Driving Out the Darkness

Our world is drowning in violence. Terrorism, rape, homicide, police brutality, and the aggressive responses such attacks foster in a social existence that is tired of the blood bath we've been wading in. Anger is of course the natural reflex that surges when we see our families, friends, and countrymen harmed by a perceived outsider, and even more so when they're hurt by the very system intended to protect us. But what dangers could this fury unleash when left unbridled in the hands of a nation scorned? What could we possibly accomplish with the draconian eye for an eye mentality that leaves us blind beyond the pupils of our enemy? There are many battles to fight, but there are many paths to victory, and the descending spiral of violence is not one of them.

Many arguments in the history of the world have been settled by war in one respect or another, but while they led to ceasefires and peace agreements, they rarely led to harmony and tranquility. More recently, the wars waged across the geographical lines of international borders have raged on without any possibility of resolution in sight. The war on ISIS and Al Qaeda, the Boko Haram Insurgency, the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict have been battling on for years and even decades, with millions dead and more dying every year. Even here in the US, internal combats have spattered our streets with blood thanks to gang wars, drug wars, gun violence, racism, homophobia, and yes, even police brutality.

In a country where law enforcement has been given the ultimate power to protect the innocent civilians of the US, it seems the long arm of the law too often sees color beyond Justice's blindfold, and reaches for the firearm on its hip too quickly. As a result, several innocent black lives have been lost. Violations of the law that include being in the wrong place at the wrong time, following directions, lying motionless on the ground, placing your hands in the air are all things that can get you killed when you are the wrong color in this country. Especially if you are confronted with the misfortune of having a police officer who is quicker to reach for more lethal means beyond a taser or pepper spray.

Of course every time, and far too often, when these stories splash across my computer screen, when they haunt the water cooler at work, the anger rises in my chest, bitter as bile. While I admit I have never faced the onslaught of violence and aggression the boys and girls in blue deal with on a daily basis, I have worked in high intensity environments, where individuals were unstable and as such became violent and aggressive towards themselves, towards others, and towards staff, including me. We were taught (minimally) how to address these attacks, usually involving a quick ProACT restraint, tackling the client to the ground, holding them in place as they writhed and struggled beneath our grips. We fielded globs of spit as they flew in the general direction of our faces, we shifted our hands so they were just out of the reach of their gnashing teeth, we fought to gain and regain control of their flailing arms and legs as we were punched, kicked in the the face and the chest. Sometimes we had to wrestle potential weapons from them, including broken shards of glass, broken bottles, and rocks. Our safety and well being was endangered. Many staff ended up in the emergency room with cuts, abrasions, bleeding bite marks, and concussions. But at the end of the day, we understood this was the job.

We worked with psychologically disturbed clients. Granted the facility was not well run and the clients were out of control, but still we did our best to keep the peace with the little training we had. We were not afforded tasers, pepper spray, batons, or cuffs and certainly not granted guns. We had many opportunities to lose our cool in the heat of the moment and lash out at our attackers, we had every reason to panic in the many crises that flooded our hallways. I even developed mild PTSD after being strangled at work. But this was the job. This is what we signed up for. And this is what police officers sign up for every day when they put on the badge. Now of course I am not asking them to risk their lives, and if the gun is genuinely necessary, they must do what they have to do. But with the extensive training they have to de-escalate and manage crises and the multiple tools in their belt they can work with, what excuse do they have for impulse, for panic, for repeated deadly force?

I can't wrap my head around it. I never could. But as angry as I get, I understand that violence is not the answer. Fighting brutality with brutality brings no calm to the tumultuous sea of our society, but adds to the confusion, the irrationality, and the impulsive decisions that can completely destroy the remaining scaffolding of our crumbling world. In spite of the overwhelming desire to bash in the heads of the guilty parties across the nation, I understand that killing innocent officers during a protest is not a solution. Assaults and arrests are not the solution. Rioting and looting is not the solution. Much like the result of police brutality, violence breeds nothing more than distrust, suspicion, and fear. There are thousands of peaceful demonstrators in the Black Lives Matter movement, but the more aggressive members seek to garner attention, notoriety, progress and respect, these intimidation tactics only breed deep-seated trepidation which will eventually turn to animosity and onward toward hostility. Blame will be placed, distrust will grow, the Us vs. Them mentality will thrive, and violence will build in an ever-growing cycle until it becomes an unstoppable force; before the nation is swallowed in a bloody tidal wave.

