Newtown shows us - ourselves:
The murdered children at Newtown hold up a mirror to
our collective psyche. In that mirror we see President Obama killing innocent
children with drone strikes, the mainstream media remaining virtually silent
about this policy, and Obama's counterterrorism advisor Bruce Reidel likening
such killings to mowing the lawn: "You've got to mow the lawn all the time. The
minute you stop mowing, the grass is going to grow back."
All of this is but a part of our
demented policy of perpetual war, aided and abetted by both political
parties as the latest amplification of the military-industrial complex's
iron grip on our society. Violence and murder is our business, and
the tone-deaf National Rifle Association wants to make sure that anyone
within our borders who has the urge to murder has the means to do so as
effectively as possible.
These are but a few of the countless examples of
the violence rampant in our society. Michaelson's analysis does us a
disservice by overemphasizing the individual psychology of mass killers
and virtually ignoring the society that models such behavior and arms its
citizens. As a collective ,
with our $525 billion yearly military budget, we clearly are displaying
the "murderous instincts," "profound inner weakness" and
"lack of self-regulation" that Michaelson pins solely on individual
shooters.
When an individual kills innocent civilians, we call
it murder and insanity, and anyone foolhardy enough to defend such behavior
would be rightly vilified. In contrast, when our government routinely kills
innocent civilians, we either deny it is happening or liken it to "mowing the
grass," and anyone who defends such behavior calls themselves a patriot.
Certainly it is important to recognize that the
Newtown killer was mentally disturbed. The deeper healing will come, however,
when we admit that in many ways he is a reflection of our own profoundly
dysfunctional society -- and then decide to do something about it.
Alan
James Strachan, Ph.D. is a
psychotherapist, teacher and author of the book-in-progress, America on
the Couch: Dreams and Nightmares of Democracy , http://www.americaonthecouch.net .
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