The United States: Blood & Fire
Published in El Universal
(Mexico) on 21 January 2011
by Antonio Navalón (link to original)
“What we can’t do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another.” -Barack Obama.
The United States is a violent country. The right to bear arms, granted in its constitution, comes from an undeniable situation: a country created in blood and fire.
The Civil War came about because there was a grave conflict between the North and the South; there were slaves and an institutional model that had been dragged along from more than 70 years prior. Nevertheless, the inherent ethnic violence in the country under Jefferson Davis’s leadership reached its culmination when the defeated Southern forces, who had been such gentlemen in the war like they were scoundrels in times of peace, provoked a climate of social hatred— as if they were a Sarah Palin of sorts. After the war they put a bull’s eye on Abraham Lincoln’s head.
Uncle Abe, as often happens to exceptional politicians, lived in a moment in which he lost the floor. Despite his Secretary of State William Henry Sewald’s vow to protect him, Lincoln couldn’t avoid going to the Ford Theater to see the play, “Our American Cousin.” The play ended up being the “Divine Comedy” that took him to his death.
The favorite recourse in situations of deep hatred in the United States: a shot to the head.
When Martin Luther King had his “dream” on the staircase of Lincoln’s monument, he started to load the bullet that would eventually kill him. Today, as a result of an ongoing war and the existing fear within the United States from the Tea Party, radicalization has continued to grow within the country, ending with someone taking up arms. It is always some busybody from the dung heap of the human condition, like the assassin from Tucson, Arizona, Jared Lee Loughner. Seeing him at full view, one understands that we have failed at civilizing society during the past 2010 years, according to the Judeo-Christian calendar.
The United States, whether it is at war or is coming out of war, always has the same internal breach and it has become a territory doomed to the birth of hatred. The problem lies in all those who turn up the heat in this great society, constructed on a democratic foundation, so that the worst of the human soul— the hatred and the rancor of whatever idiot— is capable of killing. That reminds us that it doesn’t matter if we’ve walked on the moon; we haven’t finished our civilizing of humanity on Earth.
John W. Booth didn’t kill Lincoln, the layers of hatred over old Abe and what the Union signified killed him. Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t kill Kennedy, he was killed by a complicated affair that involved players from the mafia to Castro, passing from the casinos in Cuba and the arms industry, to Vietnam. It was not Mauro Rivero Pilan who killed Martin Luther King, but rather those individuals who viewed the rise of African Americans as a stain on our country and as something congenitally bad for the United States, rather than as a bastion of hope. The Democrat legislator Gabrielle Giffords was not shot only by Jared Lee Loughner, but by a situation that she encountered in head-on confrontation— in the disqualification, in the loss of processes, and in the bottom of American politics— conveyed, for example, through the Fox channel, its principal element being to channel the enormous frustration of a disconcerted country.
In addition to having an African American in power, the U.S. is charged with getting through two wars it does not know how to win, as well as repairing a stagnant economy. The system has been created so that every disqualified individual, young and old, takes his ration from the country with a double serving of hatred and tries to change history by shooting someone.
It’s a big moment for the United States, which as always reacts on the edge of the precipice. Now Obama can start something that somehow I think will happen. This year will be much better than those before it. Why? For things to be better this year, we had to get several things out of the way. First, the excesses of Tea Party and the enemies of the Democratic and Republican parties had to move completely out of the realm of rationality and relevancy, and second, we had to officially disprove the idea that the solution to the country's problems would be the breakdown of the social climate. We have learned now that the destruction of the U.S.'s social climate only helped to fuel the country's problems.
The shot to Gabrielle Giffords’ head, the sensation of a bullet having gone through her head and her still having lived, is a certain feeling, an allegory of our world: everything can go wrong, but everything can also go right.
It is possible that she will be saved and will recuperate a large part of her bodily functions. What is not possible is to continue, like Sarah Palin, to place bull’s eyes on people's heads, as people have grown weary of these radically offensive tactics. One also cannot continue acting like the Tea Party is turning into a furious animal full of hatred as it is already a danger, both for the Democrats as for the Republicans, and for Obama, or whoever else wants to be president.
