Among the numerous appeals to the disparate audience of the Claremont Colleges’ Social Justice teach-in on Thursday that were voiced in equally varying ways, Reverend Jesse Jackson’s broad and urgent message concerning the state of violence was perhaps the most universal. America is home to one of the most productive, affluent populations in the world, he said. It also has the greatest amount of violence at its center.

Many speculations, in the numerous speeches given prior to Jackson’s, were made about the cause of this. One criminologist believes it to be the inherent racism built into the structure of the justice system. Some called it fear of people of color actually becoming a majority. Others simply called it fascism. Everyone, however, agreed that abuse of power, and power structures, is what makes violence difficult to fight, and even more difficult to defeat.

Examples of this misuse of power surround us on every level–involving race or not. Violence in our society is perpetuated by a system in which people are allowed to look the other way, as long as there is an Other.

Few of you may have noticed, on Saturday night, a cloud of multi-colored smoke curling into the sky. Over the course of a couple of hours, it dissipated into a thick brown mass. A natural phenomenon? Y2K taking an early inventory? Hardly. That was the work of our United States government.

The government, casually and dismissively in a New York Times article reporting on it this weekend, explained they were simply testing nuclear missiles as part of the Strategic Defense Initiative. Using one as a target and the other as its destroyer a few miles out over the Pacific, they ascertained that the missiles, indeed, were working.

This, apparently, was the explosive climax to other tests that were missing their marks, and costing the government billions of dollars. Not a onetime ordeal. The LA Times reported the anticipation of this event. No one voted on the necessity of such a test.

It is more disquieting to us that the public was notified of this event and did nothing rather than postpone their stargazing dates than if the US government had underhandedly and surreptitiously executed these tests. We are passively accepting the outward stance that violence can and should be met with violence, that violence should be broadcast for everyone to see, and the role of missiles as a part of our everyday life.

Although there were "practical" justifications for this test, it nevertheless sends out quite a symbolic image of our stance on violence and military. Why do we put up with these acts–acts we know are symbolically (if not literally) deceitful, wasteful, and unnecessarily aggressive? Who, exactly, is it our government is publicly flexing its muscles for? The public or the Other? Who is the Other?