A dialogue of weapons

Was it that we just never heard of atrocities before unless they reached a collective overwhelming mass? Why is it that all we hear about these days are terrible events around the world where people are using force and weapons instead of negotiation and peaceful dialogue?

Yes, the availability of the Internet and the instant communication that forms the backbone of our modern world has exposed what may have always been a dialogue of weapons and force instead of peaceful discussion and negotiation. After all, action — swift, deadly action — makes for more entertaining images, spurring the taker of the video to share what he or she filmed. Has anyone seen video taken from the hours of talks to bring about the normalizing of U.S. and Cuba relations? Nope, in the Internet age we need to stage flag raisings and trot out honorable Marines. While pleasing (not violent), there is no substance there. The substance was in the months of talks, negotiations and dialogue without weapons.

So, too, with the Iran agreement. Years of discussions, all assuredly boring and seemingly mundane, the snail pace of discussions left a yawning gap in people’s desire to see something, anything, happen. The accord is boring. The alternative is action, bombast, full of the potential for deadly conflict. Surely that is more exciting, more in keeping with our daily Internet feed, our insatiable desire to be safe observers of deadly war games not on home soil. Only a country that has never really been invaded can feel that way.

The dialogue of death and destruction by gas in Syria, the civilian slaughter — now over 1,500 in Yemen — instead of negotiation and mediation, the heavy armor and deadly force training being supplied to police forces around the country instead of the same resources being applied to remedy underlying causes, the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, Darfur, Nigeria, Ukraine, Burundi and, not least, the drug wars in Mexico — all these play out with deadly entertainment value on our screens, big and small. The audience is insatiable, the commercial benefit (TV and Internet ads) undeniable. The audience is shown these as everyday events, unavoidable, part of the structure of modern life.

The audience becomes a patsy, easily manipulated.

“Build it, and they will come” could be restated as “Inure them to it, and they will want more.” And in so doing, that same desire can be easily turned to an acquiescence for more hardware for war, more weapons and more hardline politically approved tactics. Ask yourself this: Are you shocked anymore to see bombed out cities and dead bodies on the streets outside of America? If not, you have become the perfect tool for the war mongers. If that death and destruction does not still shock you — it should. Every time. The day you allow yourself to become unfeeling about the plight of others is the day you become partially responsible and part of the dialogue of weapons, not peace.

Peter Riva, a former resident of Amenia Union, now lives in New Mexico.