Glenn W. LaFantasie: Our Permanent Culture of Political Violence
[Glenn W. LaFantasie is the Richard Frockt Family Professor of Civil War History and Director of the Institute for Civil War Studies at Western Kentucky University. His most recent book is "Gettysburg Heroes: Perfect Soldiers, Hallowed Ground" (Indiana University Press, 2008).]
In the wake of Jared L. Loughner’s attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords -- part of a shooting rampage that has claimed six lives -- Americans are going through much hand-wringing and some honest soul-searching, while politicians and media pundits have loudly condemned this heinous act of political violence and bemoaned its occurrence. All of these heartfelt expressions are necessary. Words are the only way we can truly express our national grief and sorrow.
But much of what is being said frames the event in terms we have become more than accustomed to, whether the occasion has been a Columbine or a standoff between local police and a hostage-taker in a domestic dispute. In all of these instances, we tend to interpret the events and their perpetrators as aberrations. Our first reaction is shock and disbelief. But our understanding of the situation soon takes the form of something else, as if acts of personal and political violence are like the devastation of a Katrina or an oil spill -- something that happens infrequently enough to make us shake our heads in sadness and disbelief. Deeper in our thoughts is gratitude that such events are not more prevalent.
And yet, deeper still in our consciousness and in our souls, we know that they really are not infrequent at all. Violence erupts around us all the time -- in our communities, on the news, or in our homes. Yet we try to dismiss it, hoping that by pushing it into the recesses of our consciousness we can deny its pervasiveness. We condemn it and we fear it, for we know we live in a world where it can manifest itself without warning at any time, in any place.
But even as we condemn such violence -- particularly political violence like what has just taken place in Arizona -- with lamentations and scowls, we persist in condoning it. There are two reasons for our toleration of political violence, despite all our sincere words of grief and castigation. For one thing, America has a long history of political violence -- a dark river of brutality, even savagery, that runs through our entire national experience. For another thing, we don’t like facing up to that fact as a people or as a nation. Americans prefer instead to see each outburst of violence -- whether in physical attacks on political figures or in blasts of gunfire in our schools and shopping malls -- as aberrations, isolated incidents committed by deranged individuals who cause mayhem and slaughter like human whirlwinds. When the wind has subsided, and the casualties have been counted, we proceed as we have done before, dismissing the event as an exception, waiting for the next act of lunacy to occur, at which time we will express our shock and dismay all over again.
The American tradition of political violence goes back as far as the colonial era, when Nathaniel Bacon and a sizable number of Virginians rose up in armed rebellion against the royal governor of the colony in 1676. Other armed uprisings took place against colonial authority in New York and Maryland in the late 17th century. In the 1760s, on the eve of the American Revolution, political violence broke out in the backcountry of the Carolinas, where disenchanted frontiersmen took up arms to fight for more equitable representation in their colonial legislatures, but these illegal posses often consisted of nothing more than roaming bands of thieves and cutthroats. By the early 1770s, Ethan Allen -- the Vermont patriot, not the furniture salesman -- led his Green Mountain Boys into violent confrontations with New Yorkers over border disputes, while Connecticut Yankees clashed with Pennsylvanians for political dominance over the settlements along the Susquehanna River. Pennsylvania, in fact, was a maelstrom, for a rebellion of Western Scotch-Irish settlers marched on the Quaker-dominated government in Philadelphia in their own bid for increased representation in the colony’s assembly....
Read entire article at Salon
In the wake of Jared L. Loughner’s attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords -- part of a shooting rampage that has claimed six lives -- Americans are going through much hand-wringing and some honest soul-searching, while politicians and media pundits have loudly condemned this heinous act of political violence and bemoaned its occurrence. All of these heartfelt expressions are necessary. Words are the only way we can truly express our national grief and sorrow.
But much of what is being said frames the event in terms we have become more than accustomed to, whether the occasion has been a Columbine or a standoff between local police and a hostage-taker in a domestic dispute. In all of these instances, we tend to interpret the events and their perpetrators as aberrations. Our first reaction is shock and disbelief. But our understanding of the situation soon takes the form of something else, as if acts of personal and political violence are like the devastation of a Katrina or an oil spill -- something that happens infrequently enough to make us shake our heads in sadness and disbelief. Deeper in our thoughts is gratitude that such events are not more prevalent.
And yet, deeper still in our consciousness and in our souls, we know that they really are not infrequent at all. Violence erupts around us all the time -- in our communities, on the news, or in our homes. Yet we try to dismiss it, hoping that by pushing it into the recesses of our consciousness we can deny its pervasiveness. We condemn it and we fear it, for we know we live in a world where it can manifest itself without warning at any time, in any place.
But even as we condemn such violence -- particularly political violence like what has just taken place in Arizona -- with lamentations and scowls, we persist in condoning it. There are two reasons for our toleration of political violence, despite all our sincere words of grief and castigation. For one thing, America has a long history of political violence -- a dark river of brutality, even savagery, that runs through our entire national experience. For another thing, we don’t like facing up to that fact as a people or as a nation. Americans prefer instead to see each outburst of violence -- whether in physical attacks on political figures or in blasts of gunfire in our schools and shopping malls -- as aberrations, isolated incidents committed by deranged individuals who cause mayhem and slaughter like human whirlwinds. When the wind has subsided, and the casualties have been counted, we proceed as we have done before, dismissing the event as an exception, waiting for the next act of lunacy to occur, at which time we will express our shock and dismay all over again.
The American tradition of political violence goes back as far as the colonial era, when Nathaniel Bacon and a sizable number of Virginians rose up in armed rebellion against the royal governor of the colony in 1676. Other armed uprisings took place against colonial authority in New York and Maryland in the late 17th century. In the 1760s, on the eve of the American Revolution, political violence broke out in the backcountry of the Carolinas, where disenchanted frontiersmen took up arms to fight for more equitable representation in their colonial legislatures, but these illegal posses often consisted of nothing more than roaming bands of thieves and cutthroats. By the early 1770s, Ethan Allen -- the Vermont patriot, not the furniture salesman -- led his Green Mountain Boys into violent confrontations with New Yorkers over border disputes, while Connecticut Yankees clashed with Pennsylvanians for political dominance over the settlements along the Susquehanna River. Pennsylvania, in fact, was a maelstrom, for a rebellion of Western Scotch-Irish settlers marched on the Quaker-dominated government in Philadelphia in their own bid for increased representation in the colony’s assembly....