It's all around you

Violence is the ethos of our times. It is the spirituality of the modern world. It is accorded the status of a religion, demanding from its devotees an absolute obedience to death. Its followers are not aware, however, that the devotion they pay to violence is a form of religious piety. Violence is successful as a myth precisely because it does not seem to be mythic in the least. Violence simply appears to be the nature of things. It is what works. It is inevitable, the last, and often, the first resort in conflicts. It is embraced with equal alacrity by people on the left and on the right, by religious liberals and religious conservatives. The threat of violence, it is believed, alone can deter aggressors. Violence is thriving as never before in every sector of American popular culture, civil religion, nationalism, and foreign policy. Violence, not Christianity, is the real religion of America.—Walter Wink as quoted in America and Its Guns: A Theological Expose, page 198

<idle musing>
I would have to agree with him. Or, as Walter Brueggemann says, the unexamined metanarrative of our culture is militaristic consumerism—which really boils down to the same thing, just in a shorter phrase with bigger words : )
</idle musing>