Stop Feeding the Fire, Stop Romanticizing Guns: A Cry for Orlando

A week ago, on the early morning of June 12th, 2016, Omar Mateen carried out his brutal rampage in the LBGT nightclub in Orlando, Florida, setting a new American record for number of people killed by one American gunman at one time. Though much attention has been paid to the killer's Muslim religious background and his claim of allegiance to the Islamic State, I find it more important to point out that this massacre was clearly motivated by intense homophobia. He could have gone anywhere to take innocent lives and make his point, but Mr. Mateen chose a place that was associated with the LBGT community. He made a conscious decision to target gays, lesbians and others of non-conventional sexual and gender preferences for his night of infamy. In deploring the killing, many politicians and media pundits have chosen to focus on his religious identity and his attempt to link himself with violent Islamic extremism, but fewer are the voices that have made as resounding a denunciation of anti-gay attitudes and violence as they have of Islamic extremism or terrorism.

This is quite ironic, considering that LBGTs are among the populations most prone to suffer persecution and violence--and thus live in terror--in America. One would think that those who denounce terrorism in broad, sweeping, flag-waving, moral-crusade terms would take note of how often LBGT Americans are terrorized, and bring this front and center in denouncing the Orlando rampage, but no. The reason is not difficult to surmise. Many right-wing politicians have made quite a point of vilifying LBGT people and rejecting their efforts to gain equal rights over the last several decades. In their demonization of gays, lesbians, transgender people and others, such politicians helped to set the stage for the Orlando massacre, for they have targeted LBGTs with their rhetoric and legislation as surely as the Orlando killer did with his assault rifle. And so, when this holocaust raged in the Orlando nightclub, the right-wing politicians and gay-haters found themselves in a quandary, and took the easy way out, focusing on the religious aspect to engage in some free and easy Muslim-bashing, to avoid the issue of how their words and actions have contributed to the beating and killing of LBGTs on many occasions including this horrific night in Florida. Sadly, their pointing to Islam, rather than homophobia, as the cause of the Orlando catastrophe is likely to lead to more Muslim-bashing around the USA and beyond. Of course, for those like Donald Trump, who depend on whipping racism and bigotry to a "white"-hot froth for their surest source of political support, this result will probably suit them just fine, regardless of how it traumatizes Muslim-American individuals and families, tears apart our society, and bolsters the anti-American sentiments and ideology of groups like ISIS.

Today, however, I want to call attention to another aspect of the Orlando shooting spree. Omar Mateem didn't just go to the Pulse nightclub armed to the teeth to kill others, but also to be killed himself in an orgy of violence, a ballet of bullets. In so doing, he was acting out a script that has been portrayed and played out all too many times in America, in both the fantasy life and the real lives of Americans. This is the tired but never retired old trope of the valiant, gunslinging hero who goes to fight against invincible odds and dies in a blaze of glory. Think of "Custer's Last Stand," fighting bravely against the "Injun" enemy. Think of all the movies and television shows, from "High Noon" to "Dirty Harry," from "Pulp Fiction" to "American Sniper" to (add your own), where soldiers or police or vigilante he-men or charismatic criminals end up fighting alone, one gun against a hundred or a thousand, to either die or miraculously triumph, or both.

All hail the lone male hero and his mighty gun, one brave penis against the world! If he dies, he dies happy in one last ejaculation of lead, blood and sperm! If he prevails, it is because of the magical power of a noble man and his majestic weapon!

I would go so far as to say that this scenario, this man-and-a-gun-against-the world script, has achieved a quasi-sacred status in the American imagination, particularly the American male imagination, helping to explain why guns are such a sensitive political issue in the USA. Any proposal to limit access to guns in the USA ignites such ferocious and irrational opposition, you would think that the proposed laws were aiming at castrating men rather than simply placing limits on gun access, use and purchase similar to those in other countries. Perhaps if more men played more with their penises and got their jollies that way, perhaps if our society were more open and accepting of sexuality, we would not have this problem. Perhaps if Omar Mateem had gone to that bar seeking an orgasm rather than a gun-gasm, this tragedy could have been avoided. Unfortunately, it would seem that gun play had become more satisfying, more meaningful, and more heroic than sex play for him. I fear, however, that he is not alone in this, shall we call it, "lifestyle preference," where aggression trumps eroticism and carnage is preferred to coitus.

