Saturday Morning Confusion: Why did William Bryan film the killing of Ahmaud Arbery?

Allan: 

When I lived in Georgia, this was the mindset I saw over and over and over and over and over again.

It’s hard for people who live outside the United States to grasp, and to a lesser extent hard for people who live outside the Deep South to grasp, the extent to which many American conservatives live in fear. 

I never really wrapped my head around it until I lived outside of the US.

Many American conservatives, especially in the South, truly, honestly believe—the way normal people believe the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening—they are beset on all sides by the forces of darkness, and it is absolutely inevitable that one day soon they will need to grab their guns to defend their homes and families from rampaging home invaders hell-bent on murdering everything they love.

It’s a bunker mentality you rarely see outside of war zones, yet it’s a pervasive part of American culture, to such a degree Americans are a bit like fish living in water—to the fish, the water is invisible. When you live in that environment, it’s hard to see. You don’t really appreciate how pervasive it is until you spend time living in a place where people don’t think that way.

What’s more, they see themselves as Big Damn Heroes.

The American monomyth is all about the rugged hero taking up arms to defend all that is righteous in a savage blaze of violence.

Terrible trigger discipline here, by the way.

This is how they saw themselves.

This was their moment. This was their time to be heroes. This was what they’d always known would happen: that instant when they would be called upon to become the avatars of John Wayne, Chuck Norris, Clint Eastwood.

This was their time to shine.

Of course they recorded it. Who wouldn’t want to record the act of heroism that would cement you as one of those men willing to take up arms against the rising tide of lawlessness and chaos? I mean, duh!

This monomyth is so deeply woven into the fabric of American society that from the outside, it can seem not only bizarre but completely alien.

I’ve had conversations with folks in Canada and England who struggle to comprehend something so weird and bizarre, but for Americans? The idea that any minute now, thugs will come crashing through the door, the police will be utterly powerless, and only the manly he-man of manly manliness will be able to save the day is normal.

I’ve known folks in Georgia and Florida who talk about it with a gleam in their eye. Not only do they believe this will happen, they’re looking forward to it..........