ENEMIES ?

Gary Hart had a good level-headed piece up at HuffPo at the weekend: Diplomacy where it is Needed Most:

SNIP

We currently have differences with Russia over Syria, Iran, missile defense, and, to some degree, arms reduction. There is also that pesky leaker, Snowden, hiding out in the transit section of the Moscow airport.

Some say, because of these differences, President Obama should not meet with President Putin in Moscow following the September meeting of the G-20, basically Europe plus Russia, in St. Petersburg. One opposition party Senator has even said that President Obama should not go to the G-20 meeting unless it's moved out of Russia. So much for diplomacy... and statesmanship.

The excessive anti-Russian sentiment within U.S. foreign policy circles remains a mystery. Left over Cold War resentments, more than 20 years later? Old grievances even before the Cold War? Failure of Russia to do what we want it to? Who knows. No one is saying.

I don't understand why many retain such hatred of Russia. Isn't it long past time that people of the USA began to realise that the only real enemies out there are the people leading: governments (any governments), military industrial complex, corporate power and big business, aided and abetted by complicit media ? People, ordinary people, all over the world are really just like the rest of us. Their priorities, as most of ours: to live as peaceful and contented a life as possible, care for family, meet whatever challenges come along, hopefully with good grace. Ordinary people are not interested in being part of an empire, they do not, left to their own devices, hate each other for any perceived freedoms, or for their different lifestyles.

I get that Joe McCarthy scared the living daylights out of y'all in the US regarding Russia, but that was long, long ago, in the 1950s. Not many who remember that time in any detail will still be around.

This built-in hatred, not only for Russia, but also for Islamic countries, China, and others - and for anything not fully understood - is fostered, encouraged, fabricated even, in order to provide dichotomies, stir up fear and confusion. All the while The Powers That Be are keeping the money flowing to the military and to the ultra-wealthy 1%, while the rest of the people are kept busily distracted, hating.

“... in a cycle as old as tribalism, ignorance of the Other engenders fear; fear engenders hatred; hatred engenders violence; violence engenders further violence until the only "rights", the only law, are whatever is willed by the most powerful.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

Lines from an old post of mine (2009):

When we were in South Dakota last week, enjoying one of the many sights there, I heard a nearby group of tourists discussing the political situation. One of the group said "all Muslims are terrorists, and now we have one in the White House". On another occasion, in an antiques mall in Nebraska, another group of people stood discussing health care, and though I didn't hover too long, as I passed by them I couldn't help hearing just one sentence deriding what is, in the USA seriously misunderstood and looked on as a dirty word: "socialism".

From Rogers & Hammerstein's "South Pacific":

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

HATRED: "the madness of the heart"

Quote in the title is from Lord Byron. A somewhat related observation from commenter "edejan", under an article titled :
5 Recommendations for a New Politeness by Roy Speckhardt, Director of the American Humanist Association attracted my attention; the comment went like this:

The problem I see isn't lack of civility. That's the symptom. The problem is the seething and roiling hatred under the surface of so many people today. This is what needs to be addressed. Our social fabric is frayed to the point where the need for civility as a bonding force is not deemed necessary or even important. We are a nation which has been brutalized and divided by the greedy predators in powerful positions and have lost our sense of commonality and humanity. Perhaps what we really need is a re-ordering, restructuring and reinforcement of our social structure. How can that be done? I don't know.

I don't know either..

20th century British astrologer C.E.O. Carter wrote that:

"Hate is one of the most extreme Martian vibrations, through Scorpio rather than Aries, and probable generally with an admixture of Saturn or Uranus. The last-named is often violent in its antipathies, and, like Scorpio, may remember slights and insults after long periods. In maps (natal charts) capable of nourishing hatred and revenge the benefics are usually obscurely placed."

We all have all the signs and planets in our natures, some more emphasised than others, some dormant but alive - all are present in all of us, waiting to be called upon.

“........there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average human being to supply any given army on any given day”
― Charles Bukowski

Hatemongers will use any twisted logic and lies to persuade the uninformed or passive that their views are the right ones. People waving hate-ridden signs, and shouting abuse could, on the surface be seen as a release valve of sorts; but whipping up and encouraging hatred of this nature among onlookers, who will perhaps not stop to think things through for themselves, carries likelihood of far more dramatic and disastrous eventualities.

The original draft of this post had a different second half. I deleted it and replaced it with the following paragraphs relating to a movie we watched on DVD last Sunday evening. It's a little-known Canadian film, adaptation of a stage play by playwright David Gow : Steel Toes. The film's content is so relevant to the issue of hatred that I decided to include a reference to it here. I came across the DVD during my search for films in which David Strathairn has appeared.

In Steel Toes , set in Montreal, but would be equally relevant in any location, anywhere in the world, a liberal Jewish lawyer, Danny Dunckelman (David Strathairn) is appointed to represent a white supremacist, neo-nazi skinhead, Michael Downey (Andrew Walker). Downey is on trial for the racially motivated attack and murder of an East Indian immigrant.

There could be no clearer illustration of what hatreds can lead to than the first, barely watchable, scene of this film. Downey, crazed by hatred kicks to the edge of death - wearing steel-toed Doc Marten boots - an Indian cook, who has accidentally splashed Downey's clothing when throwing out some liquid.

