dynamics around gun violence are the ones that shape all of American politics
America is a country built on violence and its dominant culture is violence. What drives change or the status quo in America is power. The most powerful people in this country have cemented and protected this culture of violence. Through capitalism they make sure the poor and the homeless suffer, dying on the streets, dying from lack of health care, their lives upended by a sudden cost of 400 dollars. Through imperialism we regularly bomb brown children in the Middle East, creating the same type of massacres that occur in America. Through white supremacy we see cops murder with impunity, ICE terrorize and separate families, and the normalization of white nationalist rhetoric and groups across the country. Through patriarchy, women face harassment and assault at the work place, in their relationships, and on the streets. With this amount of day to day violence embedded in the country, there’s no surprise the powerful would not react to the massacres of even children.
It’s because of the dynamics of power and violence that make this a regular occurrence in America. The powerful have not been responsive to any forms of violence throughout America, unless it happens to impact the ways they hold onto that power. The issue of gun violence and mass shootings is not an aberration of how this country works, it is the clearest demonstration of how it works. We see the profit motive from gun manufacturers making millions of dollars off selling a weapon designed to kill humans and marketed that way. The white supremacist roots come from the 2nd amendment itself, designed to protect slave patrols. One can see much of the racist propaganda the NRA puts out as the modern expression of that today. Only when gun control was part of a larger initiative to incarcerate more people, primarily black and brown, in the 1994 crime bill did it pass. The most prominent and substantial part of that, the assault weapons ban, expired during the Bush administration and has never made progress since.
This is why the repeated conversations around guns have been so ineffective. The powers at be don’t answer to the logic or the charts or the “common sense gun reform” policies because they don’t care about any of that. They will answer to power, and policies that will take theirs away. A significant reduction in gun violence and mass shootings is going to require more than reform. It requires a true transformation, and a different way to see our politics. While we do share a collective shame in our inaction to these tragedies, there is an imbalance of power and a clear enemy before us. Republicans, some Democrats, and especially gun manufacturers for being the merchants of death that they are must be actively challenged and beaten. These manufacturers and those that protect them must be targeted. Changes must come by attacking production and access rather than possession which has always been disproportionately focused on the marginalized.
Guns can’t be the only way to address gun violence. The other day to day violence must be challenged to change the culture of death that surrounds us. It shouldn’t be a surprise the shooter was in a junior ROTC class, as the violence the US military regularly commits abroad reverberates here. It’s normalized and our uncritical acceptance of the military leads to young men thinking it’s normal. We must drastically reduce if not end the violence we commit abroad, as well as put an end to the state violence committed here by police and other law enforcement. As we tear down these systems of violence we must build systems that affirm our commitment to life and dignity by caring for the marginalized. This happens by guaranteeing health care, housing, food and other services that build a different type of culture and a different type of country than the one the United States rest on today. It only comes from challenging the powerful and the systems that shape our entire politics. We must tear apart the gears of the machine that seeks to grind our will and dream for a better world. That’s the path forward.
