The Grand Illusion
After Saturday’s attempted assassination of Trump, a wave of media comments issued forth along the lines of “tone down the rhetoric’ and “hatred and violence have no place in the United States.”
Most of the commentators, well-meaning as they appeared to be, seemed to forget who exactly had been the one who started the “hate talk,” with his calls to his supporters to “fight like hell” on January 6th, calls that touched off the attack on and invasion of the US Capitol. Over the next three years, Trump fanned the flames with various extremist posts, including calling anyone who opposed him “communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country,” saying that shoplifters should be shot on the spot, and proposing deporting eleven million people. Not to mention restricting women’s ability to control their own bodies and opposing any additional limitations on firearms (which is ironic in itself, given that he was shot with an AR-style 556 rifle).
Yet when those opposed to Trump’s views of imposing a right-wing authoritarian government pointed out the loss of freedoms involved, and the restrictions on democracy those would entail, the Trumpists called those opponents extremists, and, now, after the Pennsylvania shooting, many in the media are telling everyone to tone down the rhetoric, conveniently forgetting who dialed it up in the first place.
The other media/popular misconception is the characterization of the United States as a peaceful society. This misconception is embedded in most of the media commentary about how this violence wasn’t what America was all about.
More than fifty years ago, H. Rap Brown said, “Violence is as American as apple pie.” He was unfortunately right. The United States was created by violence. The South was originally built on the violence of slavery. New England, the upper Midwest, and the great American West were subdued and the indigenous peoples conquered and suppressed by violence. We’re so violent a society that, with only five percent of global population, the U.S. has more than 20% of the world’s prison population. Since 1970, our incarcerated population has increased by 500%, far outpacing population growth and crime.
Yes, we’ve made an effort to channel and conquer that violence, but the U.S. is one of the more violent countries in the world – in large part because an unspoken part of our culture is the freedom to be violent, so long as it’s not too violent.
The problem with Trump remains. That problem is that he believes violence and power in support of his ends are justified, and he and his followers also believe that those who point out his desire to destroy those freedoms Trump doesn’t like are evil extremists.
Far too much of the media is buying that “equation of extremism,” and now that Trump has already re-created himself as a “bloodied patriot,” it’s even more likely that, inadvertently or not, they’ll help him become President.
LEM,
You forgot about Trump’s allies celebrating the violent attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband. Of course, you’re point about America’s penchance for violence (and conspiracies) is spot on. Sigh. Sometimes it seems just too much.
Not to mention celebrating Kyle Rittenhouse as some sort of hero. Yeesh. Violence is not something to celebrate.
Which is why I urge another course on all Trump’s opponents. I think we all owe it to ourselves to do our very best, our utmost, to make sure that, one day, Donald Trump dies peacefully…in bed…surrounded by his creditors.
American produced media in general considers violence appropriate for all ages, and a suitable problem solver for most issues.
Whereas sex or nudity is something that anyone under 18 must be protected from at all costs.
You see the pattern repeated in books, film, tv, everywhere.
This problem reminds me of public schools and bullies. Schools ignore bullies and think they stop the problem with a zero-violence policy. But they ignore the language until one of the victims lashes out. Then the focus is on the horrible violent victim and ignore their own responsibility in enabling the bully. The schools ignore their responsibility because it is difficult to sort out bullies and deal with their parents and the lawyers without demonstrable proof. In the schools the problem is that teachers and the administrators don’t want to deal with the bullies. In the public sphere the media doesn’t want to call out the violent rhetoric until something happens. Then the media acts like there is a zero-violence policy and seeks to calm both sides down. It is similar to the way the New York Times didn’t say that Trump should drop out until after they got a lot of backlash from saying Biden should drop out.
The media is caught in a catch 22 – they don’t want to condemn violent language because they are scared that it will turn on them and be used to limit their free speech. But the media only has the illusion of free speech since the owner limits what they are allowed to say. This also works in the reverse because the outrageous is often very profitable and therefore encouraged.
“ … in large part because an unspoken part of our culture is the freedom to be violent, so long as it’s not too violent.”
During the pandemic many people binge watched TV series, I was no different. My wife and I tended to watch whodunits and preferred the British products. We noted that as the production of each series starting from the 1980’s and 1990’s progressed, they dealt with the usual dozen motives in more or less set police procedural manner. Then from the mid 1990’s the primary detective story was interlaced with the very human psychotic chaos of the police team characters. This was already a major part of US entertainment after shelving of ‘Sergeant Friday and Dragnet’ but it has gradually tainted the British and European entertainment industry as well (ok: it was a major part of Scandinavian products for at least 50 plus years). So it seems as if violence specifically and the other “adult” movie features are now used in most if not all products labeled ‘entertainment’ distributed via the “media” or “communication and entertainment channels” of the world.
We discussed previously the question of whether the citizens of a nation should be held responsible for the “crimes” committed by the national leaders. Should we also consider that the level of emotional issues in communication and entertainment of the nation be due to the expectations of the nation’s citizens? (Our lives are not determined by the stars but by our own behaviors)