War: Bloodthirsty Arrogance

Rescue teams on January 8, 2020 at the scene of a Ukrainian airliner that crashed shortly after take-off near Imam Khomeini airport in the Iranian capital Tehran.

“The solitary is, first of all, one who renounces arbitrary social imagery. When his  nation wins a war or sends a rocket to the moon, he can get along without feeing as if he personally had won the war or hit the moon with ar rocket. When his nation is rich and arrogant, he does not feel that he himself is more fortunate anymore honest, as well as more powerful, than the citizens of other, more ‘backward’ nations. More than this, he is able to despise war and to see the futility of rockets to the moon in a way quite different and more fundamental from the way in which society may tolerate these negative views. That is to say, he despises the criminal, blood thirsty arrogance of his own nation or class as much as that of the ‘the enemy.’ He despises his own self -seeking aggressively as much as that of the politicians who hypocritically pretend they are fighting for peace.”

-Thomas Merton

-Actor Michelle Williams at the Golden Globes