Section A02
Week 5
Talk About a Mood Killer
This week's readings made me sick. I understand the importance of opening discussion about the root causes of gun and serial violence in America, but "Empire of Death" opened up with a diatribe about how our internal violence is a result of the overly militarized state of our nation. One or two examples would have been ample to prove this point, but instead we have the equivalent of 15 pages discussing the individual components of various serial and mass murderers. The trend of "mass murderers [being] predominately white (70 percent) and male (95 percent)" (Hamamoto 279) is crucial to the argument, but also incredibly unsurprising. We have moved into a society where violence is okay, but as we attempt to move towards more representation and shift away from the violence of that state, those who came to be dependent on that privilege then lash out in response because they can't handle no longer being on what they perceive to be the "top" of the social order. This can be seen reflected in the rise of neo-nazis culture and white supremacy as an apparent "counter-culture" that is in fact the established culture instead of a reaction to anything but an attempt to progress beyond the limited view of the current situation.
A large amount of the mass murderers the reading talked about were veterans or family of veterans and my question is: what role does war-induced PTSD play in this situation?
A large amount of the mass murderers the reading talked about were veterans or family of veterans and my question is: what role does war-induced PTSD play in this situation?
Hamamoto, Darrell. "Empire of Death and the Plague of Civil Violence." Masters of War: Militarism
and Blowback in the Era of American Empire, edited by Carl Boggs, New York, 2003, pp. 277-92.
Lopez, German. “The state of gun violence in the US, explained in 18 charts.” YouTube, Vox Media,
22 Feb. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX4qUsgHa4Y.
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