What If This Is Who We Are...
Its Time To Look At Ourselves In the Mirror - It Is Time for a National Reckoning
Today was another day in American life and over 300 people were shot (based on averages) and just over 100 of them died, and around 22 of them were children…this happens every damn day in this country. Charlie Kirk was one of them last week. Kirk’s death stood out because he was a public and provocative figure…but the deaths of all the others are just as tragic, no more and no less.
But….This is who we are….
Every time a shooting takes place, everyone is appalled by it. And rightly so. It seems out of character with the placid lives most of us live. We blissfully go about our lives, going about our day, heading to the store, taking our kids to school or soccer practice, and then to Pizza Hut for a quick bite. We all feel a false sense of security and safety within the cocoon of our individual lives.
Then, a shooting happens, maybe in a school, or at a rally, or even within a church service. The cocoon shatters….we panic, and we get outraged, especially if the victim was “one of ours.”
Violence disturbs our false sense of safety. It seems remote and unreasonable to our senses, but it isn’t remote. When it happens, we are taken aback and feel a strange sense of panic for our kids who might be exposed to shooters at school, or about ourselves being gunned down in church or at a mall.
American violence is the antithesis of the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness we were promised, yet it always lurks in the background of our existence. It is always there…like a stalker…like a thief.
It constantly follows behind us, and we frequently look over our shoulders to make sure it doesn’t come too close. But it is always there in the rear-view mirror of our daily lives, and we keep trying to outrun it.
Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about this when you have found yourself in a movie theater, a grocery store, or a church service. In the back of your mind, you are looking at the exits, trying to figure out how you can escape should a shooter enter the arena.
It is always there and it continues to pursue you…. that is who we are.
Then, when a violent shooting takes place like a school shooting in Colorado or at Sandy Hook, or the assassination of Charlie Kirk or Melissa Hortman, we are shaken to our core and surprised. Our peaceful sublime existence shatters and violence collapses in around our reality and tells us…We aren’t immune. We could become the next target…we might end up like “them.” A statistic on a 30-second news spot.
We deceive ourselves into thinking we are free, but are we truly free? Not really. Violence has enslave dus. We worry we might end up in the wrong place at the wrong time or that our kids will. We are enslaved to the fear of our national epidemic of violence.
Here is the thing…Every time a shooting happens, political leaders quickly opine that “this isn’t who we are.” Or, they give us platitudes like, “This is a rare event that shouldn’t have happened. We’re better than this.”
They are lying, and they know better.
This IS who we are. These shootings happen EVERY DAMN DAY! It isn’t unusual, it is the norm. We need a wake-up call, and a reality check…
I’m sorry, this is exactly who we are, and the sooner we own up to it the better.
I’m not going to sugarcoat this column or try to feed you happy pills. America has been historically and is currently, a violent society built on the concept that power and might make right, guns keep you safe, and especially, white power makes right. That is how we were conceived as a nation, and that is how we continue to exist. This virus has continued to metastasize and grow, and we see it increasing in generation after generation.
We can’t go back to a more peaceful time and restore “who we were” because that era doesn’t exist. We have always been a violent society. Our goal needs to be to transform what and who we are and set our country in a new direction.
We’ve become so used to violence that it is like we swim in it, and it feels natural, until it hits close to home. Consider these facts:
The U.S. far outstrips peer countries in gun deaths per capita. In 2023, there were 46,700 gun-related deaths in the U.S.; on a per-person basis, that was 13.7 gun deaths per 100,000 people, and gun homicides were about 5.6 per 100,000 in 2023. Our peer Western countries have gun-death rates a small fraction of the U.S. rate; firearm homicides in most Western European countries, Canada, and Australia are far lower. What is “normal” here is not normal in Canada, the UK, or Germany.
What makes the United States so much more violent?
Let me break this down yearly…this is a typical American year, combining a five-year average:
There are 115,551 people shot annually in the United States
Of that number, 7,959 are children.
Of the 115,511 people who are shot, 38,826 people die from gun violence annually.
Let’s break it down to a per-day average:
Every day, 316 people are shot.
Of that number, 22 are children/teens aged 1-17
Of the 316 who are shot, 106 will die.
The most considerable portion comes from suicide because of the proliferation of guns.
Even the US suicide rate is above the 2019 global average of 9.0 deaths per 100,000 people. Much higher than any other advanced country. This isn’t just about Charlie Kirk…it is about us…What kind of society allows this? WTH? Who in their right mind doesn’t take action to end this scourge? But we don’t.
Please take a look in the mirror, this is precisely who we are. It is who we have always been.
Ironically, in addition to being the murder capital of the world, the US is also the most religious nation of comparable Western countries. Being a religious country doesn’t change who we are and, in fact, may exacerbate the problem. Religion has always justified the use of violence in the name of their God.
Don’t believe me?
Let’s consider our history. The British colonies were established and founded upon the policy of the extermination of Indigenous peoples who were already here. It is estimated that when Jamestown was established in Virginia in 1607, there were likely around 15 million Indigenous people on the continent. Today, that number hovers around 3 million. Where did 12 million Indigenous people go? Poof! Eradicated, exterminated. They were deliberately killed. Genocide.
That is who we are.
During the era of enslavement in colonial America and the Antebellum period, people of African descent were routinely abused, starved, raped, and hunted down if they fled, only to be killed. Slave patrols killed thousands. During the Jim Crow era, there were thousands of lynchings, massacres, and the destruction of Black communities through violence and killing.
That is who we are.
Native tribes of the late 19th century were murdered and massacred in places like Wounded Knee, Sand Creek, and numerous other sites that today have no memorials because we are too ashamed to fund them. And there was no accountability for the atrocities. We lynched hundreds, if not thousands, of Hispanics in the West and Southwest during the 19th-century rush to grab land filled with resources.
