America on the Brink

Chapter One The Neglected Dimension of Verbal Violence in Politics The Descent into Violence America is a violent country in every sense of the word – wars abroad, racial ethnic strife, mass shootings, police brutality, gang violence, hate crimes, rape, and domestic violence are reported daily. I can hardly scroll through my Twitter or Facebook feed without video footage of people fighting or arguing over something. It doesn’t take long before the argument gets personal, sometimes nasty. This is not to mention our insatiable social thirst for violence in sports and entertainment – hit ‘em, kick ‘em, break his neck, kill ‘em. But our problem with violence is not just physical, it is also verbal and emotional. While many of us may not be on the battlefield with a gun or engaged in physical altercations recorded for voyeurs to view on social media, many of us participate in another form of violence we believe is somehow more respectable than these other forms. Verbal and emotional violence is widespread today yet neglected and not thought of as problematic. Why is this the case? Our neglect is rooted in a misunderstanding of the fundamental nature of violence. Violence is often defined as the use of physical force to injure, abuse, or destroy in dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster and Oxford. It is also understood as a form of aggression by the American Psychological Association. The word force is important. Often our understanding of force is physical and that is why we miss the basic and core dimensions of violence. We associate force with physical acts of aggression – pushing, hitting, and or using a weapon to inflict harm or death. But there is more to violence than physical acts. Violence also involves both actions and words. Violence does two things. First, it disregards the basic dignity all persons deserve. Second, this disregard results in actions that we characterize as violent - actions that invade mental, emotional, physical, and social boundaries. Those actions can be physical and verbal. The point I want to make here is that not only can we use force physically, we can also use it in verbal ways to inflict harm emotionally and psychologically. This fundamental aspect of violence has been ignored for too long. My question for readers is “What would it mean to apply this basic understanding of the nature of violence to the ways we talk to one another as citizens?” When I answered this question a few months ago it opened my eyes to the fact that our political discourse has a violent dimension we have missed. On all the major news networks and social media platforms, we have descended into a retaliatory approach of communication as we

| 7