Violence is Truly the American Way

By: Cara Ellis

Guest Contributor

Copyrighted and Originally Published on June 22, 2025; Republished by Permission on June 27, 2025

Cara Ellis, an award-winning Appalachian writer, LGBTQ+ activist, and community organizer in eastern Kentucky.

An Editorial Opinion

I am 37 years old, and in my nearly four decades of life, I have never known a single year without American involvement in war or armed conflict.

From the Gulf War during my earliest years, to our nation’s interventions in Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, and Haiti, my childhood was marked by names and places I didn’t know or understand. Then came the so-called “War on Terror” that shaped my adolescence and early adulthood, taking with it people I knew and classmates to fight overseas in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen. In the years since, there’s been the second Somali civil war, Syria, Libya, and now unfolding escalations in Gaza, Israel, and Iran.

It’s a heavy truth to reckon with: every single year of my life has included some form of military engagement by the United States. Nevertheless, we hear rhetoric that recent escalations of bombings of alleged nuclear sites in Iran are “un-American,” a departure from who we are. I beg to differ; this is not an aberration. It is the norm, and violence is truly the American way.

The University of Virginia’s Miller Center reports that our country has been at war roughly 93% of the time since its founding in 1776. That’s not just a statistic; it’s an indictment. We have been bred into a national identity that equates might with right and that sells patriotism through the language of conflict. We’ve normalized it to the point that we forget we’re even at war unless the headlines are too loud to ignore.

The truth is, many of these conflicts aren’t technically “wars,” at least by the legal definition. They often don’t require a formal declaration by Congress and are instead justified under vague umbrellas like “national security” or “counterterrorism.” However, try explaining that to military families who’ve watched their loved ones deploy, or to civilians in countries where bombs bear “Made in the USA” stamps. Whether it’s called war or not, it is still bloodshed, trauma, and countless lives lost.

At home, we mirror that violence in multiple ways. Our news cycle numbs us to the reality of mass shootings, which occur so frequently we barely flinch anymore. The phrase “Thoughts and prayers” are issued with robotic precision, and then it’s business as usual. Violence doesn’t just happen elsewhere around the world—it’s here, too. It’s in our schools, our churches, our grocery stores. It’s on our streets and in our homes. We are a nation simultaneously desensitized to violence and yet, obsessed with it.

All the while, we’re told by those in power that there’s no money for the things that would actually help people. No money for universal healthcare, robust education, or affordable housing. We watch politicians, many of whom we voted for, gut programs like SNAP and Medicaid while funneling billions into weapons and surveillance. We’re told that the unhoused are merely people who failed to “make better choices.” We’re told that immigrants deserve to be caged or deported, even those who are here legally. We manufacture scarcity for the vulnerable while writing blank checks for military contractors. Make no mistake, this is strategy. This is how they want it to be.

After all, violence is profitable. It’s easier to militarize our borders than to reform our immigration system. It’s easier to bomb than to build. It’s easier to criminalize poverty than to address its root causes. Somewhere along the way, we’ve convinced ourselves that this is just how the world works. That peace is naïve, compassion is weakness, and domination equals safety.

Despite what we have been taught or may think, most of us have never had the luxury of peace, and truthfully, it shows. Our people are exhausted, anxious, and deeply suspicious of each other. We stay divided by design to serve power, not people.

Peace isn’t just the absence of war; it’s also the presence of justice, dignity, and collective care. Still, we have never really been given a chance to experience that globally and here at home.

When people decry that the latest escalation is “not who we are,” I have to vehemently disagree. It IS who we are, and it will remain who we are until we decide to be something else. Until we stop valorizing violence, and start valuing human life over military might, then this is who we are. We must reckon with our history not as a nation of liberators, but as a nation that has, more often than not, wielded its power through force.

Remember, we will never know peace until we demand it. Peace will never come as something we export through war, but as something we build together.

[About the Author: Cara Ellis is an award-winning Appalachian writer, activist, and community organizer whose work explores LGBTQ+ identity and rural resistance in eastern Kentucky. She serves as President of Pikeville Pride, a local LGBTQ+ organization dedicated to highlighting visibility and inclusion of the LGBTQ+ community in the region.]