I was thinking about the current state of world affairs, with wars in Ukraine and The Middle East raging. Casting my mind back to the recent global pandemic – remember that? Folk were worried about dying from Covid and governments were doing their best to help their citizens. It was not perfect but there was a caring concern at the top of most people’s priorities. Since then, we have the old economic imperative reasserting its dominance over our lives via inflation and the central bankers’ monetary policy hammer. Mister Putin thought that it would, also, be a good time for his Russian forces to invade the rest of Ukraine. Then the putrid sore that was the Israelis’ treatment of the Palestinians flared up via Hamas killing and abducting hostages en masse. Now, we have lots of men killing each other with their tanks and their bombs. Drones are the flavour of the month too, with these high tech toys of death dropping bombs on those down below. Pushing buttons and sending missiles to rain down destruction upon the guilty and the innocent indiscriminately. Why do men feel the need to kill?
“Sociologists will tell you that the tendency for men to be more violent than women is a result of traditional gender roles, such that in many cultures boys are raised to believe it’s important for them to be dominant and competitive, while girls are raised to be more nurturing and gentle.
Evolutionary psychologists, however, would say that it has more to do with our evolved sex differences and the fact that males have historically competed for status and access to females.”
Men Killing For Power
Mercenaries, soldiers, terrorists, and freedom fighters are all names for men who get to do the same sort of violent activities. Yes, there probably are a few women in the mix but predominantly it’s a guy thing. Killing other human beings. Shooting bullets into lives and ending them. It is a power grab thing. It begins with politics and the machinations of the grab for power over others. It can end with bully boys pointing their guns at those they don’t agree with. White supremacy is a power thing too. Keeping the n****** down. The colonial recent past where the white man brought civilisation to the savage natives. The blue eyed, white skinned Jesus fiction. The Christian smokescreen for an exploitative power grab. There are dumb folk out there who still believe this BS about the superiority of the white race.
Pretending To Kill In Every American Movie
Have you ever noticed that just about every American movie has someone with a gun in it? Gun violence appears to be the number one fantasy of the American public. No matter the genre, a gun is always proffered as the answer. Most people in their real lives have little to do with guns. What is the big wet dream about toy guns in the movies? Guns and killing with them are portrayed as sexy. You have to say that is one sick fantasy. If you dig down into sex its actually about procreation at its biological core. A gun is a weapon designed to make killing easier. WTF? This American obsession with guns is a distortion of something fundamental in life. Why do men feel the need to kill? Is it because only women carry new life into the world? Is it some f***** up jealousy thing? Man the destroyer? Woman the creator? If American civilisation is crumbling, what will they be remembered for? Probably their guns.
Getting Young Men To Do The Killing In Wars
They send very young men to war. They do this because these youngsters aint so good at thinking for themselves about important stuff. Younger guys are easier led. Peer group pressure is more easily manipulated to achieve the aims of the organisation. Getting guys to kill for their country or cause is what it is all about. Older men, who might be fathers, are not going to so readily pull the trigger. Life looms larger in the shadows of a co-creator. I studied ancient history, the ancient Greeks and Romans, and the accounts of their soldiers and leaders are strikingly familiar to our modern day equivalents. We have not really come very far when you get down to it. Several thousand years may have passed but we are still sending young guys to war. You know plenty of soldiers join up out of boredom and in search of a more exciting life. Travel to exotic places and kill people! I can see the tourist brochure. Not many of us think too deeply about stuff at the best of times.
Old Men Point The Finger
Old men make the final decisions about who gets killed most times. Our political leaders are invariably grey haired guys. Thinning on top and further away from the start than their demise. The Putin’s and the Trump’s. The Netanyahu’s and the Morrison’s. Old autocrats who firmly believe in the assertion of power. Why do men feel the need to kill? The competitive urge for ever more power at the expense of others? Old men make the bullets and get the young to fire them. High tech warfare is all the rage in the 21C. Drones and missile systems. Push button killing. Blowing up homes and the lives of the innocent – collateral damage. The Israelis are wiping out Gaza. Already, some 25, 000 Palestinians have been killed. Israeli settlers are getting ready to move in and colonise what was once Gaza. They talk about what is written in The Torah and the original name for this part of Israel. This is the trouble with religious belief, the adherents think that the answers are in an old book. No one and nobody else matters but the word of God. The Old Testament is full of violent and righteous Jews. This is why the Christian Nationalists in America love that book more than the wimpy gospels in the New Testament. They can grab one of the 600 million guns and waive it around threateningly ready to smite their enemy. Some lefty liberal with questionable morals. Evangelicals may sin but they don’t proudly rub it in your face. They don’t write children’s books about their secret perversions to be put on display in the local library. God damn those multiplying acronyms LGBTQIA.
The Socially Conservative Smokescreen
Russia is a controlling socially conservative place where immoral crimes can land you in prison. The Russian Orthodox Church is firmly behind Mister Putin and his imperialistic expansion. They spin a tale, a false narrative, of Ukrainian moral decay to justify the war and Russia’s invasion. There are parallels with the lies and distortions spread by the GOP Trump cult about their political opponents. Making up stories that demonise ‘the other’ for the purposes of galvanising political support. The politics of grievance rules America and the world in the 21C. Fascists are employing bully boy tactics and brandishing their guns. The strong man is back in town to impose socially conservative rules upon the people. Sin must be put back into the shadows and out of the sunlight. Bronze age beliefs about sexuality, gender, family, and God are to be reimposed upon us. Fox News is trumpeting the message about ‘woke’ being the sheep’s clothing for a socialist take over. Critical Race Theory is one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. Meanwhile, the grifters are taking your money under the cover of this ideological smokescreen. Corporate America in its concentrated oligarchic rentier brilliance is sucking every greenback it can from the population. It has SCOTUS in its pocket with justices bought and paid for. Clarence Thomas and the Trump appointees do the bidding of the highest bidder. Women’s reproductive rights have been horse traded to the religious right for their electoral support. The progressive policies of the late 20C are now under attack, as the right seeks to take back America for the privileged white. Big Business wants regulatory frameworks to be watered down for greater profits. They call this a backlash.
Killing To Control
Why do men feel the need to kill? January 6th, 2021, at the Capital was full of murderous intent. This was no peaceful protest; this was an insurrection. Police officers died and many were seriously injured defending the Capital. Angry Americans storming the seat of government and smashing things and people. Righteous anger manipulated by a conman, Donald J Trump, and his MAGA co-conspirators. Whipped into a frenzy by the messaging and social media. These folk were urged to “fight like hell” by Trump. Hundreds of them are now in prison having been prosecuted for their crimes. We wait for the wheels of justice to turn upon the ring leader. I wonder whether wealth and power ever gets served the justice it deserves in the United States of America. We will all have to wait and see.
Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of Money Matters: Navigating Credit, Debt, and Financial Freedom.
©HouseTherapy
