America today doesn’t just have red (conservative) states and blue (progressive) states, but de facto red countries and blue countries: regions with distinct cultures, heroes, politics, dialects, economies, and ideas of freedom. The recent massacre in Las Vegas suggests that it's time to let them go their separate ways.
LONDON – The Las Vegas massacre and its aftermath are pure Americana. A deranged person lugs nearly two dozen high-tech assault weapons to a 32nd-floor hotel room to spray death upon concertgoers in a mass murder and suicide. In response, the culture wars flare anew, with gun-control advocates in pitched battle against gun enthusiasts. Yet there is consensus on one deep truth: nothing much will change. After a week of televised, heart-wrenching funerals, American life will go on until the next massacre.
Mass violence is deeply rooted in American culture. America’s European settlers committed a two-century-long genocide against the native inhabitants, and established a slave economy so deeply entrenched that only a devastating civil war ended it. In almost all other countries, even Czarist Russia, slavery and serfdom were ended by decree or legislation, without a four-year bloodletting. When it was over, America established and enforced a century-long system of apartheid.
To this day, America’s homicide and imprisonment rates are several times higher than Europe’s. Several large mass shootings occur each year – in a country that is also waging several seemingly endless wars overseas. America is, in short, a country with a past history and current stark reality of racism, ethnic chauvinism, and resort to mass violence.
LONDON – The Las Vegas massacre and its aftermath are pure Americana. A deranged person lugs nearly two dozen high-tech assault weapons to a 32nd-floor hotel room to spray death upon concertgoers in a mass murder and suicide. In response, the culture wars flare anew, with gun-control advocates in pitched battle against gun enthusiasts. Yet there is consensus on one deep truth: nothing much will change. After a week of televised, heart-wrenching funerals, American life will go on until the next massacre.
Mass violence is deeply rooted in American culture. America’s European settlers committed a two-century-long genocide against the native inhabitants, and established a slave economy so deeply entrenched that only a devastating civil war ended it. In almost all other countries, even Czarist Russia, slavery and serfdom were ended by decree or legislation, without a four-year bloodletting. When it was over, America established and enforced a century-long system of apartheid.
To this day, America’s homicide and imprisonment rates are several times higher than Europe’s. Several large mass shootings occur each year – in a country that is also waging several seemingly endless wars overseas. America is, in short, a country with a past history and current stark reality of racism, ethnic chauvinism, and resort to mass violence.