The fact that everyone is cheering it on

It's not the more repressive direction that the world has taken in the last 6 or 7 years that has me most down. It's not the fact that liberal democratic societies have taken a more repressive direction and that the world is following that has me most upset. It's not the fact that the most repressive cultures and governments have become far more repressive in this period and that too many of more repressive folks in the U.S. seem to be excusing it. It's not the fact that we keep moving in this direction no matter how much it so very clearly does not solve our problems and makes many, most of them far worse.

It's the fact that everyone keeps cheering it on that discourages me.

Terrorism in Palestine is ugly. But watching Palestinians take to the street to cheer it on is far uglier. Repression of democratic student protests in China is ugly. But seeing Chinese people and politicians rationalizing that repression is uglier. The killing and imprisonment and torture of Iranian students who wish to exercise the democratic freedom to protest in a presumed democracy is ugly. But reading about Iranians egging it on is uglier. And watching the American government of my own country, and liberal democracies take this repressive turn, recently, is ugly. But seeing and hearing and reading people in America and the liberal democratic world cheer this direction is uglier.

And everyone, including the terrorists, do it to pressure, punish, and force their way through difficult problems, most of which need more compassion, decency, thoughtfulness, and engagement.

Bobby Kennedy warned us of this propensity in 1968, shortly before his death. And we've all just ignored him. And we are living with the consequences.



The arrogance of it, the hubris of it, is overwhelming for me, right now, as I watch a world rife with conflict and aggression with far too little understanding of aggression and its uses and misuses.

So much of it is premised on the idea that Bobby's and Martin's and Ghandi's and Jesus' love and compassion and decency towards others was naive and that only more cynical outlooks on humanity and human nature offer greater wisdom than these great and wise and courageous men offered. It is true that Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King and Mohatma Ghandi and Jesus Christ did not know or understand everything that is needed to be known or understood about the world. No person has or ever will have that kind of knowledge or understanding. But the heart of their messages were quite wise and true and courageous and decent.

And we mock their decency out of hubris that we know better because the world is a forever uglier place than we can believe that their poor, naive, sweet little souls could ever have imagined.

And we engage our ugliness against one another. And we watch as so many of our problems get worse. And we call it good.

All so our hearts don't ever have to face their own ugly contents and the consequences of that fact on our thinking and acting in the world.

We are a nasty and ugly lot, so often. Humanity. We will all need much forgiveness and mercy when this is all said and done.

Love,
Ben