Well, this was near enough (I live in Baton Rouge) to get text message from a couple of friends. Was it close to my house? No, not really … though Foster Drive is a major commercial street that connects several other major streets, and I’ve driven past the location plenty of times. It’s in a rough area, but, at least during the day, not a particularly scary location.
Still…damn. Goddamn. I’ve been reading the articles, I’ve seen the videos, and have even been watching local TV news (rarely do that anymore)…oh, if you want to read something depressing, be sure to look at the comments on the local paper’s website.
Of course, they don’t reflect the views of most — at least I hope they don’t — but they do reflect a troubling aspect of modern culture…an aspect I’ll call … taking as faith … a faith in violence as a solution. It certainly appears the police felt that way. A part of the general public unfortunately feels that way (they’re already emphasizing Sterling’s prior record, as if that justifies things)…Down here owning/having a gun is…well, I don’t, but sometimes I feel like that makes me the odd one. And I haven’t even mentioned the last almost two decades of, well, war.
I just can’t think a society that justifies this degree of violence really counts as a free society. Do we want to live like this, or force our neighbors to?
“A faith in violence as a solution.” We live in the land of the High Church of Redemptive Violence. Our national religion isn’t some variant of Christianity, it’s Violence. We turn to Violence in times of stress, bless Violence in our national festivals and feasts, honor Violence at every major sporting event with a liturgical presentation of some of the Holy Relics (military cover guards, Air Force flyovers, Airborne parachutists, etc.). If Violence doesn’t appear to solve a problem, the failure is ours, not Violence’s, and it’s because we didn’t use enough Violence. We’re going to fix Syria with Violence, right now the debate is just how much is proper: More drone strikes? Send in troops (and how many)? Flood the region with even more armaments? A combination of everything? Nuclear weapons? Violence holds the answer.
Yes, come to think of it, Christianity, or at least a central tenet, is its own odd celebration of violence — a god made man tortured and then killed for our sake.
Sort of an aside — fortunately it doesn’t seem to be chiseled in stone, but I’ve often thought that people who got beaten a lot as kids tend to think the solution to any host of life’s problems is…giving someone (usually lower in the pecking order) … a good beating. Not exactly my idea of a solution…