The Silence of Sheep Enables The Violence of Wolves
Saman Mohammadi
The Excavator
January 9, 2011
Terrorists come in many forms, and they all have a different agenda. The biggest terrorists in history have been state terrorists, and this is especially true in our age, especially in the United States of America, where the crime of the century, the 9/11 attacks, has went unsolved for more than nine years, and the perpetrators still hold power in the highest levels of the government. There are other, smaller terrorists, who are just as dangerous as the terrorists in government. These terrorists are known as lone wolves, who are deranged individuals that harbor a mix of wide ranging political theories that are almost always nonsensical, and have messianic ideas, like the 88-year-old James von Brunn who entered a U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. in 2009 and killed a security officer.
The latest example of a lone wolf nut is 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, the killer responsible for the deaths of a veteran federal judge, a nine-year-old girl, and four others in Arizona. In the wake of the gunman's "unspeakable act" as President Obama called it on Saturday evening, a lot of people have began finger pointing, saying that the shooting is related to the heated political rhetoric coming from the Tea Party, the radical right, and prominent personalities on television and in politics who have acted as irresponsible agitators since Barack Obama became President. Journalist, Daily Beast contributor, and CNN presenter Howard Kurtz rightly describes this nauseating blame game as a "sickening ritual of guilt by association," in his fantastic article "Should We Blame Sarah Palin for Gabrielle Giffords' Shooting?" Kurtz:
And here we go again in Arizona, as people with political agendas unleash their attacks even before the victims of this senseless shooting have been buried. I find it depressing beyond belief.It is one thing to connect the dots, and contextualize patterns to identify other possible threats, which is the perfectly appropriate thing to do in such a situation, but it is a very vulgar form of conspiracy theorizing when people start to engage in the stupid and counter-productive blame game that occurs after the fallout of every mass shooting done by insane and psychopathic individuals. Government authorities on the scene and professional psychologists are best qualified to explain acts of random violence and and mass killers like Loughner, not individuals like Mark Potok, head of the Southern Poverty Law Center, who has an anti-democratic political agenda, and others who try to make their political enemies look bad any chance they get.This isn't about a nearly year-old Sarah Palin map; it's about a lone nutjob who doesn't value human life. It would be nice if we briefly put aside partisan differences and came together with sympathy and support for Gabby Giffords and the other victims, rather than opening rhetorical fire ourselves.
The idea that "the right has politicized violence" in America, which is being spread on liberal and progressive websites, is a dangerous half-truth. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, the biggest purveyor of violence in American society is the American government. The scary truth is that the biggest mass killers of our age are not deranged lone wolves, but deranged government conspirators, like the criminals who did 9/11, and the neoconservatives who came up with the justifications to get the American people to support the War on Terror, and the Iraq War.
It is the interesting that President Obama used the term "unspeakable" to describe the shooting in Arizona. Author and peace activist James W. Douglass used the same term to describe the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in his book "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters." Douglass explained why he used the term "unspeakable" in the book's introduction, here is an excerpt:
"John F. Kennedy was no saint. Nor was he any apostle of nonviolence. However, as we are all called to do, he was turning. Teshuvah, "turning," the rabbinic word for repentance, is the explanation for Kennedy's short-lived, contradictory journey toward peace. He was turning from what would have been the worst violence in history toward a new, more peaceful possibility in his and our lives.Merton's conception of the unspeakable was political in nature. He sensed very early on that the most lethal and cruel individuals in American society were in control of the American government. John F. Kennedy could not stop them because by the time he came into office they were already a powerful and organized force that could act criminally and cover up their trail of lies.
He was therefore in deadly conflict with the Unspeakable.
"The Unspeakable" is a term Thomas Merton coined at the heart of the sixties after JFK's assassination--in the midst of the escalating Vietnam War, the nuclear arms race, and the further assassinations of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy. In each of those soul-shaking events Merton sensed an evil whose depth and deceit seemed to go beyond the capacity of words to describe.
