Status Quo

2021 Artist’s Book Acrylic and paper. In a country with more guns than people, few discuss how this condition corresponds to U.S. history and governmental style. The United States is a product of genocide and terrorism. The native peoples were attacked with wars and diseases and the survivors were expelled from their homelands. Africans were brought to the United States against their will and enslaved as personal property. The abolitionist movement was followed by 100 years of Jim Crow laws and lynchings. Progress in justice and civil rights to this day is far outweighed by institutional resistance to maintain the status quo. If Uncle Sam reserves a right to commit mass murder, often with impunity, then why do we lament when U.S. people do the same? Americans are taught from childhood that their violent country upholds unmatched values of goodness, justice, benevolence, and democracy — a country that leads the world in military spending and that brings wars home by militarizing local police. When the U.S. is not practicing state-sanctioned terror within its borders, it commits atrocities on an international level. U.S. state violence has become muzak, seeping into the national consciousness and reassuring its listeners that individual violence is OK. So of course, bloodshed continues. Wouldn’t you be surprised if it ended?