The Thirst for Revenge. The Media and our Politicians.

“Our media have very little moral fiber left.”

There’s a well known quotation by the American writer Eric Hoffer. “Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.”

Among the lives of people, individuals and cultures there are some who maintain that the best thing for man to strive for in this world is to take revenge on his enemies. The satisfaction of thirst for revenge cannot be clearer than it is today. And since November 2016, be it from the political left or the right, America must accept ownership of being in the forefront of adding a venomous fire to religious hatred and intolerance.

The great ninth century Jewish philosopher Saadia Gaon commented that the thirst for revenge affords the pleasure of seeing discomfiture of its enemy, assuages the vehemence of its wrath and puts an end to excessive brooding. Saadia said that the man who is consumed by the desire for revenge gets into a frame of mind of refusing to accept intercession or entertaining any feeling of compassion or pity or listening to any plea of clemency.

Over one thousand years later Saadia’s comments still reflect the attitude that we have learnt nothing. As we observe the hatred between America’s political elites, Sunni and Shia, between Muslim and Jewish sense of victimhood, between Kenyan Luo, Kalenjin and Kikuya, Turkey and its PKK militants, Africa’s Greater Sahel and Lake Chad Basin and the Muslim Rohingya minority in Myanmar, we find very little is based upon the two way acceptance that my world is also your world.

Many gloat over peoples misfortune, falsify historical evidence, instill a hatred in each other’s cultures and religions that no civilized government has a hope in hell or will in stopping. It is a hatred that has its own direction, its own time and space, egged on by the perverse nature of fanatics such as Daesh and the Jew-hating Hizb ut-Tahrir, as well as a score from the evangelical movements, utilizing the services of the ten second clip, satellite dishes, mobile phones, photos of children flourishing guns and Internet web sites.  It is a hatred spurned on by educated societies to the masses of the uneducated and their educated children.

Today, we attempt to compare the difference between America’s fake news and the flag-waving, drum-rolling entertainment news programmes thrust upon us by the TV networks, as we fantasize for the return of the Walter Cronkite’s of our world. For lighting the match of hate and intolerance is by no means a right of privilege of our politicians, who are in direct competition with much of our media.

It’s been said that because our media have very little moral fiber left, they have enhanced the egregious display of open prejudice pervading our society today. The days where media were supposed to spread enlightenment has vanished. We have crossed the red line. It’s an utter travesty. I’ve said enough!