Resisting the litany of darkness

Look around and see the hellish interior landscape of the Great Leader’s sick mind, which he has turned inside out and loosed on the world. Note the toxic ideas that repeat themselves there. When people choose the path of the Great Leader cult in any of the nations where it is lately in ascendance (you know where I’m talking about), this is what they get:

Kill kill kill, punish punish punish, revenge revenge revenge.

Here are the folks you should hate and fear… [fill in as appropriate].

Terrorists, rapists, drug traffickers, human traffickers, aliens, migrants, subhuman, vermin. Those are the folks who are coming after you, they are out to get you, watch out!

I will send heavily armed special forces loyal to me, to protect you. Only I can save you. And I will save you whether you want me to or not! Plus, you can buy a personal weapon, man up, and be ready to protect your family…

And don’t forget whose fault it is – you know the ones: they look different, dress funny, speak another language, come from dirty neglected rat-infested places, they are rapists and murderers and gang members, they will take over your neighborhood, take your jobs away, ravish your daughters…

Disbelieve the media, don’t swallow anything they say, fake news, alternative facts, they call it science, it is godless, it is a threat to your sacred values, they are trying to brainwash your children, watch out, be afraid, be very afraid….

Still, we can resist the litany of darkness

All of that dark vitriol is from the catechism of authoritarianism, the litany of darkness that disengages us ordinary people from our organic connection to basic human realities and simple human values — and grooms us to embrace extremes of aggression, invasion, conquest, slaughter, annihilation.

People, wake up! It is past time for us to wake up. Leaders whose entire repertoire of leadership is rooted in the propagation of fear and loathing cannot lead us anywhere worth going. Their very extensive networks of influence, encompassing corporate and state propaganda, social media, talk radio, macho gamer culture, violent sports empires, death cults, trafficking – none of that offers us a path to any kind of sustainable future.

The Great Leaders enjoy posing as Prophets of the Divine. They like to feign piety and brandish sacred scriptures during their photo ops, but behind the masks they are Profiteers of Divisiveness. In wartime, which is itself a deeply ingrained collective human enterprise of negativity that repeats and repeats endlessly, the only true winners are the makers and sellers and venture capitalists of weaponry, and the politicians; everyone else loses. Demagogues harangue their people into an escalating mutual frenzy of hate and aggression as a proven path to political power. Atrocities by the other side are foregrounded; atrocities by one’s own side are ignored or justified. This is a recipe for endless mutual degradation and mass suffering.

American feminist and pacifist Jeannette Rankin famously said: “You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.” And she was right.

Choosing the other path

There is an alternative mindset embraced by too few. Every so often a prophet comes along and preaches about it and is generally ignored, or reviled. Yet it offers the possibility of bringing us back to beauty and truth and reconciliation and peace. Although the struggle to repair the world for the benefit of all offers no guarantees, the attempt is still worth undertaking. Today is not too late to choose a different way.

The alternative mindset to the Great Leader cults is succinctly illustrated in an iconic 1965 graphic by American artist Lorraine Schneider, which she entitled “Primer”: War is not healthy for children and other living things. Her story, with photos, is told here. Schneider donated the rights to “Primer” to the nonpartisan peace education organization Another Mother for Peace.

Ghandi is supposed to have said: “Our only true enemies are in our own hearts, and that is where all our battles should  be fought.” Indeed, the crippling mental construct of “enemies” long ago outlived its usefulness to humans. Now, in our new age of instantaneous global interconnectedness, the only sensible way forward is that we do our best to learn to see adversaries as indispensable future partners in crafting a new shared understanding of the potential for sustainable community — local, regional, and global.

War is not healthy for children and other living things.