More than a month ago, Army Specialist Aaron Robertson hammered Army Specialist Vanessa Guillen to death. With his girlfriend, he attempted to dismember the corpse. They gave up and buried Ms. Guillen's remains 25 miles outside Fort Hood. The U.S. Army found the site a month ago.
Much as George Floyd's death rallied millions of Americans in support of Black Lives Matter efforts to change policing and to fight racial inequity, Guillen's death has rallied female veterans, GI's, and civilians against sexual harassment, violence, gender inequity, and death.
Women have fought for this nation (yes, killed enemies) since the American Revolution. Millions of others steadied the home front as their fathers, uncles, brothers, cousins, and sons and grandsons went into battle. These are and have been the nation's unsung fighting women. These patriots--those in uniform, those not--have suffered and died from harassment, assault, rape, and death at the hands of their comrades in arms.
In the case of the armed forces, military command and political leaders have failed to respond effectively. Female veterans, some officers, politicians, and military observers have condemned Guillen's death, the reasons behind it, and the obscene suffering absorbed by our nation's female commissioned and non-commissioned soldiers.
Some observers have called it #MeToo's BLM moment.
I understand the point: Guillen is a cause célèbre of #MeToo as Floyd is for BLM. My understanding doesn't change the myopic nature of the observation.
Simplistic comparisons do wonders to inspire slogans for protest banners or Twitterish expressions used to rally people in the street. At the same time, the simplistic underestimates the sin committed against Floyd and Guillen.
Neither wanted to die. They weren't fighting for a cause, in a war, or guarding liberty. They fought off attackers who had sworn oaths to protect the library and safety of Americans. They died in the shadows of American indignity.
These supposed guardians of simple American rights robbed two ordinary Americans of the most fundamental of rights, life. In doing so, these villains denied them a dignity deserved, not just as Americans but as human beings.
For these very reasons, Floyd and Guillen shouldn’t be mythicized. They aren’t cause célèbres. They were people whose lives were rubbed out. Their futures eliminated. Their loved ones left in grief. Their deaths have a meaning far greater than found in the objectives and solutions offered by BLM and #MeToo.
Their deaths should be immortalized by a movement yet unseen--the same one created and betrayed by most of this nation's founding fathers: all people “are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Their deaths must not be in vain so that all Americans are endowed with the liberty and dignity to pursue happiness as they see fit.
The distinction is crucial to the well-being of all Americans, for if we see only Floyd's and Guillen's mistreatment and deaths, then we only glance at the true problem, and that glimpse won’t fuel the determination needed to bring about change.
We must recognize that since America’s founding, women and people of color have lived under tyranny’s whip of self-interest and indulgences. America has betrayed them, for these two groups have been denied their inalienable rights. To live without being abused or killed. And to be treated on par with all Americans. In other words, American society must ensure and enforce the equitable treatment of people of color and women. With this assurance will come the solutions sought by BLM and #MeToo: the rightful dignity to women and people of color. Should we as a society treat people with the dignity deserved, we ensure their opportunities to receive an education, housing, and compensation on par with all Americans.
Then America will fulfill the claims its founders made in 1776.
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