The U.S. has always been a violent nation-state. It is currently, and it will continue to be until we as citizens demand that the violence stops.
The U.S. has always been violent to its citizens. Starting with the Indian Wars to the Plantation Economy in which they took people from lands that were not even theirs to be taken from. Bringing people over to the U.S. to become enslaved bodies. And those who were already here, the U.S. decided to subjugate and try to wipe them out via disease, ideology, and classification. That is a violent act.
Fast forward and we see this violence reenacted by policies and procedures that we say are laws, created by people dressed up in their Sunday best. Church-going people, they call themselves, are supposed to be fighting for and protecting the American people. And so we have amendments to correct violent laws. The violence is still there because the law itself is blind. Justice is blind, right? Not really.
Now we’re in 2023. Car accidents are no longer the leading cause of death for American children. It’s guns. And why is that? Because the U.S. is such a violent nation-state, it refuses to see how it’s enacting its violence on itself.
Instead of using laws to protect our children, we have individual rights. This means that the individual is selfish and lacks self-reflection. So then your rights become more important than other people’s life.
But we, in the land of the free and the home of the brave, this is what being in a violent nation-state looks like.