This needs to change. I say that unequivocally, and I don't see how any sane person could disagree with the proposal that we need to completely reject and lay to rest the persistent, pernicious and tragically popular mass hallucination that teaches young men in America that the ultimate exercise of American male heroism is to die in a hail of gunfire, shooting and being shot, taking down as many others as possible before submitting to death oneself. John Wayne, RIP! Quentin Tarantino, please find something else to aim your camera at besides endless and repetitive displays of gunfire!

But it will not be enough to retire this script. It has to be replaced with cultural representations that are not only non-violent, but also attractive and inspirational. American boys and men--and boys and men in other countries who grow up to the sights and sounds of bullet-riddled American media, from police procedurals to war movies to gangster rap--need to be shown other models of heroism to aspire to, other ways of being fulfilled and proud as men without fetishizing guns and shooting to kill. We need a paradigm shift, in Thomas Kuhn's phrase.

We need a massive, all-hands-on-deck commitment to creating images and narratives that celebrate the value of peaceful pursuits and non-violent forms of achievement and heroism for American men. Instead of only glorifying policemen, soldiers and psychopathic killers ad infinitum and ad nauseum, we need to showcase the drama and significance of other occupations and situations. To a public trained to feel bored by any story that does not involve the firing of guns, and equates heroism with good guys with guns killing bad guys with guns, this is indeed a difficult task, but that does not mean it is an impossible one. Popular television programs have been built around the work-lives of lawyers and doctors, with the ethical dilemmas of law firms and the life-and-death drama of the operating room proving just as gripping and just as lucrative as battlefield heroics or the stereotyped shoot-out in the crime-den. The work of teachers, social workers, legislators and other public servants could also be converted into compelling dramas if the networks and movie studios were willing to take a chance, as they did with "Mad Men" and its portrayal of the advertising world, for example.

And then there are video games. Surely more could be done to create a wider range of alternatives to the kinds of single-shooter kill-fests that would almost seem to have been designed as how-to manuals for disturbed mass killers like Omar Mateem?

I know some who read this will object that there is no direct correlation between violent entertainment and gun violence in America. I would answer that while there may be no direct correlation, there is no escaping the fact that American gun violence in American life very much reflects the portrayals of gun violence in American popular culture, suggesting a kind of feedback-loop between what people see on screen and what they do in life. There may not be any one-to-one causal correspondence between any particular media display of gun-violence and any particular mass-shooting in a simplistic sense, but that does not mean there is NO influence on the American psyche from the constant screening of scenes of men with guns who shoot to kill and are killed by shooting. If images and narratives on the screen had no effect on us, billions of dollars would not be spent every week on television and internet advertising. What we see, what we hear in the media DOES affect us. Looked at in this way, the massive and ceaseless displays of gun violence are one long and unending advertisement for the glorification of guns and an equation of American masculinity with gun violence, an anti-public service announcement, you might say.

Women of course can play and slay with guns as much as men, and I would sadly predict that the rising number of films and programs with gun-toting females will eventually usher in a new phenomenon of female mass-shooters. I suppose this could be seen as a victory for gender equality, but this is one glass ceiling I would rather remain unbroken.

One more thing. I have noted for many years now that in many places in America, most public monuments are dedicated to soldiers and police. One could easily develop the impression, growing up in the average American town or city, that the only men who are real heroes in American life are those who brave danger with guns in their hands. Why are there so few memorials to people in other walks of life, to doctors, nurses, engineers and musicians, poets, artists, composers and playwrights? Many are the American highways and byways named for army regiments and state police officers; few are those named for teachers or writers or scientists. This is another area in which we can alter the atmosphere of our country to advance more peaceful values and images, and start reducing the amount of energy that our culture pumps into a misguided romance with guns and violence that may not directly cause events like the Orlando massacre, but which helps make them more imaginable, and thus more possible. We need to drain this swamp, whose polluted waters allow toxic tendencies to flourish...

I remember once reading a book called "Wisconsin Death Trip," a photographic journey through images of death and funerals in Wisconsin. I feel like our country has been on an "American Death Trip" for years. Let's get off this sad trajectory, PLEASE!

Next: Paganism and gun violence.

The Culture of Violence Devours Its Young

The recent (Dec. 14) mass killing in Newtown, Connecticut, a town not so far or so different from the one I was born in, sickens me with grief and anger, with hot, bitter tears repeatedly welling in my eyes over the last several days. The only good thing that can be said about this cruel slaughter of 6 and 7 year old children and those who worked with them is that it seems to be provoking the wayward conscience of my countrymen to consider once more some kind of action to limit gun violence in our country. It is hard to be too optimistic about this, however, as we have had similar mass killings in recent years that also stimulated discussions of possible new gun control measures, only for these to quickly fade as America reverted to its characteristic acquiescence in a culture of violence with a society divided between those who think we should have less guns in circulation and those who think the answer to gun-related deaths is always MORE GUNS.

