The Conservative War on Everything
War is indeed hell.
The Conservative Republican movement in America is a case study of what fear does when it fully grips a group of people; the emotional net result of being weaned for decades on a steady diet of culture war rhetoric, targeted disinformation, racial stereotypes, incendiary sermons, and plain ol' white nationalism.
In this environment, the human heart becomes unable to manufacture empathy for the other, as it finds encroaching enemies everywhere it looks.
Someone in the grips of this kind of prolonged enmity can no longer seek the common good because it doesn't recognize how our fortunes are tethered together.
They become terrified of all differences: losing the ability to see the beauty or worth in anyone who does not look, talk, think, believe, vote, worship, or love the way they do.
Having long since jettisoned any notions of understanding another perspective or being willing to thoughtfully engage a difference of opinion, they now know only how to boycott and ban.
In the absence of any intellectual creativity regarding the complex challenges of crime, hunger, sickness, of violence; people default to a simple strategy of blaming, condemning, and eradicating.
Worst of all, when fully addled by this continual exposure to irrational fear, this life becomes a zero-sum game where anyone else's gain is interpreted as their loss.
At that point, human beings lose the ability or the desire to collaborate or compromise with anyone. They exist solely in a battle posture against those they've come to believe are imminent threats, which includes an ever-expanding portion of humanity.
And now we find America brutalized by a group of people who are fiercely and unrelentingly at war—with everything.
They rage against the LGBTQ community,
people of color,
against the rights of women,
against immigrants, Muslims, and Jewish people.
They go to battle with scientists,
with medical professionals,
with Atheists,
with the Democrats.
They crusade against election results,
against Liberals,
against the Media,
against the Constitution.
They mount their incessant brutal assaults upon athletes and entertainers,
upon librarians and school teachers,
upon theme parks and drag queens,
upon beer companies and participation trophies.
To hell with the needs of the sick and the poor; with the evaporating natural resources and the rapidly warming planet, with the unemployed, underserved, and underfed; with the daily mass assassinations at schools and shopping malls. To hell with sorrow and need and loneliness. Those inconveniences merit no urgency, garner no grieving, and elicit no such passion.
War, after all, is hell—even if it means putting others through it.
It must be an exhausting existence to be terrified by so much and hostile to so many. I try to imagine what it feels like to be so viscerally sickened by the breadth of diversity around me and relentlessly in a fear-birthed battle posture toward it—but I can't. Many of us can't.
If there is a sharp dividing line in America now, this is it. It is the line between joyful people and miserable people; between those who live open-handed toward the world and those whose fists are balled up tightly; between people who are compelled by compassion and those fueled by anger; between people who want a bigger table—and those feel the table is their birthright.
As disheartening as it is to witness people this internally toxic, it's a cautionary reminder of who we do not want to become, and of what we can't let the fight do to us. We have to steadfastly cultivate beauty inside us despite the outside ugliness; to never be defined by how many things we are threatened by or how many people we hate.
May we who oppose this never-ending Republican campaign against the world, never become so devoid of lightness that we resemble those who wage it. May we never applaud suffering, seek another's demise, weaponize our religion to harm, or grow comfortable with hearts that are only capable of anger.
And let it never steal our optimism or extract our empathy or keep us from fighting for things truly worth saving.
We will passionately move together in these days but we will do so recognizing that we are inextricably bound together here.
We will fight for the outcasts and the vulnerable and hungry.
We will fight for the lonely, the hurting, and the desperate.
We will fight for the progressive, the moderate, and the conservative.
We will fight for the blue voters and the red voters.
We will fight for the deeply religious and the fiercely anti-religious.
We will fight for those fortunate enough to be born here and those who seek to call this place home.
We will see hatred, ignorance, and violence as the only enemies worth our collective rage.
We will not become people at war with the world but for it.
These days are a struggle but as you have said so well, we will fight to retain our empathy and humanity in the face of hateful, cruel actions against so many. Today we face the special elections and we must be determined to keep fighting no matter the outcome. I pray this morning for joy, hope and love to be with us all.
“Astronomers know that once a great fiery star has lived out its time, it’s core may begin to collapse inward on itself. Pressure builds up until it can no longer be contained. Fissures and jets of fire begin to break through. Exploding into supernova sends shock waves through the universe that can trigger the formation of new stars.
“Or they may implode, forming black holes, sucking any light nearby in to oblivion.
“As above, so below.
“Once a culture or community of humans on the planet earth has pushed deeply into its period of obsolescence, pressure can build up within its core, where there are those who refuse to change.
“Those who hang on most stubbornly might find the intensity of their paranoia, of their sometimes-violent desperation; their conviction that they alone are right while the entire rest of humanity is wrong and wracked with evil; they may find their most extreme reactions breaking through in great fiery bursts.
“They may explode; or they might implode, sucking all light down, down, down into their darkness. Communities of humans draining all hope out of life, and out of their fellows.
“Under the crushing fist of fascism, white supremacy, and the PolitiChurch; small and ever-tightening communities inside The Great Barrier Walls were being cheated and robbed economically, morally, politically, and socially. Left with little beyond their most dire passions. Rampant fear, hatred, mistrust. Their worship of violence as the answer to all problems.
“That horrific, unyielding anxiety. Crushing their spirit. Their reasoning. Forming a heavy plaque over their softer heart and blinding them to caring about anyone else.
“But this was God’s will, they were forced to believe. They weren’t meant to understand it. They had to trust the church.
“They sacrificed their individuality, put their faith in the leadership of schoolyard bullies of the media, their church, and of the government they had themselves elected.
“They collapsed inward on themselves. Their racism shrinking them down into ever harder and more rigid knots of hatred; shrinking down, and shrinking down, until even their own kind became 'those others.' The enemy. They who must be destroyed.
“And always there was someone higher, some incontestable leader, stirring the pot of their raging. Keeping them blinded. Smashing them. Crushing them.
“And that pressure built up and built up in their cores….
“… It was all coming apart.
“And that pressure just kept building.”
From “The Soul Hides in Shadows.”