Aaron Bushnell: An American Martyr

This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal

I usually write about protest songs. Today, I want to write about another type of protest.

On February 25, 2024, Aaron Bushnell, a 25-year-old airman, died after setting fire to himself to protest being “complicit in genocide” in the Gaza Strip. Bushnell’s rank was as a Senior Airman. He was soldier of lower rank.

My father spent 15 out of 22 years as a Staff Sergeant. He never finished high school. Bushnell, like my father, was not part of the officers’ corps. They were both average American military men.

I grew up on Air Force bases in separated housing areas, one for officers and one for the non-officers or lower ranks. I don’t know Aaron Bushnell, but he is very familiar to me.

In the early 1970s, my father served a tour of duty in the Vietnam War. He never spoke about it afterwards to his five children. We never brought up the subject either. Although he was not fighting on the frontlines, it’s impossible to escape a war zone without some trauma.

The Madness of a Free Palestine

Bushnell said he was protesting against “what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers" and shouted “Free Palestine” as flames consumed his body.

Chris Hedges, a gifted writer and journalist, wrote a thoughtful article titled Aaron Bushnell’s Divine Violence. It explains how the act of self-immolation draws a bold line between acts of good and evil.

It tackles the question of colonizers and the oppressed and the zeal of religious resistance.

Hedges refers to the theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, who calls these extreme acts “a sublime madness in the soul.” And only madness allows one to engage in battle with “radical evil.”

According to Hedges, the self-sacrifice of a martyr weakens the grip of a tyrannical state, leaving it to discredit the higher act of power:

Communities of resistance, even if they are secular, are bound together by the sacrifices of martyrs. The martyr represents a total rejection of the status quo. They know and fear the power of the martyr, even in death.

Complicit, Complacent or Criminal

Aaron Bushnell called everyone out. He took excuses off the table. He nailed all of us for being complicit in a human tragedy. He gave us the answer we need to hear:

Nobody cares enough about the Palestinians. They’ve been displaced and murdered since the Nakba of 1948. They’ve been manipulated by far greater powers from Europe, the United States and the Arab world.

Palestinians are pawns in a global game of political influence, war profiteering and oil extraction. They are sacrificial lambs for all the Abrahamic religions.

What does it matter if you argue about the technical terms? Is it a genocide or an ethnic-cleansing? Since October 7, 2023, there are over 30,000 Palestinians killed and nearly 2,000 dead Israelis. Thousands of others are missing and trapped under the rubble of their homes.

We are way past calling for a ceasefire. We are watching the elimination of a people. It’s like watching feral hogs in Texas being slaughtered en masse because they’re an invasive nuisance to the natural ecosystem.

Palestinians are being herded and starved with nowhere to go. They are already home.

Coda

The courage and conviction of Aaron Bushnell is beyond my comprehension. His purposeful act is both powerful and memorable. It is seared into our consciousness.

RIP Aaron Bushnell.

I wrote Gaza Strip Is Falling Down as a coping mechanism. Songwriting helps me to sift through all the hate and spread some truth.

Here are some of the lyrics:

Families gather to die as one
Buried in rubble, nowhere to run
Lifeless limbs lie in the sun
Mark the graves of little ones
Gaza Strip is falling

Hospitals blown to smithereens
Leaving babies behind to scream
No human touch to ease the pain
Living just to die in vain
Gaza Strip is falling

And the children cry
Watching the falling sky
Crushed to the ground
Where dreams carry no sound
Where dreams carry no sound

No land, no shelter, no escape
Trapped by political fate
A people damned in their homeland
Waiting for nations to take a stand
Gaza Strip is falling

===================

If you like the songs and/or essays, please help me distribute them by sharing and following me on Twitter/X, Instagram and now YouTube.

I appreciate your time and support in this endeavor.