A Culture of Violence

- by Stephen Lendman
9/26/07

What do you call a country that glorifies wars and violence in the name of peace. One that's been at war every year in its history against one or more adversaries. It has the highest homicide rate of all western nations and a passion for owning guns, yet the two seem oddly unconnected. Violent films are some of its most popular, and similar video games crowd out the simpler, more innocent street play of generations earlier. Prescription and illicit drug use is out of control as well when tobacco, alcohol and other legal ones are included.

It gets worse. It's society is called a "rape culture" with data showing:

- one-fourth of its adult women victims of forcible rape sometime in their lives, often by someone they know, including family members;
- one-third of them are victims of sexual abuse by a husband or boyfriend;
- 30% of people in the country say they know a woman who's been physically abused by her husband or boyfriend in the past year;
- one in four of its women report being sexually molested in childhood, usually repeatedly over extended periods by a family member or other close relative;
- its women overall experience extreme levels of violence; an astonishing 75% of them are victims of some form of it in their lifetimes;
- domestic violence is their leading cause of injury and second leading cause of death;
- statistically, homes are their most dangerous place if men are in them as millions experience battering by husbands, male partners or fathers;
- for most women with children, there's no escape for lack of means and because male assailants pursue them causing greater harm;
- adding further injury, its society is often unsupportive; it affords women second class status, privileges and redress when they're abused so many suffer in silence fearing coming forward may cause more harm than help;
- its children are abused as well; millions suffer serious neglect, physical mistreatment and/or sexual abuse; many get relief only through escape to dangerous streets; they end up alone, more vulnerable and at greater danger away than at home where there, too, families act more like strangers or predators forcing young kids to flee in the first place.

What country is it where things like these are normal and commonplace; where peace, tranquility and safety are illusions; where they're crowded out by foreign wars and violence at home in communities, neighborhoods, schools, throughout the media and in core families.
What kind of country glorifies mass killing, assaults and abuse; one that looks down on pacifist non-violence as sissy or unpatriotic, yet claims to be peace loving. It's not in the third world, under dictatorship or controlled by religious extremists....

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