The School for Violence

We have to stop exporting our violent media. We have to re-examine the values behind globalization. If it’s only to promote what we inaccurately call free enterprise, which primarily benefits the elites of the developing and developed world, then we’re actually strengthening the top-down socioeconomic structures integral to the dominator model from which violence inevitably comes. On the other hand, if we back an international campaign involving heads of state and clergy to end intimate violence, we’re dealing with foundational matters, with the school for violence. If we channel economic aid and training to the grassroots, if we channel health-care, nutrition and educational programs directly to women and children and make their implementation a keystone of globalization, we’re addressing foundational matters.

You’re thinking multilevel solutions for a multilevel phenomenon.

Let us call it the partnership response to terrorism. We need a long-range plan, and we need to do this together with people all over the world. And if we only talk violent solutions, we fuel the dominator regression that will be fatal to everything we Americans yearn for and aspire to. We have to change the foundational dynamics of terrorism. Without this, we’ll never have lasting peace or security.