America’s fascination with the theater of violence.
From a gun in a child’s hand to the button launching missiles over Ukraine, we’ve turned violence into virtue.
From the first crack of a musket shot at Lexington to the latest missile striking an apartment complex in Ukraine, halfway around the world, our national pulse quickens. We’ve made a sacrament of violence and destruction—cloaked it in patriotism, baptized it in cinema, and called it freedom.
The recent $10 million verdict for the former Virginia teacher Abby Zwerner—shot in the chest by her six-year-old student—should have stopped the nation cold. Instead of disturbing our national conscience, it became another headline in the media feed, briefly reported, then faded beneath more bizarre news episodes. The bullet is still lodged in her chest—symbolizing a pagan culture that worships and loves its violence
How does a six-year-old learn to kill? He doesn’t. The technology does it for him. He doesn’t need strength or malice or understanding—just the means. That pistol left carelessly in reach by a doped-up, depressed mother carries the genius of centuries of metallurgy, chemistry, and precision engineering. Our high-tech civilization compressed its intelligence into a palm-sized device, handed it to a six-year-old child, and claims it’s progress.
We used to forge our tools; now they forge us. The weaponry that once required handicraft, skill, and discipline now requires only an irrational impulse, a twitch of the finger. A second of anger overrules thought, replacing centuries of humane restraint. Technology has collapsed the distance between emotion and consequence—and America, with its gun shows and thriller action films, celebrates that collapse as welcome entertainment.
Yet the story doesn’t end with an impulsive child.
An adult with a teenage perception of reality is just as dangerous—only better armed and more confident in his power delusions. He lives and walks among us: a driver who turns a car into a weapon, a closet ideologue who assassinates by firing into a crowd, a political leader who orders missile strikes as if playing a video game. Each is a child wielding power magnified, acting without conscience to achieve stunning drama on the global stage.
Decades ago, Thomas Merton warned of this: a nation that “preaches peace while preparing for war, preaches freedom while enslaved to power.” We export democracy through war, then wonder why the world doubts our gospel. We declare ourselves defenders of liberty even as we turn a classroom into a firing range and a public square into a battle zone. Freedom’s now a slogan for domination, a mockery of the ideal we claim to defend.
Violence is a narcotic.
It gives purpose to chaos, meaning to boredom, profit to the arms-dealing Lords of War. Each generation inherits a new crusade—WW1, WW2, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza—each justified as necessary, each leaving widespread psychic rubble. Our media dresses it up with martial music and noble language, as if courage could sanitize carnage. We favor decorated heroes in political elections. But beneath every patriotic bloodthirsty montage lies the same addiction: the thrill of a life-or-death crisis, the pornographies of power.
A culture enthralled by violence is one terrified of the silent God who condemns much of humanity to Hellfire.
We cannot sit in stillness long enough to feel the pangs of conscience, so we fill the void with spectacle—Wild West movies that glorify vengeance, video war games, politics of outrage, media algorithms that amplify our primitive reflexes. We confuse shouting with conviction, actions with meaning, and shootings with resolution.
The Unspeakable–Numb Complicity
Merton called this the unspeakable—that numb complicity which allows a society to preach prosperity and peace while manufacturing death and despair. The gun factories hum, the drones circle, the headlines scroll, and that child’s bullet remains embedded next to her heart: a 9mm in her chest that never reached our heart and soul.
True freedom isn’t the right to act or speak without restraint. It’s the power to govern oneself—to master anger before it becomes fire, to feel suffering before inflicting it. We’ve mistaken license for liberty and spectacle for spirit. This nation’s Founders spoke self-evident truths, warning that the ‘tyranny of the majority’ and rioting mobs can turn democracy’s noble ideals into self-serving myths, unworthy of sustaining true democracy.
A teacher, Abby Zwerner, will live the rest of her life with that bullet lodged inside her—a relic of the Greek god Ares we worship by violence. One day, the body politic may reach the same conclusion her surgeons did—that removing our proclivity for violence would be too dangerous, that the penetration is too deep for safe removal.
The Theater of Violence
So, then, the theater of violence continues. The curtain rises on another tragedy daily, a raptured audience applauds, then the actors change face masks, costumes, and settings, to repeat the script. We watch it on TV in the dark, transfixed by a reflection of our own identity and comforted by rehearsals of democratic freedom.
And from a quiet monastery a voice still whispers from the past—Merton’s voice, steady, mournful, unheeded:
“We make a mockery of the freedom we preach.
Centuries from now, when archaeologists sift the ruins of our pagan civilization, they may find her skeleton and marvel at the 9mm lead bullet resting where her heart once pulsed—a sacramental relic from a violent culture.
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If you’d like more insights such as this, visit RMDellOrfanoAuthor.com under the blog category … Politics, where conscience, culture, and spirit intersect.
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