"These are the times that try men's souls."
"You are about to embark upon a great crusade."
"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure."
These are words spoken in times of actual war. Times when our country and its way of life was at stake.
Today, we are not at war. The survival of country, as we know it, is not at stake. We are not engaged in another Civil War. We are not left with only binary choices regarding our future. We are not left at a crossroads of one choice leading us to eternal damnation and the other leading us to glory. We are not at war.
But we have made to believe that we are. We're told every day that we are at war. We're told that Republicans want to destroy our healthcare and freedoms while we're being told that Democrats want to destroy our religion and confiscate our guns. All of these ultimatum-like talking points serve one purpose, and that is to make us believe that we actually are at war.
Why do so many people, on both sides of the aisle, insist on fighting this war? Why do so many in our country relish in the fact that we are so divided right now? Why do so many people seem to promote the idea of war? Why do so many people get their fulfillment in the life by being mad at "the other side of the aisle"? Why are we so angry all the time? The answer to these questions is simple: war allows the worst deprivations of mankind to be justified. Many of the most heinous crimes in history have committed in times of war. War has been used as a justification of crimes, hatred, and bigotry for centuries, and it continues to be today.
Example:
The Holocaust, one of the worst atrocities of human history, was perpetrated against the Jews because Hitler and his cronies deemed them to be the cause of Germany's demise. Hitler and the Nazis believed that tt was the Jewish bankers who had sold Germany out in 1918 and led them to the humiliation of Versailles. To the Nazis, Jews thought differently, they acted differently, they celebrated non-Germanic holidays, many were wealthy, and they looked different than many Germans, so to the Nazis, Jews couldn't be true Germans. The Jews were different from the model Germans Hitler envisioned; so to him, they were enemies of the true German people. As enemies, they were not worthy to live in "the Reich" as normal German citizens. As enemies, they weren't even worthy to live. To eliminate the Jews was to ensure Germany's survival. And to question this mindset or to speak out against this bigotry was to speak out against the state, and speaking out against the state was considered treason. What higher crime could a citizen commit than treason against his country? Have you ever wondered why so few Germans spoke out against the Holocaust during the war? How could so many people ignore the plight of people whose only crime was practicing a different religion or holding a different political persuasion? The answer to this question is that the Germans were made to believe that the survival of their state and their cherished fatherland took precedent over another group of people, because they were at war. Would you betray your country for another group of people that were different than you? If we're honest, could the Holocaust occurred in 1934 when Germany was not at war?
Another example of this war mentality is the Holodomor. The Holodomor is one of the lesser known tragedies to befall humanity, but it was one of its worst. This horrendous mass starvation was perpetrated by Josef Stalin against the farmers of the Ukraine. This atrocity did not take place during a war in the traditional sense, but rather a cultural war. This was a war against the "Kulaks", the so-called enemies of the working class people of the Soviet Union. It is estimated that around 7-10 million Ukrainians died as a result of this act of mass murder. To put it in perspective, that's more than the number of Jews killed by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. The Holodomor also occurred in a short time period, roughly 1 year. If you want to lose your appetite for the next few hours, do some reading on the Holodomor.
But now we come to a different dilemma regarding these examples. In both of these examples, the atrocities were not committed by the leaders, but by ordinary people. Yes, the leaders orchestrated them, but Adolf Hitler never dropped a canister of Zyklon B into a gas chamber, not did Josef Stalin confiscate every single scrap of food in a Ukrainian village. These atrocities were carried out by followers of these men. These men knew the atrocities and they knew the suffering of these people, yet they committed these atrocities anyway. Why? How could man stoop so low as to do this to his fellow man? I believe there are two reasons that could bring a man to do this. The first is fear. Fear that if he did not follow orders he or his family would be killed or worse. This can be seen by the vast atrocities committed by Lithuanian, Latvian, Polish, and other Eastern European peoples against the Jews. In many cases, Jews were instrumental in perpetrating the Holocaust. This was not because they wanted to, but because they feared the consequences if they did not. The second reason is that these actions were justified because he was at war with these people. In either case, he could justify his actions by making himself believe that he had chosen the "lesser of two evils". Murder is wrong, but is it wrong if it is done to justify the defense of one's country or family? How many of us would honestly sacrifice ourselves and our families just to die with a stranger? If we're honest, that's not an easy question to answer, even in a perfect situation.
Fortunately, we have the gift of foresight and by looking to the past, we know that neither the Jews nor the Ukrainian Kulaks were responsible for the hardships befalling Germany or the Soviet Union. Yes, there were some Jews who did some bad things. There were Kulaks who abused their power and took advantage of others. But those shortfalls did not lead to downfall of the German or Russian state. But instead of dealing with the real problem, it was much easier to make enemies of a certain group of people that could be easily blamed. Anne Frank was no less of a German than Adolf Hitler was. (She was actually born in Germany, while Hitler was born in Austria, so I guess she technically was, but you understand my point)
The point of this is to say that war allows and makes people do things that they would never normally do. War allows man to stoop to the lowest places he can ever go. War has the potential to turn even the best among us into one of our worst. This is true not just of a literal war, but in a "Cultural" or "Religious" war as well.
One of the most important things to realize about a war, whether literally or metaphorically, is who stands to profit from this war. Money, power, and greed are very strong motivators for war.
To be continued...
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