It's So Easy To Feel Helpless...

 

Hi!

I won't pretend to understand the complicated, deep history of the Middle East. There is so much more to all of it than what is presented to us in the news. 

But I do know what hate looks like. Hate is visceral, hate is pungent, hate is simple and manifests through cruelty to the nth degree. 

As long as the evil-doers of the world have cheerleaders with money, who clutch their pearls at the sight of blood, but are more than happy to spill it for profit, there is no incentive to stop. Evil will continue to do as evil does, without restraint.

The antidote to evil is not revenge. It's compassion.

The counter to the screams of hatred is the playing of joyful music, accompanied by lyrics filled with love.

I am not naive enough to think it's that simple. That singing rousing choruses of kumbaya will heal all things.

All I know, is it can't hurt.

Maybe if those, whose only goal in life is to dominate and inflict pain, figure out that those they doing their best to destroy have unwavering support and compassion from the entirety of the rest of us, they won't have a choice but to crawl back into the putrid hole from which they came. 

Underneath the guns, there lives nothing but a bully. Which is what dictators and their want-to-be counterparts are. For a bully to back down, they have to gain a true understanding that they have no path to victory. They need to be overwhelmed by the support their victims receive. 

It's a tale as old as time. The bully CAN NOT become victorious. 

The only way they win is if we quit, become weary of the fight, or decide we simply no longer care. 

It's so easy to feel helpless. But we're not.

Social media has made the world a virtually small space. We can show support, throwing our voices behind those who have the actual power to do tangible things. 

Good people, when we collectively do good things, can move mountains, hell, entire mountain ranges, if that's what's needed. 

Centuries of pain are not healed overnight, but for the healing to begin, the infliction of the pain must stop. 

My heart breaks for the senselessness of it all. 

The insatiable appetite for power, driven by greed, and delusional assumptions of superiority, willing to filter the blood of children through the gloves of their henchmen to fill their golden chalises. 

Dictators are the antithesis of freedom. There is no upside. How they are able to get some to do their bidding will forever baffle me.  It's so twisted. 

Anywhere there are efforts to restrict voting, put shackles on an unbiased education,  ban books, interfere with bodily autonomy, or marginalize already marginalized swaths of humanity, lives a very real danger to democracy. 

They fearmonger, telling us scary stories of "others". 

They want us to be afraid of immigrants.

They want us afraid of the LGBTQ+ community.

They want us afraid of anyone who doesn't look like us.

They want us afraid of those who worship differently, or choose not to worship at all.

They make things up, then want us to fear "others" like proverbial boogeymen. I mean there are still people out there who think antifa is an actual thing! It's short for anti-fascism. That's it. 

They want us afraid of each other. I mean, they have a lot of not-so-critical thinkers twisted in knots, jumping out of their skin at non-existent shadows. Scared people comply. Any of us who grew up with corporal punishment understand this all too well. 

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May we all reject the fear, and build trust in its stead.