2005 was a good year for violence. The recipients were a host of victims. There never seems to be an end to reports about victims of anger, revenge or being small, timid, inoffensive and easily overcome. Victims sometimes are nations, sometimes a people and sometimes a minority in a country where the majority has this feeling of superiority that they make the minority into second class or non citizens. Violence is so popular it is celebrated in official wars, unofficial attacks by organizations devoted to destroying the public peace, “sports” and, in the end, the end of life by death by any means.

We lose a huge number of people reported in statistics every year as having been killed by cars, trucks and drivers who have a great disregard for their lives and those of their victims.  The State of Florida is complicit in this violence because there is no enforced, required inspection and forcing off the roads those drivers whose vehicles are lethal in their hands.

Violence by Nature has claimed an inordinate number of victims who could not get away from its power in hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis.  Some victims courted danger by living in marginal areas where living has always been problematic.  2005 was a big year for death by the violence of upheaval of earth, water and wind. Victims of such forces continue in a state of shock and inability to cope far beyond the event that deprived many of their comfortable and reliable lives.

2005 was a good year for the War in Iraq.  The killing has gone on unchecked by the good will or the armed forces we have sent over there. The number of U.S. combatants is crawling upward toward the 3,000 mark while the deaths to civilians must be much higher than the 100,000 that is the result not of record keeping but of guesswork.  War claimed so many more victims than those carrying weapons.  Carrying weapons did not prevent the killing of many others who got in the way of the violence of planted bombs, car and other vehicle carrying bombs, “suicide” murderers and random killing to intimidate voters and citizens who just happened to be in the way.

We celebrate violence in this country as it is throughout the world.  Whatever would the young men everywhere do without violence for them to concentrate on?  Football, soccer, wrestling, cock-fighting, bear baiting and just the thrill of carrying weapons and blasting away at turkeys, deer, squirrels and other innocent creatures historically the victims of us humans. What is violence without a victim?