Violence is American as cherry pie

 

"I say violence is necessary. Violence is a part of America's culture.
It is as American as cherry pie."

H. Rap Brown said that in 1967, and everybody pretended to be shocked. The descendants of the people who burned down the Ursuline Convent in Boston pretended to be shocked. The descendants of the lynchers in the South pretended to be shocked. The descendants of the soldiers who slaughtered the native Americans on the Plains pretended to be shocked. The descendants of the men who filled the ranks of the Westies, or La Cosa Nostra, or Nathan Bedford Forrest's cavalry pretended to be shocked. We all pretended to be shocked, just as we all are pretending to be shocked today, just as we all pretended to be shocked after Charleston, and Newtown, and Oklahoma City, and Jonesboro, and Aurora. In his new book, Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the violence inherent in a nation built on the blood of slaves and on a foundation of violent white supremacy. This is how violence is as American as cherry pie. It is baked into the culture of this nation and everybody pretends not to notice until it festers and boils up again.

In that sense, and in that context, Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez was every bit an American. He had a grudge. The basis of that grudge, whether it was rooted in a bloody-minded version of religion or an anger at the country's policies across the seas, is beside the point. Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeezwas angry at someone or something. He had a problem he could not solve and, being an American, he reached for that most American of solutions. He reached for a gun.
This is not an explanation that carries any political utility. Already, there is the high screeching from the xenophobic Right. Already, there is the inchoate mongering of fear and war. Already, we got a con run on us about how this act was inspired by ISIS,and enough with that already. We are claiming that a bunch of barbarians driving pick-up trucks around the desert have the ability to perform elaborate intercontinental social-media Jedi mind-tricks. In this case, to do so without any concrete evidence, is to ignore the very obvious domestic nature of the crime in question. 

According to estimates, so far in 2015, on almost 27,000 occasions, an American chose that same course of action. They all had problems they had decided they could not solve. They all had grudges. They all had something that made them angry enough. And, as a result, almost 7,000 of our fellow citizens are as dead as the people in Tennessee. This is not an explanation that satisfies any particular agenda but, unquestionably, we are a very fearful nation with an unacknowledged history of violence that also has armed itself very heavily. Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, an American citizen, chose a very American course of action. He had a problem he couldn't solve so he reached for the most American of solutions. He reached for a gun and he killed some of his fellow citizens.​