By Blox Content Management

Copyright berkshireeagle

To the editor: It is tragic to see anyone killed, even if I disagree with that person’s right-wing propaganda.

But we need to reflect on the underlying causes of events, now instantly linked in our digital age, as opposed to the detached physical and psychological silos that technology has paradoxically forced on us. History has a lesson.

From the 1492 invasion against first peoples through the African slave trade for plantation capitalists in 1619 Virginia to the 19th-century Industrial Revolution robber barons to the current national and global corporate 1 percent, people have suffered from exploitation, inequality and violence at the hands of the oligarchs whose mantra is profit over people, nature and our collective future.

It is, in effect, a reverse-mirror image reign of terror to that of the French revolution in 1793-94, one whose current symptoms include irrational media pundits and government officials with agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement demonizing immigrants and working in ways that are violent, illegal, unconstitutional and anti-human. Cheered on by personalities who muddy the waters to create a false equivalency between left and right, we are expected to dismiss the latest atrocity from an administration glorifying self-interest over the common good. Thankfully, The Eagle has not joined the pundits, media, universities and legal firms who have cowered in the corners of responsibility, normalizing deviance.

We disappear thousands of immigrants, despite their presence as native peoples in the hemisphere for thousands of years. We withdraw desperately needed food and medicines from Africa and Asia with the dissolution of USAID, which will result in millions of deaths. We allow Vladimir Putin to destroy Ukraine while enabling the Gaza genocide. With the help of a compliant Congress and Supreme Court, we allow the eradication of ideals this mutated garage sale called a country is supposed to stand for.

Charlie Kirk’s murder was wrong, but no one should validate the usual knee-jerk “thoughts and prayers, let’s all come to the political center for milk and cookies” while the world burns down. It is the corporate-industrial complex, in its different forms through our history, that has poisoned every aspect of our lives and the planet since 1492 and is responsible for our current moral vacuum.

What will be the next and final step on our current course, possibly sooner than we can bear?

Royal Hartigan, Pittsfield