The United States is a violent country. The right to bear arms, granted in its constitution, comes from an undeniable situation: a country created in blood and fire.
The Civil War came about because there was a grave conflict between the North and the South; there were slaves and an institutional model that had been dragged along from more than 70 years prior. Nevertheless, the inherent ethnic violence in the country under Jefferson Davis’s leadership reached its culmination when the defeated Southern forces, who had been such gentlemen in the war like they were scoundrels in times of peace, provoked a climate of social hatred— as if they were a Sarah Palin of sorts. After the war they put a bull’s eye on Abraham Lincoln’s head.
Uncle Abe, as often happens to exceptional politicians, lived in a moment in which he lost the floor. Despite his Secretary of State William Henry Sewald’s vow to protect him, Lincoln couldn’t avoid going to the Ford Theater to see the play, “Our American Cousin.” The play ended up being the “Divine Comedy” that took him to his death.
The favorite recourse in situations of deep hatred in the United States: a shot to the head.
When Martin Luther King had his “dream” on the staircase of Lincoln’s monument, he started to load the bullet that would eventually kill him. Today, as a result of an ongoing war and the existing fear within the United States from the Tea Party, radicalization has continued to grow within the country, ending with someone taking up arms. It is always some busybody from the dung heap of the human condition, like the assassin from Tucson, Arizona, Jared Lee Loughner. Seeing him at full view, one understands that we have failed at civilizing society during the past 2010 years, according to the Judeo-Christian calendar.
The United States, whether it is at war or is coming out of war, always has the same internal breach and it has become a territory doomed to the birth of hatred. The problem lies in all those who turn up the heat in this great society, constructed on a democratic foundation, so that the worst of the human soul— the hatred and the rancor of whatever idiot— is capable of killing. That reminds us that it doesn’t matter if we’ve walked on the moon; we haven’t finished our civilizing of humanity on Earth.
John W. Booth didn’t kill Lincoln, the layers of hatred over old Abe and what the Union signified killed him. Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t kill Kennedy, he was killed by a complicated affair that involved players from the mafia to Castro, passing from the casinos in Cuba and the arms industry, to Vietnam. It was not Mauro Rivero Pilan who killed Martin Luther King, but rather those individuals who viewed the rise of African Americans as a stain on our country and as something congenitally bad for the United States, rather than as a bastion of hope. The Democrat legislator Gabrielle Giffords was not shot only by Jared Lee Loughner, but by a situation that she encountered in head-on confrontation— in the disqualification, in the loss of processes, and in the bottom of American politics— conveyed, for example, through the Fox channel, its principal element being to channel the enormous frustration of a disconcerted country.
In addition to having an African American in power, the U.S. is charged with getting through two wars it does not know how to win, as well as repairing a stagnant economy. The system has been created so that every disqualified individual, young and old, takes his ration from the country with a double serving of hatred and tries to change history by shooting someone.
It’s a big moment for the United States, which as always reacts on the edge of the precipice. Now Obama can start something that somehow I think will happen. This year will be much better than those before it. Why? For things to be better this year, we had to get several things out of the way. First, the excesses of Tea Party and the enemies of the Democratic and Republican parties had to move completely out of the realm of rationality and relevancy, and second, we had to officially disprove the idea that the solution to the country's problems would be the breakdown of the social climate. We have learned now that the destruction of the U.S.'s social climate only helped to fuel the country's problems.
The shot to Gabrielle Giffords’ head, the sensation of a bullet having gone through her head and her still having lived, is a certain feeling, an allegory of our world: everything can go wrong, but everything can also go right.
It is possible that she will be saved and will recuperate a large part of her bodily functions. What is not possible is to continue, like Sarah Palin, to place bull’s eyes on people's heads, as people have grown weary of these radically offensive tactics. One also cannot continue acting like the Tea Party is turning into a furious animal full of hatred as it is already a danger, both for the Democrats as for the Republicans, and for Obama, or whoever else wants to be president.