‘What we’ve got here is failure to communicate,” the Captain declares in “Cool Hand Luke.” It is an iconic scene that glorifies both oppression and suppression.
The scene in which Paul Newman’s Luke is beaten into submission because of his indulgence to test the power holding him captive in a prison work camp erodes from a testament of courage to a violent authoritarian positioning of captor versus captive.
It is black and white in its extremes, and there is no room for testing; there is no place for negotiation. It is, or it isn’t.
The irony, of course, is that violence as a form of communication is abuse, and rather counterintuitive. And more often than not, in world events and even in settling local scores, we are seeing an uptick in crimes involving violence.
This week, Burlington saw its 12th and 13th violent death in 2023. That tally does not include the violent crimes that merely resulted in bloody injuries. Statewide, this autumn, Vermont had one of its “deadliest” months in ages. Overall, the year has been one of Vermont’s most violent. Some of the violence was drug-related; but too many of the incidents were tragic cases of domestic violence.
We may not want to admit it, but this cycle is taking a toll on us, playing upon our fears. We do not like being made uncomfortable.
The war in Gaza has us on edge, too. Unless directly impacted, we often do not know how to address the constant barrage of images and news coming from the region. Mostly, we are unwilling to understand the complexity of the sides involved. We know blood has been spilled there forever, and that the sides are entrenched, bitter and generations away from ever seeking a peaceful resolution. Choosing to ignore is a failing.
And yet crime rates and the violence in the Mideast are going to dictate our upcoming political campaigns. The discussions of extremism and bloodshed are factors in how we think about casting a vote for president in 2024. It, too, will likely prove to be bitter, entrenched and nowhere near a consensus. It is a tipping point.
Crime is a matter of patterns in society. It always has been. It is about choices being made, usually for the worse. Those bad decisions add up to behavior that tests morality. Granted, addiction and substance abuse can impair judgment, and mental illness certainly can be a motivating factor, but crime generally comes down to individual choices.
What’s happening in the Mideast, and what has happened countless times around the world through history, is rooted in religion. We have decided as humans that it is easy to love or hate the things that define us, whether it is gender, race, religion, class, and the like. These are deep-seated fundamentals that are part of our nature, nurture and culture. They feel indisputable, and yet we are constantly disputing, judging, castigating and reacting to these core values of “others” who we are as fellow human beings. And, as we see day in and day out, we are not very good at relating, as a species.
Politics is messy. It is a practice that depends on victors and losers. Democracy in any form has never been perfect. And the great ones have failed, historically. The arena of politics is, by design, supposed to pigeonhole who we are — in nature, nurture and culture — and pit us against others who might have been raised or believe in different paths toward “progress.” So we fight, endlessly, and celebrate gridlock with the same vigor we do our victories. We invoke fear in what the “other side thinks” and we presume to know their intentions, strategy and outcomes. It breeds contempt.
All of this points to the unease we feel just by turning on the radio or television, or reading the newspaper. We cringe at the confrontation and conflict, and we struggle for a means to justify the chaos that we cannot control around us.
What is interesting, however, is how crime, the crisis in Gaza, and national politics right now are engaging younger people (worldwide) in a way that reveals the shortcomings of their parents and grandparents. Younger people are expressing their concerns over worry, and, in some notable cases, they are not relegating their concerns to pre-written talking points. They are making arguments against genocide; they are discussing the implications of climate change; they are explaining that their lack of faith in government has more to do with the failed system. They are not ideologues — they have become disenfranchised that so many of us rely on party, history or upbringing in the convergence of “how life ought to be.”
They are mobilizing and speaking out against the various breakdowns in communication. As they should.
We do not blame people for being unsettled by the world around us right now, whether it’s close to home in Vermont or abroad. We are grateful when individuals come together — not on social media or behind the veil of a keyboard — to share perspectives and experiences. Movements toward understanding complexities of issues, and then parsing where there might be some resolution or at least common ground, is encouraging. It’s almost novel in this day and age.
For all of the bad news that is the maelstrom, the good news is that even in our struggle to cope with the world around us, we may be learning — across generations — that extremes and failed systems are unanswerable if we want to feel good about making better choices for tomorrow.
