Periodic madness

I attribute the phrase 'periodic madness' to John le Carre, the nom de plume of the British writer David Cornwall. It's a useful descriptor. Bouts of periodic madness have gravely damaged the American psyche and the body politic. Obvious examples include the Civil War, in which about a million young men died, Prohibition, which fostered gangsterism, the concepts of 'manifest destiny' and American exceptionalism, which absolves the USA from obligations held in common by other civilized nations, especially in wartime. 

When Wendy and I lived for a year in Burlington, Vermont in 1964-65, we saw several manifestations of 'periodic madness' that persuaded us to turn our backs on the American variant of 20th century civilization. I've mentioned these in previous posts on this blog.  They include strident militarism and a paranoid view of the USA's place among the community of nations, which was displayed in the early 1960s in the Vietnam War. Americans saw this as a conflict between the (good) forces of Capitalism and the (evil) forces of communism. Even now, half a century after it ended, many of them apparently continue to believe this distorted, misguided view of the reality, which was a war of liberation of the Vietnamese from French colonial rule. The French were decisively defeated when the fortress of Dien Bien Phu was overrun by the Viet Cong. But American 'advisers' were already operating in Vietnam. Instead of embracing Ho Chi Minh as a fellow spirit of George Washington, American policy makers saw him as an agent of the mythical communist hordes that sought to convert the world to their evil system. They expended huge amounts of American blood and treasure opposing the irresistible urge of the Vietnamese people to control their own destiny. The Vietnam War ended and so did the Cold War. But America found other adversaries, notably in the Middle East. Perhaps 'periodic madness' is the wrong phrase to describe this feature of the American psyche: it's not periodic but perpetual madness.

One constant feature is violence, commonly lethal violence. This week there was another mass shooting: fourteen people at a pre-Christmas party in a disabled people's centre in California were slaughtered by a young married couple who had a baby a few months old. They left the baby with relatives, put on body armour and used large calibre assault rifles, weapons of war that have no possible civilian use. The man was American-born, has an 'Arab' name, and acquired his wife in what sounds like an arranged marriage while visiting Saudi Arabia last year. Several aspects of this mass shooting are unusual and puzzling. The unanswered questions about it will doubtless soon be answered. This might have been a terrorist attack. None of the other mass shootings in the USA this year - 355 according to the Daily Beast, an 'average of one a day' according to the NY Times - is associated with international terrorism, although some, for instance one a week ago, were associated with another manifestation of madness in the body politic, an attack on a Planned Parenthood clinic, a rather common form of domestic terrorism in the USA. Many Americans seem to believe it's OK to destroy facilities and terrorize, even kill staff of family planning clinics, because every foetus has the right to live. Nurses and doctors who help women with reproductive problems on the other hand, apparently don't have a right to life, according to this warped view. Political reactions to this latest mass shooting have been the same as to all the others: condolences and prayers for the bereaved, and total silence on possible legislative or regulatory measures that might be adopted as ways to reduce or control this mindless and preventable loss of life.