"One of the awful facts of our age," Merton wrote in 1965, "is the evidence that [the world] is stricken indeed, stricken to the very core of its being by the presence of the Unspeakable." The Vietnam War, the race to a global war, and the interlocking murders of John Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy were all signs of the Unspeakable. It remains deeply present in our world."(Douglass, J. W. (2008). JFK And The Unspeakable: Why He Died And Why It Matters. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc. Pg. XV.)
The Military-Industrial Complex is part of the unspeakable and organized power elite in Washington, which is largely invisible because it is not spoken of in the Western media. As a result, America is thought to be a free and democratic country, which obviously isn't true. America is ruled by plutocrats along with a well-connected political establishment who consistently lie to the American people and the world and use terrorism to get what they want. But once people view America's inhuman power elite as a real force that dictates the tyrannical political agenda in Washington, they quickly drop the false notion that America is free and democratic, and realize reluctantly that America is indeed ruled by political violence and propaganda in the interests of the few.
The unavoidable truth is that the people who politicized violence in the United States of America were the government conspirators behind the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy, more than four decades ago. The inhuman conspirators behind the murderous plots struck down the hope for peace, freedom, and equality in America, and across the world. The assassination of President Kennedy was an attack on the Constitution, the rule of law, America's institutions, and the American people. Kennedy envisioned America as a hands-off leader in the world, choosing peace over war, and a republic over an empire. He was not defeated by a popular vote, he was mercilessly killed by a group of powerful and greedy men in the government and outside it who would lose big profits and control if he had lived and remained President.
The evil conspirators in the U.S. government, who worked through the CIA and other government agencies, didn't just kill President Kennedy, who transformed into a shinning light of liberty and peace while in office, they killed America, and its honorable constitution. This is the awful truth that we all must see, and try to put into words because if we do not see the real reality then we can't change the world for the better.
The crisis of confidence in the U.S. government, and other Western governments, is often repeated because the crisis is very real, and continues to grow. How can governments that lie to go to war be trusted to uphold the rule of law, and maintain law and order in society? Citizen anger is natural when high-level leaders get away with mass murder, theft, and fraud, but the important thing is that we channel that anger in a peaceful, and productive way.
Whether we like to admit or not, the fact that the current anti-democratic controllers of the U.S. government rule by force and violence, and not the rule of law and the Constitution, probably motivates on some level crazy individuals like James von Brunn and Jared Lee Loughner to shoot lawmakers, and make a violent statement against the government. Of course, that does not excuse their insane and inhuman acts in any way, but if mass violence and terrorism is to be stopped in American society, and in other societies, then the government must lead the way in the direction towards peace, not in the direction towards violence, which the U.S. government is presently doing by unjustly killing innocent people in Afghanistan, and Iraq, and committing catastrophic terrorist acts in America like the September 11 attacks.
A society that is led by a pack of wolves at the very top is bound to attract lone wolves and madmen from below. Terrorists within government and outside government share the same anti-human traits, and are determined to kill innocent people to send a message, or push a political agenda. A knowledgeable, peaceful, and courageous civil society must be on the lookout for both types of terrorists, but especially those inside the halls of government because they have infinitely more power and prestige. The violence that comes from the hands of lone wolves does not measure up to the violence that comes from state terrorists and state murderers like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and the entire gang that was responsible for 9/11.
However unthinkable it may be, we cannot be silent about acts of government terrorism. Our silence enables their crimes, and violence. We must speak up about 9/11, and other big lies. Wolves prey on scattered, and defenseless sheep. And we can only defend ourselves and our societies by arming ourselves with knowledge, not with guns. Those who live by the gun will die by the gun.
We live in very crazy, and violent times. Lawmakers and citizens alike must face the horrible facts of recent history, and come to terms with why evil acts of state terror like 9/11 are committed, and covered-up in front of our eyes. Looking away from the truth just makes everything worse. The truth is a healing and positive force. Government criminals who live by the violent lie will die by the peaceful truth. But it is critical that we all take the step towards the truth, and peace, and follow in the footsteps of trailblazers like John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy, whose speech in Cleveland called "On the Mindless Menace of Violence," delivered one day after the assassination of MLK, is even more significant today, after the tragedy in Arizona, and should be read by everyone.
"This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics," said Robert F. Kennedy.
