Can we, even for a brief time, put aside the
fear that has made us a nation caught in endless war that has come home
to us? Can we begin to look at our fellow citizens, not as “the other,”
or “less than,” or “disposable?” Can we reduce our society’s
militarization and culture of violence? Can we get beyond inflammatory
rhetoric that paralyzes our government and poisons family gatherings?
Can we stop our war at home, even for a short while?
During World War I, on and around Christmas Day 1914 along the Western Front,
the sounds of exploding shells and rifle fire faded in several places
in favor of gestures of good will between enemies. At the first light of
dawn on Christmas Day, groups of German soldiers emerged from their
trenches, crossed no-man’s-land, and shouted “Merry Christmas” to the
British soldiers. In a number of places, the men exchanged cigarettes
and sang carols and songs. The film “Joyeux Noel” depicts this remarkable truce and calls it “a moment of humanity that changed everything.”
Can we have a moment of humanity
that changes everything? How many of us have stopped watching the news
because we can’t handle what we are seeing? In a season that is
presumably devoted to peace, we have come to wonder if peace is possible
in our country, with its culture of killing, bullying, sexual assault
and torture. We know this is not who we are, but somehow it is us, and we don’t know how to handle it, or get ourselves out of it.
I’ve seen this before. Along with other members of Veterans for Peace who
have served in war, I’ve seen what happens when fear takes over and we
lose the better part of our humanity. We know what is possible when “the
other” is cast as less than human. We know war, and it is here.
In the United States today, guns and mass
shootings proliferate. Police departments are militarized. Violent video
games have drugged our youth. The toxic residual of slavery and racism
fuels us. We tout strength and dismiss the “lazy who feel entitled.”
Entire groups of people are disposable. We pride ourselves on being a
classless society, even as we watch our middle class evaporate and the
American dream disappear. In a nation of immigrants, we attack new
immigrants who seek what our forebears sought. We fail to support
early-childhood initiatives, strip schools of funding, and question the
right of all Americans to affordable health care. Endless war overseas
has morphed into war at home where diminishing resources make us less
than we should be and compromise our future.
President Dwight David Eisenhower said it
best in 1953: “This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is
spending the sweat of laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes
of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern
brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants,
each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped
hospitals. … We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could
have housed more than 8,000 people. … This is not a way of life at all,
in any true sense. … it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”
On Christmas Day 1914, if warring soldiers
could halt their fighting and claim the peace of a common humanity, as
Americans we need to do the same here at home. If we don’t create a moment of humanity that changes everything, we stand to lose our humanity forever.
from here
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