American Illusions About Violence

Human history contains innumerable episodes of violence, and frequently violence of the most sadistic and bloody kind, be it by individuals, groups, or organized bodies. Americans are not at all exceptional in this regard. It would not be at all surprising to find that every people on earth has a history of violence at some point, often bloody, extreme and bloodthirsty.

It is illusory to think that this tendency to violence has changed because it’s 2014 or because moral codes now condemn violence of various kinds. Certainly the capacity to inflict such violence is still present. Human nature contains the potential for not only violence but inflicting pain and torture for the pure pleasure of it.

The violence in the 20th century reached unheard of levels, and it continues to this day. It is an illusion to think that America is an exceptional nation in this regard, has some special moral insight or an exceptional degree of moral control over its violent tendency. Moral inhibitions shatter under the capacity of men to think up justifications and rationalize violence.

Americans at war seem or act surprised when the other side uses violence, roadside bombs and stealthy suicide attacks to blow up civilians or soldiers on patrol. Meanwhile almost no weapon or technique is absent from the American arsenal, ready even to be inflicted on or by obstreperous Americans. The researchers of death think up more and more ways to kill, and so do America’s enemies.

Americans at war seem to under-estimate the tenacity and motivations of the enemies. Americans cannot see that the other sides are just like them. It is illusion to think they are different.

Perhaps Americans think that they have a technological or manufacturing advantage that allows them to win. This has not always proven to be the case. This idea also seems to be an American illusion.

Share

6:07 pm on November 25, 2014