What People Say?Different people with different perspectives

Oh, the wailing, weeping, and gnashing of teeth over last week’s killings at Fort Hood!—a tragic instance of what Americans call an “isolated” event that happens almost daily.

• The very next day, Jason Rodriguez walked into an office building in Florida, killed one and wounded several.
• Gunfire erupted inside a bar near the ski town of Vail, CO Saturday night, leaving one man dead and three others wounded.
• In Cleveland, TX, authorities called to check a rural southeast Texas home found the bodies of four people who had been shot to death.
• A British tourist, Thomas Reeve, 28, was killed when a man entered a bar in Amarillo, TX, and opened fire.
• More than ten bodies have been found in the home of a rapist in Cleveland, OH.
• Authorities in Reading, PA say a Maryland man is dead after a weekend shooting at an illegal bar that also injured six people.
• Three people including a young child are dead and six were injured in a drive-by shooting in Walterboro, SC.
• A son of Washington state’s lieutenant governor has been wounded in a workplace shooting in Kent, WA.

All of these “isolated” incidents took place in less than a week. America is a killing field! It has been for a very long time. “Killeen, TX, in 1991 is watching a replay of the spotlight shone on it when a man entered a cafeteria and fatally shot 22 diners.”

In America, children kill children (Columbine), children kill their parents, parents kill their children and each other, strangers kidnap and kill children, strangers kill strangers , agents of the government kill citizens (Kent State, Waco), college students kill fellow students (VA Tech), former employees kill those they worked with, anti-abortionists kill abortionists, police called upon to help the mentally ill and otherwise challenged often end up killing them, soldiers often kill fellow soldiers and civilians. Nothing about any of this is unusual. It happens every day. If John Dos Passos were alive today, he would be reissuing U.S.A. in multiple volumes!

So why all the wailing about the shootings at Fort Hood? Perhaps it’s the fact that an officer killed enlisted men? That’s unusual; it’s usually the other way around. Perhaps it’s the shooter’s name and religion? Is the hoopla all about drumming up anti-Islamic attitudes? Is it part of the war on Islam? Oh, sorry, the war on terror?

I don’t know the answer, but I do know that there is nothing unusual about this event. Americans are driven to killing. We are entertained by it in movies and on television. Our children are enticed into playing killing computer-games. And we are often stressed to the breaking point. The lawyer for the shooter in the Orlando office attack has said, “This guy is a compilation of the front page of the entire year—unemployment, foreclosure, bankruptcy, divorce—all of the stresses. It looks like a classic case of stress overload.” America is filled with well-armed people who are led to react like cornered animals.

These events are not surprising. What is surprising is who gets killed. While with a group of colleagues on break some time ago, someone said, “Americans kill a lot of people. Unfortunately they kill the wrong ones.” Historically, the oppressed have killed their oppressors—the French in the French Revolution, the Russians in the Revolution of 1917, the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland, the Bader-Manheim gang in Germany, the Red Brigade in Japan, the Tamils of Sri Lanka, the Moslem fighters killing NATO forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Pakistan, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the Philippines . But not in America, at least not yet. In America the oppressed kill each other. Strange! How long will it last?

American politicians claim that America is the free-world’s leader. But what other country would want to follow America down this road? (Perhaps the stupid British from whom we acquired the roots of this vulture—oops!, culture.) It is noteworthy that since 1789, approximately 70 nations have become democratic, but not a single one has copied the American model. Whom are we leading where? Perhaps only ourselves to perdition.

©2009 John Kozy

Retired professor of philosophy and logic who blogs on social, political, and economic issues. After serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he spent 20 years as a university professor and another 20 years working as a writer for various private companies. He’s an active blogger. His pieces can be found on http://www.jkozy.com/.

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