Violence begets violence. Martin Luther King, one of the more prominent leaders of the Civil Rights Movement built his legacy on non-violent approaches to challenging the constructs of social injustice in the 1960s. There were several other leaders in the movement who made their own contributions, but aside from Malcolm X, they have not been as prominent, and unlike Malcolm X, MLK made his lasting mark in history without the "any means necessary" tactics. There were sit-ins, there were boycotts, there were peaceful marches that garnered the attention and the notoriety the movement deserved in order to facilitate change. Many people have turned to his teachings and cited his speeches in their tireless arguments for peaceful battles, not because they're trying to change history or "whitewash" the violence out of it, but simply out of desire to follow the path that he cleared through the decades. Because it was the better path of the two laid out before us.

Now in the midst of these desperate pleas for peaceful strategies, I was called complacent, accused of indifference because I wasn't angry enough to be aggressive. I was even told that my opinion on the ineffectiveness of violence was invalid and unwarranted because I'm not black, and I don't have the right to criticize the way black people address their own issues. I don't need to be black to know that violence is not the answer; I don't need to be violent to prove that I care. I can be and will be a peaceful warrior in fostering change in the world, because this is my tactic: to avoid adding a deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.

Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.

To the Sound of Trumpets

Nine years. For nine years we have been fighting this supposed war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq. For nine years we have been losing our soldiers, losing our money, losing face to the rest of the world. For nine years we have been terrorizing the innocent people of these countries trying to find a multitude of rats in bunkers, mountains, and deserts. And after nine years of killing what is estimated to be hundreds of thousands of civilians, sometimes mistakenly, sometimes intentionally, the army is finally realizing that our soldiers are not well.

Today, Peter Chiarelli, a top army official, argued that soldiers need more time at home in between deployments in order to recuperate before being shipped back to the front lines. They usually get a year off for a year's deployment, with a minor break in between lasting about two weeks, almost like a typical job we have here at home. Of course, we don't spend the year killing and trying not to be killed. And if a year off hardly seems sufficient to piece together their shattered nerves, it's not, which is being proven time and time again.

The toll of this war is turning our weather-beaten soldiers into cold-hearted psychotic killing machines, as first evidenced by a 2007 video leaked by Wikileaks showing trigger happy soldiers celebrating the accidental killings of four civilians. Carrying cellphones and cameras that were somehow mistaken for AK-47s and grenades (yeah, I don't get it either), the soldiers opened fire amidst cheers and trash talking like they were playing a Wii game on their living room couches. They laughed as one body was mangled by a tank that ran over it, and opened fire on another group of civilians trying to rescue a survivor, riddling their van with bullets and hitting two small girls inside. The sudden realization of the children's presence yielded the icy response, "that's what happens when you bring kids into a warzone". Another incident is a highly publicized criminal proceeding where a number of soldiers killed innocent civilians and kept body parts as souvenirs, and a more recent trial has come to light after a soldier admitted to raping a 14 year old Iraqi girl and killing her and her family because he "didn't think of Iraqis as humans".

The outrage that these attacks have elicited from the world and from me is almost immeasurable, and it's so easy to point fingers, to curse and spit and damn them to Hell, but are we pointing the fingers at the right people? Thrust into an establishment that has only recently encouraged soldiers to seek mental health services (despite existing threats of dishonorable discharges and labels of weakness), fighting for a government that worries more about how many soldiers are killing others than about soldiers who kill themselves when they return home, and having the Us versus Them mentality hammered into their heads every waking moment of every day, it's amazing these men and women last as long as they do.

