Theories Abound; Answers Don't Satisfy

It’s been a spell since I have posted a word to Critical Eye-Q. Credit an inundation of summer visitors! More truthfully, advanced housekeeping indolence.

The FBI and other agencies are undoubtedly busting blood vessels probing the nooks and crannies of Steven Paddock’s life to elucidate his horrific act. For my money, they can save their time and energy. We know. Steven Paddock’s act—inflicting death, violence and misery on defenseless people beneath him is quintessentially American. Happens all the time.

A quick gander across American society provides more illustrations than you can stack on a page: Wall Street and its facilitators in Washington have murdered the American Dream. Yes, so-called liberals like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. People we trusted.

The banking industry inflicts its powerful will on ordinary college students making them indebted as indentured servants. This week we heard about the Jones Act, most of us never knew existed, but it allows the shipping industry to inflict economic pain on a poor place like Puerto Rico. Making us recall Smedley Darlington Butler, a decorated marine general who maintained he made the world safe to collect Bank of America’s debts.

Mixed with the Paddock slaughter coverage we got Harvey Weinstein’s long career of inflicting his sexual will on women. (Routine in American life--think Roger Ailes & Bill O'Reilly.)  He’s hired a fleet of lawyers and therapists for his big mea culpa show and it’ll be biz-as-usual soon enough.  A thoughtful woman phoned a radio talk program the day after the event and said, “Look, it’s men doing these things.” The embarrassed moderator, indulged her point, and quickly went on to another caller.

Patricians have created a “gladiator class” of mostly African-American men who have deflected the discussion of the violence in football from concussions. That keeps the $ rolling in, and most Americans are complicit: buying tickets and/or watching it on TV.

During the last election campaign, Donald Trump, who glorified inflicting his will on an underdog on TV program called The Apprentice, bragged he could shoot somebody on 5^th Avenue and still be elected. I believe it. He’s big buds with the NRA—Americans who want to forcibly inflict their will on other people. The EU fined Amazon and Microsoft for their corporate misdeeds, but here hardly anyone notices wealthy men doing what they want, as it is the accepted norm.
The kind of gerrymandering that exists in Texas and Wisconsin is a grand example of a powerful elite inflicting its will. Democracy be damned. It will be reviewed by the Supreme Court this fall, but I am not holding my breath, but I hope I am surprised, because I have filled up this page, and  not begun to scratch the surface of available examples.

If you are honing your critical eye and need more examples, you don’t have far too look in this American life.