The BDN Opinion section operates independently and does not set news policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com
David Farmer lives in Portland. He wrote a weekly column for the Bangor Daily News for 11 years.
“Violence is never the answer.”
That’s what we’ve heard time and again in the aftermath of the assassination of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare last month.
But we don’t really believe it. Come on. How could we?
In the United States, violence is very often the answer.
It’s glorified on TV shows and movies, excused, encouraged. We are addicted to violence, and immune from its tragic consequences.
“No way,” you say? No one wants to see another person harmed.
Evidence suggests the opposite.
The nation was horrified four years ago when an angry mob of treasonists stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop the transfer of power from then-and-again President Donald Trump to President Joe Biden.
I should say the nation was horrified for a few weeks. Now those who led the attack on democracy are in line for pardons, their violent crimes largely excused.
Men — and it’s mostly men, but not only men — carry guns under their coats or on their belts. They carry assault-style rifles slung around their tactical gear like soldiers headed to the front in Ukraine. But they aren’t going into a war zone. They’re waiting in line for a coffee.
Protection? Exercising an alleged constitutional right? Nah, as I see it, it’s an expression of violence, of intimidation, of power. Ask them, they’ll tell you in all seriousness that the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a “good guy with a gun.” What is that if not a wish for righteous violence?
Daniel Penny, a Marine Corps veteran, was acquitted last month of a charge of negligent homicide after he choked an “agitated subway rider” to death on a New York City subway train in 2023.
As The Associated Press reported, “Penny’s attorneys argued he was protecting himself and other subway passengers from a volatile, mentally ill man who was making alarming remarks and gestures.”
Maybe. Or maybe a man who struggled with mental illness died because we have built a society that not only tolerates deadly violence, but celebrates it, teaches us that the use of violence makes us a hero.
Kyle Rittenhouse was just 17 years old in 2020 when he took up arms as a vigilante defender of law and order during protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, after Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man was left paralyzed after an encounter with a white officer.
Rittenhouse showed up in the chaos with an AR-15-style assault rifle and used it for the purpose that it was designed for. In a night of chaos in August 2020, Rittenhouse shot and killed Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, and injured Gaige Grosskreutz, then 26.
After 27 hours of deliberation in 2021, a jury found that Rittenhouse acted in self-defense.
Whatever you believe about the verdict, the entire story is tragic. A boy, not yet a man by law, grabbed a weapon of war and used it. Lives were lost, others altered forever. A tragedy.
But for perhaps half the country, it’s not a tragedy.
A young man’s poor decision has been celebrated. He has become a hero to many. Just a month after his acquittal, Rittenhouse received a standing ovation at a conservative conference in Phoenix. He was cheered for his role in a tragedy. He went on to meet with members of Congress, to hit the campaign trail for Republicans.
Check out the list of the Top TV shows for 2024.
Top of the list: the National Football League. I tune in every week — hoping beyond hope that New England Patriot’s young star Drake Maye doesn’t get hurt — as do millions and millions of Americans to a sport that is undeniably violent. Where men risk their bodies, their health, their lives for entertainment. The games, for all their glory, celebrate violence.
The rest of the list is filled with gun-toting heroes with perfect judgment and even better aim. “Tracker” follows the exploits of a lone-wolf hero who protects the weak and finds the lost, while administering Old West, sanitized justice through violence to villains.
“FBI,” “FBI: Most Wanted,” “FBI: International,” “Blue Bloods,” “The Equalizer,” “Chicago PD,” “NCIS.” The world is neatly divided into good guys with guns and bad guys with guns. Violence is often the answer.
When a racist shoots up a Black church, a student shoots a classmate and teacher, a sniper fires on a country music concert, when a CEO is murdered on the street, and on and on and on, we blame the individuals, we blame the guns, we blame the left or we blame the right. And, sure, there’s plenty of blame to go around.
But we need to look in the mirror and tell ourselves the truth. We say, “violence is never the answer,” but do we really mean it?