90 minutes of dense and intense dialogue take viewers through opposing mindsets, beliefs and embedded hatreds of the skinhead and the lawyer. The lawyer, professionally bound to defend this man whose beliefs he finds alien and despicable, needs to delve deep into his own background and the teachings of his father, to face his own dormant hatred before he can begin to find a way to assist the neo-nazi to understand, and come to terms with, his own emotional excesses.

The lawyer understands, and tries continually to explain in some way to Downey, that the struggle against evil is primarily an internal one. Downey's failure and downfall was to externalize his struggle and inner fears by identifying specific scapegoats. Immigrants, for him, were The Enemy of "besieged" white men. Taking a broader view, outside of the film's scenario, instead of (or as well as) immigrants, targets could have been gays, any non-white people, or conversely from a "black" point of view any white people, muslims, the 1% (I must watch myself!), political right-wingers, left-wingers, women, men.....the beat of hatreds, both deep and shallow, goes on.

Strathairn and Walker give exemplary performances in what must have been seriously difficult roles for both: Strathairn isn't Jewish, and Walker, in real life, is worlds away from the skinhead neo-nazi mentality. The actors needed to acquire in depth insights into the beliefs of the film's two central characters. In interview at the end of the film David Strathairn explained that he, though not Jewish, had attended Temple and read parts of the Torah in preparation for the role.

Before the injured man died in hospital from internal bleeding he had made a statement, written for him by his wife, detailing his loss of sight, inability to walk or sit resulting form the brutal beating he received from Downey, but offering Downey compassion and forgiveness. Dunckelman repeatedly makes Downey read this document aloud until a change occurs and crazed hatred and anger begin to subside.

The film will long remain in my memory, especially lawyer Danny Dunckelman's words in the last scene of all as he examines his father's prayer shawl (Wiki has the proper term for this shawl = a tallit). I recalled a phrase used by the commenter I quoted earlier in this post: "....our social fabric is frayed....."
Danny Dunckelman says, echoing earlier meditations (and I admit to not really understanding the words, but still finding them beautiful) :

These seven threads comprise a cloth: spirit, light, time, space, birth, death, and the seventh thread, which is the mystery of the universe. This seventh thread is also the opposite of spirit, the opposite of light, the opposite of time, the opposite of space, the opposite of birth, the opposite of death. The seven threaded dimensional cloth, which is the very fabric of the unnameable. The fabric extending out from any point of our universe. This movement, this animation, this extension in the cloth is the divine dance of eternity.

HATRED

While we were away, and since we returned home, even though I've attempted to avoid upsetting news stories and the opinion of others, one thing has seeped through the brief instances I've happened upon accidentally : hate (that's a verb) so I should really have written "hatred", I guess. Whether noun or verb, it's still obnoxious.

Hatred is like fire -- it makes even light rubbish deadly.
George Eliot

British astrologer of the last century, C.E.O. Carter wrote that:

"Hate is one of the most extreme Martian vibrations, through Scorpio rather than Aries, and probable generally with an admixture of Saturn or Uranus. The last-named is often violent in its antipathies, and, like Scorpio, may remember slights and insults after long periods. In maps capable of nourishing hatred and revenge the benefics are usually obscurely placed."

We have an "admixture of Saturn and Uranus" hovering above us just now, in the form of a celestial opposition between the status quo (Saturn) and change (Uranus). Perhaps it's this reflected in earthly terms that we keep encountering here in the USA.

Extreme political right-wingers seem hell-bent on the destruction of any aims of President Obama and his administration to right many societal wrongs, particularly in relation to health care in this country. These wrongs are clear to others, but the hatemongers remain blind to them, or obtusely uncaring. Hatemongers will use any twisted logic and lies to persuade the uninformed or passive that their views are the right ones. This is bad enough, but as long as it stops at people waving hate-ridden signs, and shouting abuse, not much is lost. I fear that whipping up hatred of this nature among many who will not stop to think things through for themselves, could lead to much worse eventualities. Blood could well be spilled before long. In fact, immediately after drafting this post yesterday afternoon, I saw this article at Huffington Post: "Census Worker Hanged: Bill Sparkman Found with "FED" on his Body". This man was a teacher and part-time worker collecting information for the census in Kentucky. Investigations are ongoing.

Hatred is like fire -- it makes even light rubbish deadly.

What could be done to alleviate the situation?

When we were in South Dakota last week, enjoying one of the many sights there, I heard a nearby group of tourists discussing the political situation. One of the group said "all Muslims are terrorists, and now we have one in the White House". On another occasion, in an antiques mall in Nebraska, another group of people stood discussing health care, and though I didn't hover too long, as I passed by them I couldn't help hearing just one sentence concerning what is, in the USA seriously misunderstood and looked on as a dirty word: "socialism". What is a person like me to do in such circumstances? Should I insert myself into their discussion? That would be very rude, and in any case my views would not be welcome because the minds of these folk are made up, set in stone. Yes their minds are set in stone. There's nothing to be done, but to live through whatever comes next.

I don't hate these people, I feel dreadfully sorry for them. I feel sorry for this beautiful, beautiful country that is has a proportion of citizens who do not want to see the wood for the trees.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!
(From Rogers & Hammerstein's "South Pacific" )