I am in favor of more regulations on the ownership and distribution of guns, such as a renewed ban on assault rifles and other rapid-fire weapons, which are designed for battlefield carnage, not the civilian needs of personal protection or hunting, and an ending to the bizarre loophole in our gun laws that make "gun shows," bazaar-like sales of all manner of guns and gun paraphernalia, exempt from most regulations in effect at regular gun shops, making it easy for people to buy the most dangerous types of weapons and huge amounts of ammunition with few questions asked. I think there is a lot that could be done without interfering with the right of people to own some guns and use guns for sport and self-protection, while indeed quite deliberately interfering with the foolish and dangerous belief of many in this country that Americans should be allowed to carry and use guns anywhere, anytime, anyhow.

Should you respond with the gun-rights battle-cry of "Don't infringe on my liberty! Second Amendment rights!!!," let me suggest a bit of context here. No liberty is absolute. No rights are absolute. There are always compromises made in the interest of the public good. (Of course, if all you care about are private rights and don't accept the notion of a "public good," this will probably not make much sense to you.) We don't allow people to drive anywhere they want. You may want to drive on the left side of the street, Brit-style, and may not want to stop at traffic lights, but you accept that kind of restriction of your "freedom" because that is what is needed to ensure a modicum of safety and order in our streets and cities. We don't allow people to walk around naked in public places. Maybe this infringes on a person's self-expression and personal identity, but we restrict it as it is thought to be offensive to public morality. You may want to dump toxic chemicals from your garage or your business into the local river, because it would be convenient for you to dispose of these things this way, but it is not allowed because it would be bad for public health and the environment. Even dogs are no longer free to shit on the streets, sidewalks and parks without their owners "bringing up the rear" and scooping up the poop. Terrible restriction on personal liberty, isn't it? But we generally accept that in all of these cases, personal liberty is not absolute, but has to be tempered by consideration of the public good. I think the same applies to gun control laws. No one is talking about an all-out elimination of all gun ownership in the USA. All that is being proposed are restrictions on the sale and ownership of the most dangerous weapons, and a more careful procedure for gun sales and registration in general.

It would also help a great deal to have NATIONAL laws, not state laws regulating guns. If one state has very tight gun restrictions and the adjoining state has lax laws, all a person in search of the most carnage-inducing instruments of death has to do is drive across state lines and find a gun merchant. For gun laws to be effective, they have to be NATIONAL in scope, and it would be even better to work at INTERNATIONAL gun treaties to avoid the problem noted above from being relocated to the international stage.

My main purpose today is not to argue about gun control, however, even if I have started off that way. I am more concerned with the WHY of our ever-increasing gun violence. Some look at incidents like the one that just happened in Newtown and put the blame on mental illness. That guy was sick, that guy was crazy, they say; we need more mental health services and more screening for mental illness, and then we'll be fine.

I don't buy that argument. It is too easy and too narrow. It may be that many of the people who go on gun rampages have some kind of psychiatric ailment, but this does not explain why they act out their disturbance in the same way, again and again: loading up on guns, usually including the most lethal, high-capacity types, and then seeking out a public area where they enact the same ritualized scenario, again and again: shooting as many people as they can in a short period of time and then taking their own lives, or dying in a hail of gunfire that they bring down upon themselves. These killers are not each coming up with a unique, creative scenario, but all seem to be following the same basic script. Did they create this script, this pattern, this idea, all on their own? If they have, then we can rest easy that this is simply a misfiring neuron or chemical imbalance or thought disorder, the tragic malfunctioning of a diseased brain, and all we need to understand is which psychiatric label to apply to said brain, medicate or lock away the person bearing bad brain, and voila! Case closed.

But these disturbed murderers are not coming up with these mass-killing scenarios, these die-in-a-blaze-of-glory extravaganzas all on their own. Our media is saturated with images and stories of people who live and die by and with guns, constantly shooting, killing, bleeding, more and more bodies, more and more deaths on our television, movie and video game screens EVERY DAY. And our young are becoming addicted to violent entertainment. It may be that for most young people, this exposure causes no lasting harm, at least no obvious inclination toward mass murder, but how do we know for sure? How do we know how many people who resort to guns in killing and maiming others may have been influenced by the flood of enticing violence in our culture? More research needs to be done, no doubt, but isn't it common sense that if we allow our media to constantly bombard people with narratives and images glorifying gun violence, and we then see a trend of gun violence in our society, that our media may very well be contributing to the problem? Doesn't our economy run on the assumption that massive advertising is able to sway people's behavior? Don't we believe that media communication has an effect on people? Well, shouldn't the same reasoning apply to media violence? WE ARE CONSTANTLY ADVERTISING, MARKETING,BUYING, SELLING, MANUFACTURING AND PROFITING FROM FANTASIES OF VIOLENCE AND KILLING. WE ARE TRAINING OUR YOUNG TO KILL AND BE KILLED.

