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Nov. 4th, 2004 03:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
butterflyWhen I was younger, I spent nearly an entire year obsessed with the Shoah (commonly called the Holocaust). I read book after book about it, trying to figure out how a people could get so caught up in themselves as to cause such a horror and tragedy to come to pass. Because my interest in the situation was inspired by Anne Frank, I did focus on the Jewish part, which is almost certainly where I got my intense respect for Judaism in general and for Israel specifically. Even when I was a full-bore Christian, I believed that Judaism was still a path to heaven, that God would not forsake one promise in exchange for another.
Horrors of that sort happen so often. They happen whenever a people become convinced that they deserve to be treated better, that they are better. The German people were in a bad place -- they'd been smacked down by the first World War and believed that they deserved better. Hitler spoke directly to those beliefs, telling them that they were better, they were the best. Better than those Jews, those cripples, those queers, all those 'different' people who were tainting their society and their blood. He played on their fears and on their insecurity.
I was horrified and I kept reading, because I just couldn't understand. That level of hate, of the need to prove better, I outgrew that when I outgrew fighting with my brother. It's a childish way to live. It's horrifying to me to think that some people never get past that. The idea that I can be hated just because I'm different, just because I don't fit inside the nice, neat boxes that the so-called 'moral majority' would want me in, is something so outside what I believe that it's impossible for me to ever fully grasp it.
One of the tenets of hate in the religion that Bush aligns with is the "hate the sin, not the sinner". In a sense, I can understand this -- I hate the destruction that Bush has caused, I hate what he's doing to this country. I don't hate him. I don't particularly like him, but even in my darkest moments, I didn't hate him. Hate is such a violent and destruction emotion, so incredibly hard to control. It has such an enormous potential to do permanent damage, not just to body, but to soul. Hate isn't something that I can hang onto for more than a few moments, because hate never helps.
Hate can't build, it can only tear down. That's what this administration is proving. It's been true in the past, it will continue true in the future.
We're at a turning point. This is either another dark moment in history or the steps toward the end of the United States at the top of the heap. Possibly both. We've lost the respect of the rest of the nations. We're no longer a shining star, but instead a dark cloud on the horizon.
After World War II, Germany eventually rebuilt. Eventually, they healed, when the walls came down. Only time will tell with the United States.
We'll know in another fifty years or so whether or not this was the beginning of the end.
Horrors of that sort happen so often. They happen whenever a people become convinced that they deserve to be treated better, that they are better. The German people were in a bad place -- they'd been smacked down by the first World War and believed that they deserved better. Hitler spoke directly to those beliefs, telling them that they were better, they were the best. Better than those Jews, those cripples, those queers, all those 'different' people who were tainting their society and their blood. He played on their fears and on their insecurity.
I was horrified and I kept reading, because I just couldn't understand. That level of hate, of the need to prove better, I outgrew that when I outgrew fighting with my brother. It's a childish way to live. It's horrifying to me to think that some people never get past that. The idea that I can be hated just because I'm different, just because I don't fit inside the nice, neat boxes that the so-called 'moral majority' would want me in, is something so outside what I believe that it's impossible for me to ever fully grasp it.
One of the tenets of hate in the religion that Bush aligns with is the "hate the sin, not the sinner". In a sense, I can understand this -- I hate the destruction that Bush has caused, I hate what he's doing to this country. I don't hate him. I don't particularly like him, but even in my darkest moments, I didn't hate him. Hate is such a violent and destruction emotion, so incredibly hard to control. It has such an enormous potential to do permanent damage, not just to body, but to soul. Hate isn't something that I can hang onto for more than a few moments, because hate never helps.
Hate can't build, it can only tear down. That's what this administration is proving. It's been true in the past, it will continue true in the future.
We're at a turning point. This is either another dark moment in history or the steps toward the end of the United States at the top of the heap. Possibly both. We've lost the respect of the rest of the nations. We're no longer a shining star, but instead a dark cloud on the horizon.
After World War II, Germany eventually rebuilt. Eventually, they healed, when the walls came down. Only time will tell with the United States.
We'll know in another fifty years or so whether or not this was the beginning of the end.