A little girl sits in a classroom receiving her lesson for the day. Suddenly, through the door enters a man who shoots her teacher and her classmates. In the confusion she lies still among the bodies. When all is quiet, she runs outside, blood soaked, and when she reaches her mother she says, “Mommy, I’m okay but all my friends are dead.” The child described the shooter as a very angry man. This account of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut on December 14, 2012, is from Wikipedia and is given by a six-year-old, the only survivor in her class.
As the news shocked the world, theruling classand their mouthpieces scrambled to sway a public that was asking “why” and searching for answers. Trying not to appear like hypocrites, the professional liars solemnly consoled the victim’s families and then presented the problem as one of crazed individuals with too many guns. But isn’t it they who have closed down all of the mental health facilities while they arm and militarize not just here, but all over the entire earth?
We spend more money on war and killing than nearly the rest of the world combined. Our rulers dominate the globe with 700 plus military bases in 130 countries. Secret drone assassination warfare has killed more innocent people than the “enemy”. A drone strike in Pakistan on October 30, 2006 killed 82 people at a school, including pupils as young as 12, returning to class after a holiday. Our young men and women who join the service hoping for a better life when they get back home, are committing suicide when they return at the rate of almost one per day, haunted by nightmares of the slaughter of the innocent.
And what of the growing numbers of hurting families who have lost loved ones to this kind of violence? Or the hurting and ever increasing destitute and homeless who find death on our streets because of a system that refuses to feed, house, educate and provide health care for anyone it cannot exploit?
The history of the culture of violence in America rests on an economic foundation, a system of profit. The profit in genocide of the native peoples and theft of their lands. The profit of the human auction block, backed up by the slaver’s whip, the lynch rope, and the gun. And with this uncaring system evolved a psychology that says, “I’m for me and the hell with everyone else.”
Today, massacres like Sandy Hook are happening more often. Will we be persuaded to further risk the innocent by turning our schools into prisons, with armed guards, armed teachers, and armed militia outside as is being proposed? Or will we get to the root of the problem and change the economic social system, and with it our psychology, into one that actually cares about all its people. Will we continue along the path of, “From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed”, or shall we evolve to the higher, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”