We need to address this larger social context, and not take refuge in false comfort that all we need is to label, medicate or lock away a few disturbed or diseased individuals. Yes, we need more mental health services, not only because of gun violence, but because it is part of having a humane society, assuming we still believe that such a thing is worth striving for. But we need to think more about how we educate, indoctrinate, advertise and seduce people into loving images of blood-drenched, bullet-riddled violence and narratives of glorious killing. We have to start thinking about restricting such pathways to violence, and building pathways that lead to more peaceful and humane places.

Yes, I am talking about censorship, but this is nothing so different from what we already do in certain areas. We do not allow kids to buy pornography. We slap massive fines on mainstream television performances that feature obscenity or nudity. We do not allow terrorists to use media channels to advocate violent attacks.
If in these cases we accept the need to limit free expression where it is seen as injurious to public health, safety or morals, why on earth don't we put limits on how many shootings and deaths can be shown per night per television program or video game? Yes, the entertainment companies, being immoral corporate greed monsters, will scream and cry that this is against free speech, this is un-American, this is against liberty and consumer choice, but we have to keep our eyes on the prize here. Those media companies will just have to find some different ways to enthrall and entertain their viewers and gamers. They may just have to come up with more compelling stories, characters and scenarios and diversify beyond the rote production of images of carnage. If the media giants are incapable of creating forms of entertainment that are not based upon mass violence, then we should take away their broadcasting licenses and put them out of business.

As a Pagan, I pray that all Pagans will focus their spirituality on glorifying peace and nature, not weapons and death. We can be part of the solution, or part of the problem. In a time when our society is so sick and so sad, let's be part of the solution.

A "Normal" American Massacre: Gun Violence in America

Another hellish shooting in America, this time in Aurora, Colorado. Another mass murder by a deranged gunman, the 24 year old James Eagan Holmes, this time in a movie theatre. Another round of speeches by politicians deploring the loss of life and calling on us to pray for the dead and for their families. This time, Obama and Romney making the usual robotic-compassionate speeches. It's all become so very normal in America, as we seem to have these explosions of gun violence on a horribly regular basis. The news media will be all abuzz for several days with coverage of the tearful survivors and their families.

One thing likely to be missing: any rational discussion of the need for more gun control in this country. We might not be able to prevent all dangerous individuals from getting guns and wreaking havoc, but doesn't it make sense that if we reduce the supply and ease of access to guns in this society, we might see less of these awful events? I fear that our public officials are too afraid of the NRA (the politically powerful National Rifle Association) and the gun lobby to engage in any such discussion. We can look forward to the next massacre, more politicians calling for prayers for the dead and their families, more media stories about pathetic victims, tearful survivors and traumatized families, and nothing will be learned. This country is brain-dead when it comes to the issue of gun violence. It is one of the saddest things about America. As far as I can tell, the Zombie Apocalypse is already here.

As a Pagan, I see all the more need to focus our spirituality on peace and reconciliation, not fetishes about weapons and fantasies of violence. We do indeed have in Pagan mythology gods with weapons and there are indeed tales of wars. Let us make sure to interpret these things metaphorically and spiritually so that the weaker-minded who are among us now or who may come after us later do not see these elements of mythology as literal instructions for what to do in society today, like right-wing racist nuts such as Anders Behring Breivik who blend in the mythical scenario of Ragnarok from Norse mythology with their own hateful fantasies of "race war." We can be fighters for peace and justice. We can look to smash intolerance and inequality, not the skulls of enemies. We can use the sword of intellect and understanding to cut through ignorance, like the thunderbolt-weapon (vajra) that symbolizes the Vajrayana school of Tibetan Buddhism. In fact, there is much for thoughtful Pagans to consider about how Buddhism put a psychological spin on gods of anger and war and used them as tools for meditative self-transformation.

Above all, let us refrain from glamorizing violence and weapons. In our world today, there are simply too many things going on in our culture that point us toward violence, and so very few that point us away. Let's be on the right side of that equation.