Disarming Violence on a Path Toward Peace: Books |
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by Jim Tarbell & David Delk
Disarming violence on a path toward peace must be built on an understanding of the economic, political and cultural factors that have led to the violence we see in our streets, and the violence spread around the world by US military actions. Fortunately, several recent books can help us further understand these factors.
The first one is The Gunning of America: Business and the Making of the American Gun
Culture by historian Pamela Haag. She tracks the growth and evolution of the gun business from a small-scale craft trade into a morally oblivious industry producing repeating rifles that explode wanton violence at a twitch of a finger. Then she follows corporate public relations myth-making into the early 20th century that presents the rifle as the phallic totem that won the West. They did this without any recognition of the death and destructive cultural force they let loose, causing mass-shootings, entitling violent insurrection and militarizing the police.
Radley Balko in his book, Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces details how the Nixon Administration created militarized police forces in its racist drive to oppress black lives and its imperial strategy to tyrannize the counter culture and its collateral anti-war movement. It is a horrifying tale that beleaguers our world today.
The National Rifle Association has made millions of dollars for its executives promoting the gun industry's mythical scenarios. Josh Sugarmann's NRA: National Rifle Association: Money, Firepower, Fear lays out how the NRA's top brass live like kings for shielding the gun industry from its role in America's violence, and by promoting a mythology of cultural righteousness for gun-toting America. His final paragraphs on guns as a public health problem moves us closer to policies that will disarm violence on a path toward peace.
Chris Murphy is on a crusade that guns are a public health crisis in his book The Violence Inside Us: A Brief History of an Ongoing American Tragedy. As US Senator from Connecticut, which was the locale of the firearms industry in the 1800s, and the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, he serves a constituency that has deep connections to the gun industry and the violence it produces. His enlightening book covers topics from the violent conquest of North America to the trapping and murder of Ahmaud Arbery. He highlights how the gun industry used the fear of immigrants and freed slaves to boom their gun sales, and hired artists to romanticize the role of rifles in the West. Mainly, he is on a path to establish peace in our streets, and disarm the gun and war industries from pumping up violence.
Christian Sorensen's Understanding the War Industry does a spectacular job illustrating how the global war industry, that will produce half a trillion dollars in sales this year, is in total control of American military policy. This is true from the Pentagon policy makers, who have revolved into those positions from the war industry; to the politicians who appropriate the funds to buy weapons after they receive substantial campaign financing from the war industry; to the retired generals who end up on the boards, or as six figure executives of the war industry. Then there are the war industry lobbyists, along with the war industry-funded think tanks and media apparatus that are continually scaring Americans and politicians to make more and more war expenditures.
To check out how long this has been going on see David Vine's book The United States of War – A Global History of America’s Endless Conflicts, From Columbus to the Islamic State. The United States has invaded or been at war almost every year since independence. Yet the American people continue to believe that America is a peace-loving nation. David Vine sets out to document the whole history of the American Empire throughout its 250-year history, with special attention to the history of “fort” establishment to further the empire’s expansion for the greater private profit generated by the permanent war state. He ends his excellent book with a chapter on Ending the Endless Wars, and looks at the toll on America and the world in terms of wasted resources, death and destruction this whole history has caused.
Fortunately, peace strategists at World Beyond War, over many years, have refined their book A Global Security System: An Alternative to War. It shares a vision for demilitarizing security, managing conflict without violence and creating a culture of peace. As they point out “violence is not a necessary component of conflict among states and between states and non-state actors . . . war itself can be ended. . . Here you will find the pillars of war which must be taken down so that the whole edifice of the War System can collapse, and here are the foundations of peace, already being laid, on which we will build a world where everyone will be safe.”
Image: Jake Van Yahres
Disarming violence on a path toward peace must be built on an understanding of the economic, political and cultural factors that have led to the violence we see in our streets, and the violence spread around the world by US military actions. Fortunately, several recent books can help us further understand these factors.
The first one is The Gunning of America: Business and the Making of the American Gun
Culture by historian Pamela Haag. She tracks the growth and evolution of the gun business from a small-scale craft trade into a morally oblivious industry producing repeating rifles that explode wanton violence at a twitch of a finger. Then she follows corporate public relations myth-making into the early 20th century that presents the rifle as the phallic totem that won the West. They did this without any recognition of the death and destructive cultural force they let loose, causing mass-shootings, entitling violent insurrection and militarizing the police.
Radley Balko in his book, Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces details how the Nixon Administration created militarized police forces in its racist drive to oppress black lives and its imperial strategy to tyrannize the counter culture and its collateral anti-war movement. It is a horrifying tale that beleaguers our world today.
The National Rifle Association has made millions of dollars for its executives promoting the gun industry's mythical scenarios. Josh Sugarmann's NRA: National Rifle Association: Money, Firepower, Fear lays out how the NRA's top brass live like kings for shielding the gun industry from its role in America's violence, and by promoting a mythology of cultural righteousness for gun-toting America. His final paragraphs on guns as a public health problem moves us closer to policies that will disarm violence on a path toward peace.
Chris Murphy is on a crusade that guns are a public health crisis in his book The Violence Inside Us: A Brief History of an Ongoing American Tragedy. As US Senator from Connecticut, which was the locale of the firearms industry in the 1800s, and the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, he serves a constituency that has deep connections to the gun industry and the violence it produces. His enlightening book covers topics from the violent conquest of North America to the trapping and murder of Ahmaud Arbery. He highlights how the gun industry used the fear of immigrants and freed slaves to boom their gun sales, and hired artists to romanticize the role of rifles in the West. Mainly, he is on a path to establish peace in our streets, and disarm the gun and war industries from pumping up violence.
Christian Sorensen's Understanding the War Industry does a spectacular job illustrating how the global war industry, that will produce half a trillion dollars in sales this year, is in total control of American military policy. This is true from the Pentagon policy makers, who have revolved into those positions from the war industry; to the politicians who appropriate the funds to buy weapons after they receive substantial campaign financing from the war industry; to the retired generals who end up on the boards, or as six figure executives of the war industry. Then there are the war industry lobbyists, along with the war industry-funded think tanks and media apparatus that are continually scaring Americans and politicians to make more and more war expenditures.
To check out how long this has been going on see David Vine's book The United States of War – A Global History of America’s Endless Conflicts, From Columbus to the Islamic State. The United States has invaded or been at war almost every year since independence. Yet the American people continue to believe that America is a peace-loving nation. David Vine sets out to document the whole history of the American Empire throughout its 250-year history, with special attention to the history of “fort” establishment to further the empire’s expansion for the greater private profit generated by the permanent war state. He ends his excellent book with a chapter on Ending the Endless Wars, and looks at the toll on America and the world in terms of wasted resources, death and destruction this whole history has caused.
Fortunately, peace strategists at World Beyond War, over many years, have refined their book A Global Security System: An Alternative to War. It shares a vision for demilitarizing security, managing conflict without violence and creating a culture of peace. As they point out “violence is not a necessary component of conflict among states and between states and non-state actors . . . war itself can be ended. . . Here you will find the pillars of war which must be taken down so that the whole edifice of the War System can collapse, and here are the foundations of peace, already being laid, on which we will build a world where everyone will be safe.”
Image: Jake Van Yahres
