“Sometimes I think it should be a rule of war that you have to see somebody up close and get to know him before you can shoot him.”
- M*A*S*H, Colonel Potter

We have become a nation shaped by war. The warrior mentality permeates our society as surely as it did that of the Visigoths who sacked Rome in 410. The foundations of our democracy which originated in the view of human beings as individuals deserving of respect, dignity and human rights have been sacrificed to a mode of politics and culture that has become simply an extension of war, both at home and abroad.

In the past decade, we have seen a punishing state increasingly replace the welfare state. No matter how ill-conceived that welfare state might have been, more and more individuals and groups are now treated as disposables who are not deserving of the safety nets and basic protections that provide the conditions for living with a sense of security and dignity. Basic social supports have been replaced by an increase in the production of prisons, the expansion of the criminal justice system into everyday life and the erosion of crucial civil liberties.

Where once we viewed shared responsibilities, the dominate sharing is now that of fear. We have adopted an attitude that if you share my views, you are my friend and a patriot; if not, you are my enemy. Civil discourse has been replaced with frustration and anger which has led to an attendant cave mentality striking out at that which is different and shrinking from that which goes bump in the night.

State violence has not only become acceptable, it has become the norm as our government spies on its citizens, suspends the right of habeas corpus, sanctions police brutality against those who question state power, freely tortures those it fears and hides behind the “state secrets” privilege to hide its crimes. Fear has both altered our democratic principles and dehumanized a population that is increasingly willing to look the other way as large segments of the population are simply tossed aside.

Every day we are bombarded with a seemingly endless stream of tragic stories about decent people losing their homes, more and more young people being incarcerated and increasing numbers of people living on the streets. The media writes a front-page story about young people leaving their recession-ridden families to live on the street, often surviving by selling their bodies for money. On the evening news, we hear of unspeakable horrors being inflicted on children who have been tortured in the “death chambers” of Iraq, Cuba and Afghanistan. And we barely blink.

The Bush administration succeeded in eroding a culture inspired by democratic values and replacing it with a culture of war and fear. During the last decade, our insipid “war on terror” became all-embracing, and in doing so, it eroded the distinction between war and peace. It put into play a culture increasingly shaped by militarized values and ideals. The notion of the common good has been made subordinate to the values and the dictates of the national security state. War is now no longer the last resort of a state intent on defending its territory; it has morphed into a new form of public pedagogy - a cultural war machine designed to shape society.

War is now the foundation for a body politic that employs military language, military concepts and military policing actions to address problems far removed from the battlefield. We have become so inured to the constant bombardment of the warrior culture that we now view the culture of war on the same level as we do an advertisement for tourism. The result is that the meaning of war has been expanded rhetorically to name, legitimatize and wage battles against social problems. We now fight The War on Drugs, The War on Poverty and, tragically, The War on our newfound enemy, Mexican immigrants.

The Bush/Cheney regime succeeded in making war the normalized central function of power and politics; it has become the norm of American society rather than the exception. War has become legitimated by a state of exception and emergency that has become permanent rather than temporary. There has yet to be a year in the 21st Century in which we have not been engaged in war.

Where once violence was aimed at traditionally defined enemies and threats, The State now wages war on concepts, focusing not on a specific state, army, soldiers or location but on mercurial concepts spawned by the fear emanating from that reptilian part of our psyche. The enemy has become omnipresent. And the more difficult it is to root out, the more convenient it is for The State to expand the culture of fear and the resources dedicated to violence. War is now the centerpiece of American domestic and foreign policy. We are engaged in a battle that has no definitive end and which not only demands but provides self-justification for the constant use of violence.

We have become a society increasingly dedicated to both the production and promulgation of violence. A culture of cruelty has emerged in the media, especially in the talk radio circuit, where a sordid nationalism has merged with a hyper-militaristic attitude that rejects reason and scorns all those who do not fit into the stereotype of White, Bible-thumping Christians. Dialogue, reason and thoughtfulness have disappeared from the public realm and we now stage each and every encounter as a fight to the death. The civic and moral centers of the country that disappeared under the Bush administration have been replaced by a warfare centric economy with no reverence or understanding of the obligations of citizenship and global responsibility.

By making war and state violence the organizing principle of our society, how long can we hope to survive as a democratic entity?