In Lt. Col. Dave Grossman's book, On Killing, he discusses the multiple psychological casualties of war which, from the civil war to the present, haven't changed much despite developing technologies and the abandonment of guerrilla and trench warfare. Fighting fatigue, many soldiers fall into confusional states of dissociation where they depersonalize from their environment and can suffer from manic-depressive episodes. A prominent syndrome of the state is that of Ganzer, where the soldier will become silly and make jokes, trying to ward off the horrors of war, but in a delusional state that is overwhelmingly morbid. One such soldier fighting in the Korean war had retrieved the severed arm of a North Korean soldier, using it as a puppetry prop. He carried it around waving it in other soldiers' faces, calling it Herbert, and even pretending to pick his nose with one of the fingers. Sadly, this psychotic behavior did not land him safely in a mental ward, but on a double shift of guard duty, and today, only when this behavior becomes deadly such as in killing civilians and keeping "souvenirs" does it warrant attention. The dissociative properties of the confusional state also account for the dehumanization of victims that makes it easier for soldiers to kill, whether it be their targeted enemy, or innocent camera toting civilians and adolescents.

Given the prolonged time periods of service, multiple deployments, watching strangers die, watching friends die, and a war that has actually gotten worse, it's no wonder these people are losing their minds. Many war vets throughout history have come home to PTSD, drug and alcohol abuse, destroyed personal lives and obliterated mental health. Nowadays, they develop these issues before leaving their barracks. Swank and Marchand (1946) found that after 60 days of continuous combat, 98% of soldiers became psychiatric casualties. The other 2% escaped the fate only because they were found to already be unstable with "aggressive psychopathic personalities" (did I really just do an APA citation in my freakin' blog? What have you done to me grad school?!). So with our soldiers serving upwards of 90 days of continuous combat and no sign of our government slowing this fight, we will no doubt have many more horror stories of murder, torture, and mind-numbing stomach-churning morbidity to come.

But it is important to keep in mind, however, that these soldiers were not sick to begin with. These are not deranged antisocial personalities who come into the army with the perverse desire to kill. Romanced by promises of honor and the idea of serving their country and saving another, the harsh reality of war hits hard, and, disillusioned, their better judgment and morals dissipate in favor of basic survival needs and paranoid delusions about who their enemies are and how to deal with them. War makes people crazy, then we give them a small vacation and ask them to come back and do it again. And again. Then possibly once more. So no, Mr. Chiarelli, they don't need more time off, they need this war to be over. They need to come home. They need aftercare, they need therapy.

Voltaire once wrote "it is forbidden to kill, and therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets". Likewise it seems appropriate to write that all psychotics are locked away to protect society, unless they're zipped into fatigues, then they're given guns and asked to serve their country.

Side note: I can't write a blog about the army without at least mentioning our small triumph of the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, but in spite of the success, I can only say to you now, dear gaybugs, stay home, not every right we're afforded needs to be exercised.

Standing Up for the Little Guy

Time and time again the majority has always ruled, and unfortunately, they've not always erred on the side of common sense. Whether it be stifling the human rights movement of numerous minorities throughout the years, voting in favor of multiple wars we had no business fighting, or collectively alienating a particular religious or cultural group for whatever ridiculous reasons, the hindsight afforded to us of past faults and folly is rarely applied to present day conundrums. However, despite reflections of public opinions in polls, on ballots, and in the media, it seems the tides are changing, and, if for a moment, the majority has found it's place: standing behind the little guy.

Yes, times for the gays have not been great these past two years or so. With the passing of gay marriage in California, then the removal with Prop 8, and a following rebuttal lawsuit, we now hang in limbo for the US Supreme Court to hear the case. And it's anyone's fight at this point. However, with the voting to repeal the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy of the US Army, and a guaranteed failed appeal, the majority is starting to tentatively lean in our favor. Following the tragic suicides of five GLBT college and grade school students who were ruthlessly bullied into taking their own lives, a massive outpouring of support has flooded the internet with the It Gets Better project. Hundreds of people, from everyday gays and friends of gays and big name celebrities to high profile politicians like Senator Clinton and President Obama have historically lent their voices to an anti-hate campaign that has fostered the creation of over 5,300 videos on YouTube. Even that queen chick I'm always bugging on had a few words to say about the bullying (the broader term of simple "bullying" was used, 'cause Lord knows an Arab queen could never publicly defend the gays without getting her ass handed to her by her more traditional countrymen, but we all knew what they were talking about).

