The Tie That Binds Mass Shootings

[David Morris]

http://washingtonmonthly.com/2016/06/15/the-tie-that-binds-mass-shootings/

Terrorism and chronic warfare are responses to life in societies in which
the only perceived choices are dominating or being dominated. These violent
responses are characteristic of cultures where this view of relations is
learned early on through traditions of coercion, abuse, and violence in
parent-child and gender relations.

It’s not coincidental that throughout history the most violently despotic
and warlike societies have been those in which violence, or the threat of
violence, is used to maintain domination of parent over child and man over
woman. It’s not coincidental that the 9/11 terrorists came from cultures
where women and children are terrorized into submission. Nor is it
coincidental that Afghanistan under the Taliban in many ways resembled the
European Middle Ages—when witchburnings, public drawings and quarterings,
despotic rulers, brutal violence against children, and male violence
against women were considered moral and normal. Neither is it coincidental
that, in the U.S. today, those pushing “crusades” against “evil enemies”
oppose equal rights for women and advocate harshly punitive childrearing.
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