Real Ain’t Pretty? A Nonviolent Analysis of Election Violence

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by Michael N. Nagler & Stephanie N. Van Hook

The violence that has been brought to the surface by campaigns in this election must give us pause to reflect on the state of our union.
Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman in a recent op-ed for Common Dreams suggests that we should make war an election issue. Even before the recent massive Wikileaks release, the majority of Americans were against the ongoing Mideast wars, as was revealed in poll after poll; now it should be clear to all of us that there can and will never be a “clean war” and that war will always cause horrific accounts of suffering and death. Many do consider war as an election issue, only not the way Goodmans intention to end the practise. Consider the North Carolina race for Congress. Illario Pantano, a Tea-Party backed congressional candidate admitted to brutally killing two unarmed Iraqi men at gunpoint in April of 2004 near Fallujah and hanging a sign above their corpses reading “No better friend, no worse enemy.” Cleared by the Army of any guilt, he is in a head to head race in the 7th Congressional District of North Carolina.  In other words, although this brutality has been made known to his constituency and the nation, it shockingly enough is quite plausibly working to his advantage in winning the congressional seat.  Some people – who are they, one wonders, and how many – evidently feel that these actions represent what they want in a leader – represent their values.

When traveling in northwestern Virginia, a car passed me (SV) with a sticker of a young boy urinating on the word ‘Afghanistan.’ The dehumanization of the people we harm in war has gone beyond our de-sensitization to the fact that we are causing harm. We have begun to rally around our bestial nature, as we give our support to these modern gladiatorial arenas in foreign lands. May the most violent win. May the very worst in  human nature prevail… and entertain us.

How did we get here?  ‘Entertainment’ is a clue.  A movie poster in Petaluma, California right now depicts two grim-looking white men in violent postures, machine guns ready with the film’s intriguing title: “Real ain’t pretty.” Take a look at the majority of commercial messages (the average American is subjected to over 3,000 a day!) and you will see the roots of violence. You will notice how the negative attributes of men and women are represented as what makes us real, as our true nature. In other words, we are meant to believe that human nature is violent and mean.  Imagine if there were no other outlets to counter this message, suggesting that our true nature is infinite, good, and full of dignity. Imagine if we were surrounded in an echo chamber of violent images, messages and representatives. Where would we be? Who would we be like?
Well, we might be very much like the hapless citizens of Huxley’s Brave New World who were told that if they wanted an image for the human condition they should “imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever.”  Alas, that image just came to life, here.  An official in another Tea-party candidate, Rand Paul’s retinue, literally did just days ago do that to a helpless woman who was pinned to the ground for being too close to their rally and from another persuasion.

What should we do about this?  Well, here’s one thing we should not do: we should not point the finger of blame at this person, call him a disgusting coward and a brownshirt.  Not because it isn’t true; but because it doesn’t help.  What we should do, we have come to believe, may be less satisfying to our emotions short term but will slowly and steadily help to rebuild the dehumanizing culture we have somehow endured up to now:

  • Opt out of the culture by a) reducing our own exposure to violent films, TV, etc.  By how much?  Zero might be a good target!  No one needs any violence running around in their head.  And b) changing what we buy, eat, wear, etc. to reflect the fact that we are not material objects to be manipulated for gain by advertisers.  Simple is beautiful.
  • Learn about nonviolence.  Time and again the charge against nonviolence is that it could not have stopped Hitler. Our President maintained this uninspiring perspective as he accepted his Nobel Peace Prize in October, 2009.  At the Metta Center (www.mettacenter.org), our response is that it could have and it did. There are inspiring examples of successful nonviolent resistance against the Nazis, at the Rosenstrasse Prison Demonstration in Berlin itself, the Norwegian school teachers strike, resistance by individuals (Dietrich Boenhoffer and others) and groups (White Rose and others) around Europe. And imagine how many more there could have been if nonviolence was a studied and understood alternative, if we had perceived the dangers of dehumanization instead of waiting until Hitler had centralized his power.
The unsettling climate of these elections gives us a clear message: the minds of our fellow citizens are descending into the clutches of violence which could lead to outright fascism.  The time to begin nonviolent alternatives was probably ten years ago, but it is not too late to wake up.
The White Rose Society