And the movement of the majority doesn't stop there. As previously mentioned in an earlier blog, there was a massive movement in defense of the Muslim holy book, the Quran, when some crazy old dude tried to stage a book burning. The movement not only led to public outcry to protect the Quran, but protests, petitions, denouncements from more political figureheads (Clinton again...she rocks, doesn't she?), and a particularly memorable stand-in where people of all religions laid their hands over a barbecue grill so a Christian fundamentalist group couldn't light the coals to burn the revered pages and covers. Turmoil still stirs against Muslims as emotions rise over the recent debate over the placement of a Muslim-funded community center near the Ground Zero site. However, the power behind either side of the debate has balanced as an equal amount of people have come face to face with the opposition to support the decision. While there is still some bad blood over the attacks on 9/11, it seems the majority of America has finally developed the brains to discern between Muslim extremists and true Muslims of Islam.

Unfortunately, we didn't have the mental capacity for such 9 years ago when the war in Afghanistan began. A nation broken, hurt, and angered, made the emotionally fueled decision to support George W. Bush in his bid to go after Osama bin Laden and the Taliban in the middle eastern region. Now, many years later, after wising up to the shady dealings that underlined this so-called war on terrorism, many people have denounced the U.S.'s presence in Iraq and Afghanistan and have spoken out against the continuing failings of the government. But such frustrations have not spread to our soldiers, some of whom were beguiled into enlisting, thinking they were going to kill terrorists, some of whom were misled into believing they were going to liberate a nation oppressed by a horrific dictator. Many did not choose to serve under the truth of the matter, nor did they wish to continue once they found themselves in the very real circumstances of a fictional war. And we as a nation have not turned our backs on them. Well, the majority of us haven't.

Protesters were making headlines for some time, showing up to the funerals of soldiers KIA, shouting hate-filled chants, claiming the deaths of the soldiers was God's wrath being unfurled upon a nation that supported homosexuality. Bringing with them a black cloud to hang over an already darkened day for the soldier's family, they made their unwelcome presence known and tainted what should have been honorable memorials for soldiers who gave their lives doing our government's dirty work. But, a small town in Missouri was not about to let this happen for Corporal Jacob Carver. Upon hearing via word of mouth and Facebook that such a group planned to adorn his burial, not hundreds, but thousands of people from miles away arrived as early as before sunrise to secure their positions near the funeral site. Arriving in buses and caravans, nearly 3,000 people lined the roads with American flags waving to keep the protesters at bay. Most people had never met the young corporal who lost his life, many didn't know his family, but they gathered together to push out a tiny group of radical hate-mongers to protect his memory and his family in their time of need. The protesters were forced to set up nearly a third of a mile away from the funeral and despite attempts to shout across the town, their opponents out-shouted them and drowned out their message, forcing them to pack up and move out.

America was formed by the little guy, the ones whom, tired of being pushed around by a haughty king in a far-off land, sailed across the sea to escape the autocracy. But somewhere along the way we got too big, too strong, and slipped into the position of the oppressor, quickly forgetting what it felt like to fall beneath the ruling thumb of The Man. Laws that were created to protect us suddenly worked against us, and the power of the majority at times brought historic shame to our name. Granted, there were times when our government stepped up for the little guy amidst angered cries of the majority: a black girl may never have set foot in a white public school if a judge hadn't ignored the racist cries of a southern majority decades ago; blacks and whites would not have had the right to marry if the California Supreme Court hadn't ignored the cries of 92% of Californians who felt the races should not mix. And despite the efforts of 52% of Californians two years ago, a judge still had the cajones to stand up for the little guy and declare Proposition 8 unconstitutional. A group of a people with no personal affiliations to a religion risked burning themselves to protect it's holy book. A state of citizens with no personal connection to a soldier came from miles around to stand up for his right to have a peaceful burial.

They say never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups. Well, you better watch out for the power of large groups with balls and even bigger hearts. We will prevail...we must if there's any hope for this land and what we should stand for.

Happy Thanksgiving to my American peeps...stand up for the little guy...DAMN THE MAN! (sorry, I had to say it)