On December 3, 2014, news roared in that a grand jury had delivered its decision not to indict white police officer Daniel Pantaleo in the chokehold death of an unarmed black man, Eric Garner. Garner’s last words became a slogan. “I can’t breathe” was a demand for accountability and a statement that black lives matter. Soon another refrain was heard, “I CAN breathe”—a taunt of might-makes-right exceptionalism.
The Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA Torture roared in on December 9, 2014. Its content, while unsurprising, illustrated EVEN wider brutality than we’d thought. Not long after the report’s release, the Pew Research Center found that more than half of all Americans believed that in the wake of September 11 torture was justified. Even though no valuable intelligence was gathered through its use. And despite acknowledgement that torture tactics inspired increased hatred of the USA.
Within a week or two, something so reprehensible and utterly shameful to those of us who believe torture is unconscionable was yesterday’s news.
In other words, the Torture Report came in like a lion and went out like a lamb.
And then breaking news roared in: the murder of two police officers in Brooklyn on December 20, 2014, by the deranged and suicidal Ismaaiyl Brinsley who earlier that day had shot his girlfriend.
Threading through all of these is ISIS, the horror of beheadings, the pleas of anguished family members. And the fact (ignored by mainstream media) that US foreign policy created this monster. And the certainty that incineration by droning and other US WMD are as deadly as decapitation.
Moving along to January’s breaking news: the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris. Or France’s 9/11. Americans shouted “Je suis Charlie” in commiseration. A debate followed, over satire, freedom of speech, and some arbitrary location on a line where comic ridicule isn’t really all that humorous anymore. A point that’s breached when an entire group of people is objectified/demonized and the mockery instead is exploitive and alienating, resulting in acts of violence. And then more violence—blowback. Not to mention the irony: proclamations about freedom of expression when the United Surveillance State of American has erased so many of our liberties.
Threading throughout is the carnage of war. More blowback. Troops trained to murder anything that moves.
Threading throughout is the carnage of bigotry, of inhumanity.
Mid-January, a movie I refuse to see roared in to theaters across the country. Exalting war, American Sniper is military-security propaganda, a recruitment tool. Its hero: Chris Kyle.
A young Chris is told by his father, “You got a gift. You gonna make a fine hunter some day.” Indeed. In 1999, Kyle joined the US Navy and became a Navy Seal, hunting Arabs, Muslim men, women, and children. He loved his work. And so many Americans love that he loved it. You know the story. A gun culture. Testosterone. Nationalism.
Chris Kyle has been lionized. And he’s dead, murdered at a Texas gun range by a Marine veteran with PTSD.
The American-Arab Anti-Defamation Committee reports “the rate of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim threats resulting from the Oscar-nominated war film has already tripled.” Frightening. And I just read that there’s a plan to resettle up to 75,000 Syrian refugees, mostly Muslims, in the US.
Last Wednesday, Hezbollah killed two Israeli soldiers in retaliation for Israel’s drone strike that killed six Hezbollah soldiers and an Iranian general.
Same day, Ukraine’s military announced the deaths of three more Ukrainian soldiers in its conflict with pro-Russian separatists.
January roared in like a lion and out like a lion.
Missy Comley Beattiehas written for National Public Radio and Nashville Life Magazine. She was an instructor of memoirs writing at Johns Hopkins’ Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in Baltimore. Email: missybeat@gmail.com.
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The demonized and the lionized
Posted on February 2, 2015 by Missy Comley Beattie
On December 3, 2014, news roared in that a grand jury had delivered its decision not to indict white police officer Daniel Pantaleo in the chokehold death of an unarmed black man, Eric Garner. Garner’s last words became a slogan. “I can’t breathe” was a demand for accountability and a statement that black lives matter. Soon another refrain was heard, “I CAN breathe”—a taunt of might-makes-right exceptionalism.
The Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA Torture roared in on December 9, 2014. Its content, while unsurprising, illustrated EVEN wider brutality than we’d thought. Not long after the report’s release, the Pew Research Center found that more than half of all Americans believed that in the wake of September 11 torture was justified. Even though no valuable intelligence was gathered through its use. And despite acknowledgement that torture tactics inspired increased hatred of the USA.
Within a week or two, something so reprehensible and utterly shameful to those of us who believe torture is unconscionable was yesterday’s news.
In other words, the Torture Report came in like a lion and went out like a lamb.
And then breaking news roared in: the murder of two police officers in Brooklyn on December 20, 2014, by the deranged and suicidal Ismaaiyl Brinsley who earlier that day had shot his girlfriend.
Threading through all of these is ISIS, the horror of beheadings, the pleas of anguished family members. And the fact (ignored by mainstream media) that US foreign policy created this monster. And the certainty that incineration by droning and other US WMD are as deadly as decapitation.
Moving along to January’s breaking news: the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris. Or France’s 9/11. Americans shouted “Je suis Charlie” in commiseration. A debate followed, over satire, freedom of speech, and some arbitrary location on a line where comic ridicule isn’t really all that humorous anymore. A point that’s breached when an entire group of people is objectified/demonized and the mockery instead is exploitive and alienating, resulting in acts of violence. And then more violence—blowback. Not to mention the irony: proclamations about freedom of expression when the United Surveillance State of American has erased so many of our liberties.
Threading throughout is the carnage of war. More blowback. Troops trained to murder anything that moves.
Threading throughout is the carnage of bigotry, of inhumanity.
Mid-January, a movie I refuse to see roared in to theaters across the country. Exalting war, American Sniper is military-security propaganda, a recruitment tool. Its hero: Chris Kyle.
A young Chris is told by his father, “You got a gift. You gonna make a fine hunter some day.” Indeed. In 1999, Kyle joined the US Navy and became a Navy Seal, hunting Arabs, Muslim men, women, and children. He loved his work. And so many Americans love that he loved it. You know the story. A gun culture. Testosterone. Nationalism.
Chris Kyle has been lionized. And he’s dead, murdered at a Texas gun range by a Marine veteran with PTSD.
The American-Arab Anti-Defamation Committee reports “the rate of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim threats resulting from the Oscar-nominated war film has already tripled.” Frightening. And I just read that there’s a plan to resettle up to 75,000 Syrian refugees, mostly Muslims, in the US.
Last Wednesday, Hezbollah killed two Israeli soldiers in retaliation for Israel’s drone strike that killed six Hezbollah soldiers and an Iranian general.
Same day, Ukraine’s military announced the deaths of three more Ukrainian soldiers in its conflict with pro-Russian separatists.
January roared in like a lion and out like a lion.
Missy Comley Beattie has written for National Public Radio and Nashville Life Magazine. She was an instructor of memoirs writing at Johns Hopkins’ Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in Baltimore. Email: missybeat@gmail.com.