In the rhetoric of war, the opponent must first be dehumanized. The politics of war requires that citizens must be readied to fight with a religious vigor. The Churches of Hate must rise up and help their congregants become complacent… as the machinery of combat is put in place.
In order to justify evil, the linguistics of a nation must be changed by well thought-out words that will quicken the blood to danger and make the citizenry eager to fight “the enemy”.
But who is the enemy? Think well before you allow the wordsmiths to influence you. Beware of those who tell you that God sanctions murder, and that those we fight are not like us … and do not value life.
This is not a football game. Those whom we harm in war do not disappear. Their cries are engraved in the memories of those who survive them. There is no certainty that the people we might call “the enemy” will be vanquished.
Let us deaden our ears to the persistent drumbeat that quickens the dark regions of our being. Resist the drummers … and listen instead to the still small voice of compassion. Listen instead to your heart, which beats in harmony with all of humanity.
Do not believe that we are not one.
Do not believe that what affects the least of us does not affect us all.
Stop now, and consider well before you spread the language of hate.