Horribly terroristic (and the apotheosis of weird) shootings in Minnesota—elaborately planned (and attempted) murders of top Democrat Minnesota legislators Melissa Hortman and John Hoffman (and their families) by a 57-year old who effectively disguised himself and his black car to pose as a police officer to more easily access his targeted victims after ringing their doorbells in the middle of the night should make something painfully clear. Our “perpetual war” abroad has come home. 

The barrage of constant warmongering of the last quarter century has effectively trickled down from our military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think-tank complex (MICIMATT) culture and Powers-That-Shouldn’t-Be to polarize and radicalize “otherwise good” Americans, turning us into monsters, fueling the vast increase in domestic terrorism, and an epidemic of senseless mass killings. Killer Vance Boelter’s manifesto reportedly contained a list targeting dozens more state officials.   

For people in Minnesota and our corporate media who like to refer to themselves as “Minnesota Nice,” these horrible assassinations of state political leaders were quickly declared to be “unthinkable.” But as someone who has been warning about such “blowback” consequences since early 2003 and even got my warning directed to then-FBI Director Robert Mueller published on the front page of The New York Times newspaper a couple of weeks before the United States launched its ill-begotten (and illegal) war on Iraq, I knew that it (and the endless wars that followed) would come back to haunt us in this and other ways. It was only a question of time. 

For a long time after the Vietnam War ended, we Americans were sorely embarrassed to have learned of some of our soldiers becoming so out of control as to line up and shoot to death hundreds of innocent women and children in My Lai and other villages. But once Iraq “war fever” was created through clever official lying—which remarkably misled about 70% of all Americans to falsely believe that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11 (instead of our former U.S. proxy, Osama bin Laden)—even more horrendous mass murder war crimes such as the American-funded, twenty month-long genocide of Palestinians has become normalized. 

Propaganda works, especially the emotional button kind that Nazi leaders once described, which relies on pressing people’s vulnerability to fear, hate, greed, false pride, and blind loyalty. One could even say that “humans are absolute suckers for war propaganda.” Recall as an example, the much touted American Sniper (2014) opening to wide acclaim with audiences clapping for the first scene showing Chris Kyle expertly shooting a mother and child in Iraq. This desensitization and emotional manipulation is why (once Vietnam War-horrified) Americans find it easy to shrug away the My Lai type massacres being committed every day by our proxy, Israel.  

Nor is it “unthinkable” that more and more depressed, destabilized, polarized, and naturally easy-to-anger Americans increasingly become unhinged to see suicidal-homicidal killing of “others” as their own answer to personal problems. Unfortunately, when an entire populace is pushed into thinking that killing millions of foreign people is the answer to their nation’s problems, it’s a short and even somewhat logical deduction. Famous social psychologists (Solomon Asch, Philip Zimbardo, etc) long ago proved the unfortunate human tendencies to group conformity, obedience to authority, and abuse of “others” that can arise from any group being told of their inherent supremacy. The exploitation of these vulnerabilities in turn creates what post-World War II serious analyst Hannah Arendt termed the “banality of evil” to explain the Nazi Holocaust.

In early 2003, I warned Director Mueller about the adverse consequences of deceitfully pushing the Iraq War, which expanded into perpetual conflict and regime change in the Mideast, taking the lives of over five million and counting, mostly civilians. It didn’t take a Sherlock to see the link even back then between our wars abroad and domestic violence, which had already been made clear with Army veterans Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh’s Oklahoma Federal Building bombing, Army Sergeant John Muhammad’s serial murders as the “DC Sniper,” and Gulf War veteran Robert Flores Jr.’s shootings of his professors in Arizona.

Matthew Barganier accurately explained  the blowback link back in 2003, that “McVeigh saw the U.S. government murder civilians abroad for a dubious ‘Greater Good,’ then turn its guns on civilians at home. His method of response bore the seal of his schooling.” Although they won’t admit it publicly, even CIA intelligence is aware of such inherent “blowback.” Media and politicians’ claim of confusion over the recent targeted assassinations in Minnesota is therefore, if not deliberate, difficult to comprehend. 

In a myriad of ways, Americans as a whole—far more than the small percentage who go on to join the actual military—have now been indoctrinated to believe in “regenerative violence.” The suspect in the shootings in Minnesota had long been, as his childhood friend said, “into military stuff,” such as playing “army men” and always fantasizing about running a security business. Incessant cultural lionizing of “American snipers” and warrior heroes is effectively employed by the powerful MICIMATT in its attempt to maintain a level of public “war fever” to sustain our continued violent aggression and moves on the “global chessboard.” But by the same token, it should come as no surprise that, having been surrounded for decades with this form of death culture, more and more of our fellow citizens, including warrior wannabes who become unhinged or who just eventually fall into the pit of despair and depression, come to think that war is their answer. Can it be any more painfully clear when a “Dad went to war last night”?    

Instead of looking for Agatha Christie murder mystery type “motives” or even “political reasons” for these radicalizations, domestic assassinations and the even more common senseless violent rampages erupting throughout our country, Americans need to understand, not cover up, these root causes which are the inherent consequences of our long term wars of aggression and a murder-normalizing death culture generated to sustain public “war fever.”