Help Blind The Evil Eye And Still The Voice Of Hate

The wave of hatred washing over the earth is the current manifestation of a flood that has never subsided.

Hatred inevitably leads to the dehumanization of the hated. They are labeled, cursed and treated with scorn. Eventually, they become “things” to be eliminated.

We are justified to be concerned by expressions of hatred pouring over the airways and being reported in the journals. However, are we, ourselves, completely free of the bigotry that produces mean thoughts or gross violence?

The atmosphere of retribution set in motion by the Treaty of Versailles following World War I gave rise to sinister forces responsible for the inhumane events 20 years later:

Rotterdam was bombed into extinction; Coventry suffered a similar fate. Atrocities swept over Europe for six years, and only at the end of World War II, when our troops came upon the concentration camps, did we learn the depths of the depravity.

In the Far East, the Japanese were just as brutal in Manchuria, China and Southeast Asia. After the rape of Nanking, American forces suffered the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Bataan death march. That was the “good war.”

I went through the hell of flak and fighters to deliver bombs to military, industrial and transportation targets in Germany and Austria.

Fifty years ago, the conflict in Europe came to an end. I was ordered back to the states to go into B-29 training, in preparation for the final assault on Japan.

One day as I was reading the ticker tape in the air base communications center, the machine tapped out the news of a single, new device that had been dropped from a B-29, obliterating Hiroshima and hundreds of thousands of its people.

A week later, the same thing happened to Nagasaki. Surrender quickly followed.

While I was relieved that the war was finally over, I pondered whether we had become as demonic as those with whom we had been engaged. I was beginning to hear more details about the firestorms that our planes had created at Hamburg, Dresden and Tokyo - all with questionable effect on the length or severity of the war. And now, instead of giving the Japanese warlords the opportunity to witness a demonstration of the bomb by blowing away some uninhabited island or a fleet of warships, we had sunk to their level of bestiality.

True, the fighting up the islands to Iwo Jima and Okinawa had been intense, and the enemy was becoming ever more desperate. And, the official word from Washington was that those two bombs had saved over a half million lives.

However, by that time, Japan had lost the war. We knew it; they knew it; and we knew they knew it.

Albert Einstein, Joseph Oppenheimer and other nuclear scientists had pleaded with President Truman to refrain from using the bomb. Yet, after bragging to Stalin at Potsdam that we had a new toy, Truman was determined to show it off. By so doing, he joined Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo and Stalin in their exclusive club.

Consider the buzzwords of bigotry that led to all of those atrocities. During World War I, our adversaries were called Huns to dehumanize them, making it easy to kill them.

Years later, those Germans got caught up in the hysteria of the Nazis and their degradation of Jews, homosexuals, communists, Gypsies, and the clergy. It was easy for us to hate the “Japs” after Pearl Harbor.

The history of hatred and violence in the 20th century must include the events in Eastern Europe, the revolution in Russia, the rise of the Bolsheviks, and the subsequent slaughter of millions in ethnic minorities.

So, when we were confronted by this sinister power following World War II, we went berserk. A “commie” was under every bed. “Pinkos” were swarming all over Washington, Hollywood and the universities.

The CIA, FBI, and the investigative committees of Congress went into orbit. We drifted into a war with the “gooks” that is still a terrible malignancy on the national conscience. Remember My Lai?

In our zeal to defeat the communists, we later participated in horrendous atrocities in Latin America.

Still, the messages of hate spew out in torrents from talk radio, in meeting houses and in private conversations. Some border on sedition. Some are ordinarily benign but take on offensive meanings when used with that intent. Many are absolutely brutal:

“Right to bear arms,” “government,” “feminazis,” “queers,” “baby killers,” “special rights,” “tree huggers,” “Jewish bankers,” “secular humanists,” “Hillary,” “bureaucrats,” “welfare queens,” “environmentalists,” “United Nations,” “affirmative action,” “immigrants,” and so on.

Free speech? Yes. But true freedom demands responsibility. Does anyone seriously doubt that this flood of vitriol affected the depraved minds that set off the bomb in Oklahoma City?

What to do? Each of us must resist in every way possible giving credence to such bile. We must let the broadcasters and their advertisers know they will be boycotted if irresponsible talk shows continue.

Each of us must take a firm stand against this evil. And, each of us must search his own soul for any bigoted feelings.

Finally, each of us, no matter of which, if any, religious persuasion, must take to heart the admonition given about two millennia ago to “Love your enemy.”

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