Valor-Violence: The American Way of Life

By Joe (He/Him)

“America was a bastard

The illegitimate daughter of the mother country
Whose legs were then spread around the world
And a rapist known as freedom
Free Doom”
Comment #1, Gil Scott-Heron

On March 16th, 1968, more than 500 people were killed by the American forces waging hell in what came later to be known as the My Lai massacre. Women, children, and community elders were hunted down, raped, tortured, and butchered by men draped in the honor of the U.S. military. Shortly before, the supporting commanders declared, “ [This] is what you’ve been waiting for — search and destroy — and you’ve got it1.” For over a year afterward, the Army officers did their best to cover up the bloodshed, reported originally as a successful battle for the U.S. A month later, Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered outside of a hotel room in Memphis, Tennessee, by James Earl Ray. He arrived in the city on April 3rd on behalf of the ongoing sanitation worker strike. This movement marked a shift in King’s philosophy in the years prior,
with the latter half of the 1960s committed to the struggle of workers, radical class disparities, and a further pan-African approach to racial injustice. For years prior, he was riddled with scrutiny and harassment from the FBI. Federal agents frequently tapped phone calls, tracked meetings, and even released controversial tapes disparaging his marriage. An aide to the then-director J. Edgar Hoover announced in a memo shortly after King’s 1963 march on Washington, stating, “In the light of King’s powerful demagogic speech…We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro, and national security2.” In 1999, a Memphis Jury awarded the King family a settlement, alleging that Ray acted in concert with local and state
actors3. In any municipality across the United States, his name etches street corners and boulevards. His birthday now a federal holiday, and his legacy touted in classrooms coast to coast.
One year after that, the FBI and local Chicago police orchestrated the assassination of Fred Hampton. He was killed in his sleep when the police descended on 2337 West Monroe Street on Chicago’s West Side. They fired 82 to 100 shots into the apartment4. Over the course ofthe Black Panther Party’s existence, federal officials coordinated arrests, bombings, and
espionage to stem its leaders. Hoover did so through an operation entitled COINTELPRO. This was done to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist, hate-type organizations and groupings, their leadership, spokesmen, membership, and
supporters, and to counter their propensity for violence or civil disorder5,
6.” To add a refrain to the wicked chorus, the murder was investigated by the same government that performed it. An Illinois grand jury indicted twelve police officers, the state attorney general, and another member of his office for obstruction of justice. The judge dismissed all charges against the defendants in October 1972, clearing them without requiring them to present their defense.

We do not need to go down the line and drone on with endless examples of needless state-sanctioned violence. These examples echo a tune familiar to every American. America will do anything to hold onto power. Whether it’s a challenge to global economic power structures or a reformation to domestic racial caste systems, we are hungry to spill blood and clean it up with valor stories.

Valor, defined by Merriam-Webster, is the strength of mind or spirit that enables a person to encounter danger with firmness; a personal bravery. In each example, each atrocity committed by the U.S. was either publicly or privately justified as a necessary and brave action taken in precaution. The communist Vietnamese were a threat to democracy. King was a threat to national security. Hampton propagated civil disorder. In these terms, the American apparatus for domination can formally execute any operation with seemingly limitless means. They can spy on your relationships. They can shoot your pregnant wife alongside you while you sleep. They can execute hundreds of innocent villagers. Consequences, corruption, and calamity need not be discussed because America does not need a judge. We call only to a higher power. These unfortunate actions were done to preserve the American way of life. To protect those who is apart of this, we can even strip you from your home.

Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security was created. Then, shortly after, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, otherwise known as ICE, was established. ICE operates under the guise of valor. Under the wicked circumstances of Osama Bin Laden, the United States government needed to act preemptively. So, we armed ourselves with another police force. Whereas the police were created to catch runaway slaves, ICE was created to catch runaway foreigners. Under Bush, Obama, Biden, and of course, Trump, millions of foreign nationals were taken and deported from the country.

Many argue that this was, in line with its original conception, justified. Why have illegal immigrants in your country? Why risk another theft, murder, drug deal, or, at its most dramatic, terrorism as these immigrants were advertised to bring? We can answer this question within the framework of white American supremacy with another question. Why would we risk letting the
communist villagers of My Lai live? Why would we put racial hegemony at risk with the lives of King and Hampton? Again, dominance in any structure must be preserved by being bold. By instilling a sense of valor in these operations, the actors are not kidnappers, displacers, or murderers, no. They are heroes preserving the American way of life. When Renee Good and Alex Pretti were passively resisting ICE operations, a bullet entered their skulls, and a verbal
medal was awarded to the shooters by the President’s henchmen.

Needless to say, there are many other emotionally motivating factors at play. Fear for one can be a potential engine for this pattern of valor-justification. Deep down, the officer who murdered George Floyd did not fear the man, but what that man represents. Be it a Black man, a Vietnamese communist child, a Muslim prayer, a Jewish temple, or a Venezuelan refugee, white capitalist dominant society is afraid of its grip on power slipping through its consistent encounter with the other. The power hungry are obsessively afraid of what Frantz Fanon quoted from the Bible – that the “last shall be first8.” They are afraid because, just as Derek Chauvin and Fanon knew, we Americans are all outsiders in constant psychological battle with whom we must consider the “ruling” and “ the others.9”

This is nonsensical. It is cyclical. But any injustice is inherently nonsensical, and any unjust system is cyclical in its self-preservation. This is why Pretti and Good shocked the white world. It revealed something so innate to the American way of life if you were not its typical victim. That your life is nothing compared to the valor of preserving the present.

• 5, COINTELPRO stands for Counter-Intelligence Program. NLG Task Force on Counterintelligence and the Secret Police, ed., Counter-Intelligence: A Documentary Look at America’s Secret Police, vol. 1 (Chicago: NLG Counterintelligence Documentation Center, 1990)
• 6, Bouman, Sam. “Fed by Fear: The FBI’s Crusade Against Fred Hampton and the Black Panthers.” St. Ignatius High School, National History Day, 2003.
• 8, Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox (New York: Grove Press, 2004), 2-5
• 9, Fanon, 5