We've heard it all before. "Better dead than red" with the power to turn the earth into an ash heap. As if the birds, beasts and flowers knew or cared about the politics of the destroyers. "We had to destroy the village to save it" as we forced old men, women and children into ready made villages that were little more than detentions camps so we could plow the earth with bombs, coat it with napalm and turn their crops into wastelands. Who can hear the cry of the newborn in the manger over the screams of the fallen?
Our reasons for our newest wars shifted like a sand dune under our feet. Fighting terrorism without asking WHY we were a target. And shouting anyone who did ask as a traitor, a coward or a disbeliever in American "Exceptionalism." Making the world safe for McDonalds, Wally World and our version of "democracy." Add the sacrilege of so called holy men standing in their pulpits arguing that the Prince of Peace arrived carrying an Uzi and Peace on Earth fades into the distance like a mirage on a sun baked highway.
But do the Lords of War in fact
hate the world? That would be easy
to bear if so. If they hated their
children and the flowers that
grow in the morning light, that
would be easy to bear. For then
we could hate the haters
and be right. What is hard
is to imagine that the Lords of War
may love the things that they destroy.
Wendell Berry 2003 in Collected and New Sabbath Poems
OoooooKaaaaaay! As sometimes happens the entry took over and wrote itself. It feels really weird when "somebody" takes over and off we go on a roller coaster ride.
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