That is who we are.
Violence was never incidental; it was integral to our national identity.
In the late 19th century and into the 20th century, the United States launched wave after wave of imperialistic invasions, wars, and violent acquisitions of the resources of other lands. The Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and, in the modern era, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, and Nicaragua. Millions died, we prospered.
That is who we are.
In the 1960s, we launched an invasion of Vietnam to save them from Communism and dropped enough napalm to ruin their countryside for generations and give our own soldiers cancer from Agent Orange. The war exacted an enormous cost: estimates of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed range from 970,000 to 3 million.
That is who we are.
I grew up in perhaps one of the most violent eras of modern American history. In the 1960s, I witnessed the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and countless Black leaders. I saw George Wallace shot and confined to a wheelchair. There were Medgar Evers, Emmit Till, and George Floyd and countless others who were victim to routine American violence.
During the Iraq war our desire to acquire fossil fuels under the guise of fighting terrorism cost the Iraqi people over 1 million lives.
That is who we are.
Then, there is the trend of fatal police shootings in the United States, which is increasing, with a total of 1,173 civilians having been shot between 2017 and 2024, 248 of whom were Black. This type of police violence doesn’t happen to this degree in other countries.
This is who we are. This doesn’t happen in any other country…wake up!
Then there were Harvey Milk and Matthew Shepard, two gay men who were gunned down or brutally beaten to death, and countless other gay people who have been murdered, lynched, and brutalized by violent means over the decades.
This is who we are.
Then we have this obsession with lethal weapons that we tell ourselves is a “God-given” right. I’m not sure of what kind of “god” gives consent to the armed killing of thousands of people using a killing machine. Show me that verse, please. It seems like a god I have no interest in meeting.
Even though shootings have happened in every decade since the 1990s, along with the radicalization of the NRA, school shootings from Columbine to Sandy Hook to Uvalde, and many others have taken countless young lives. How ironic that the more guns become available, the more violence increases. And we stand for it. We tolerate it.
But, that is who we are…
We continue to allow the endless proliferation of guns for anyone who wants them, without a permit, without a license, without control. That is what Charlie Kirk proposed. The United States has the world's largest and most profitable arms industry in history, worth billions of dollars, which structures the American way of life around violence. Profit over lives…killing is the way to settle our disputes.
This is who we are.
Every time this happens, we are told this isn’t who we are by well-meaning politicians and American apologists. I’m sorry, I don’t believe that anymore. This IS who we are, and we need to take a collective, historical look in the mirror and see what we have become. It is no accident.
Charlie Kirk didn’t deserve to die, and neither did the thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of others in our history, and those in the last few days, who died by violence or brutality. This isn’t about Charlie Kirk or our politics and divisions. This isn’t about mental illness…it isn’t about hatred.
IT IS ABOUT US!!!!
This is about our national character and the lies we have chosen to tell ourselves and to believe. It is about what we are willing to tolerate in the name of supposed individual freedom, but where that same freedom enslaves us to the tyranny of fear and violence.
We aren’t free…we are afraid. And fear is a loathsome taskmaster.
We tell ourselves we are a “City on a Hill” and the “best hope for the world.” We thump our chests and talk arrogantly about being “God’s Chosen Nation” in today’s world. Are we? Are you sure the rest of the world sees it that way? I can guarantee you they don’t.
I’ve heard several people call Charlie Kirk’s assassination a “turning point.” (No pun intended). If that is so, then I hope the turning point will include this:
Let’s stop lying to ourselves about who we are.
Let’s stop pretending we are a religious and wholesome country.
Let’s look in the mirror and own up to who we really are…a violent culture.
Let’s decide here and now…we will become something different than what we have been.
Let’s end our fetish for guns, for violence, for death, and for killing those who are “different” than us.
Let’s admit the atrocities of our past and make restitution to those who our white supremacy has decimated.
Let’s redefine our nation as one that seeks non-violent solutions and outcomes.
Let’s repudiate, collectively, violence as a means of attaining our personal or national goals.
Let’s commit to peacemaking, mercy, love, and acceptance as guiding principles for national and global governance.
It is time to end the cult of violence, death, and killing, which has made up so much of our past, here and now. We will not find the answer in the past; there has never been a “Make America Great Again” era that will end the violence…it is littered with death and destruction. We will only find our national redemption in the future, committed to non-violence, love, and inclusion. We must change who we are.
Human consciousness and agency allow us to make this decision. If there is anything redeeming in the current moment it might be that we decide to become something different than we have been for centuries…a compassionate, loving, and caring society for all, and repudicate violence.
That is who we can become!
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What you said is so right on! Thank you for sharing all of your thoughts and stated facts. We the people, and our country as a whole, have done horrific things. But we rationalize it and say it’s okay because it benefits us. How shameful! As far back as the Old Testament it was written that men invaded and killed whole groups of people who did not believe like them or had property or treasures that they wanted. But they were SUPPOSEDLY sent by God which made it okay and the right thing to do. With all this history of violence and killing and lying and the thirst for power it’s hard to imagine that humanity can change. We have to try!!
Good write up of the facts as usual. What we have here psychologically is what us therapist would call denial, blaming others and the divisive inability to accept one's own behavior--just on a national scale. Unfortunately, presenting facts, history, reality, etc. does not seem to produce change especially as you point out it goes back 100's of years and generation after generation. In psychology (my background) we deal with what is called change theory--how and why people can change. It usually starts with hitting bottom and realizing a need for change, but that just is the start. There must the willingness to change and the planful motivation--politically neither party has any of this and nationally there is no plan to change (except here and there by some). Violence begats violence--guns are addictive and the human brain is wired in so many ways to continue this. It will get worse unfortunately.