Thwarting Armegeddon

As gratifying as it is to see the surge of empathy and compassion in response to the Paris tragedy I wonder what is really going on. This is not the only attack that has happened in recent days. In the months of October and November of this year alone 14 attacks of various kinds have been perpetrated in 12 different countries killing over 530 of our human family and injuring countless others. The list and numbers stretch back for decades.

Perhaps it has become too commonplace for us to notice unless the event is large enough and happens in a place we personally have emotional attachments to. Paris is certainly a center of romantic ideals. Just guessing here but when such a frenzy of compassion swells up over one horrendous event yet nary a tremble is felt in the news or social media when precious lives are tragically lost just the day before in Beirut, mutilated and tortured Beirut, one has to wonder.

Perhaps it was the ‘last straw on the camel’s back’ and finally we are waking up. I hope so. Maybe it just became trendy. I hope not. Worse case it is a manufactured flash mob smoke screen to make us look away from other things equally important.

This madness and all the incomprehensible suffering that is being exacted on the innocents of this world has to stop and I know there is no simple solution to that. I can only hope that finally we as humans have discovered the means to making acts of terrorism ineffectual. To respond to evil with evil is to be overcome by evil. Evil wins. To hold to our hearts and our humanity, to hold to the good and come together in compassion is the last thing a terrorist wants. It is only by holding to the good that evil can be overcome.

We are dealing with madmen and perhaps they wont notice, perhaps it will make no difference in their actions. It will make a difference to us. Military actions to disrupt their leadership and weaken their forces may in all likelyhood go on to twart the danger they represent but if we as a people refuse to be like them in spirit they will lose their only real power: the power to change the world into their image. It is their stated desire to foment rage, hatred and madness and thereby bring about the end of the world. Seriously, they to do all this to hasten Armageddon.

Be angry, hold them in contempt, indeed, pity them for the lost souls they are, but do not return their madness in kind. Hatred cannot drive out hatred, only love can do that. Let us love one another and come together ever stronger. In the face of madness let us be a people of sanity, compassion and justice.

Morning Journal: 9/11 2015

9/11

Everyone remembers what they were doing, where they were, how they felt that day. We remember the Towers falling, the tragic loss of life, the shock, the fear and perhaps the most pervasive feeling among us: uncertainty. We struggle to find the proper way to memorialize our loss. We struggle because our compassion, our grief is not allowed to be felt unalloyed. The same source of our compassion is used to justify cruelty. Our grief and loss is cause for our violence inflicted on others. We hurt as a nation and we seem to believe that if we make others hurt as well we will somehow be healed.

We as a nation have always known that we are special. If for nothing else than the ideals upon which we were founded we stand unique and proud among the nations of history. One nation, with liberty and justice for all are the words we used to say. I grew up with that pledge being reaffirmed every morning. Pledging allegiance to a flag which was the symbol of our great nation, a nation which pledged in return to hold those words sacred: Liberty and justice for all. It is not for that ideal, or the others that we hold dear, that our enemies hate us. I believe we are hated for our failure to live up to them. We were once a beacon of hope and I believe we genuinely wanted to be, tried to be that very thing once, but somewhere we lost our way. Politics are a convenient scapegoat as are economic interests world wide. Other things just became more important. Less noble men and women with more craven motivations took the helm and our course changed. We were left with monuments to our ideals and a shadow nation that hid behind media spin and public ignorance while it toppled governments, climbed into bed with monsters and stepped on the rights, dignity and value of human beings all in the name of national interest and its accompanying bottom line.

Since 9/11 we have followed the trajectory in the light that once was hidden in the shadows. We wage war without declaring it. We capture, incarcerate, torture and kill without due process or any attempt at justice. We uphold regimes we need and withdraw support from those we don’t, regardless of our history or their loyalty to us and our ideals. We stand by without remorse as millions are displaced and live lives of hell on earth, all the while we spend billions on weapons of war. How much of the human suffering is caused today because of our self-serving choices yesterday? How much of the military budget is ‘needed’ because of threats in the world we have spawned by our own actions?

I know this is not the usual flag waving patriotic fare this day normally inspires. Sorry. It’s that picture. You see I now realize that while most people look at that picture and see the towers that were attacked and that we lost I see the Lady. In her I see the actual victim. I feel her loss most keenly of all.