From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst
9 April
Let’s suppose,
for the sake of argument, that Abraham Lincoln is planning on running for
President in 2020, not against Donald Trump but against Senator Phineas T.
Windbag. How would he treat the great issues of our day?
Take terrorism
- 9/11, for example. If Lincoln had experienced 9/11 he would have seen what
you and I saw:
•
19 guys with box
cutters changed the course of history;
•
they were motivated
by bottomless hatred;
•
their
"success," although a fluke, was massive, and we can't afford any
more such “successes;”
•
the reaction of the
West, based largely on fear, was universal, namely, kill ‘em all.
I would
suggest Lincoln would have seen more than that, namely,
•
that one-step
fear-driven reaction, having little in the way of logical progression, is both
incomplete, ineffective and dangerous;
•
there's little
difference between the live-fast-die-young kid who destroys for Isis in the
Middle East and the live-fast-die-young kid in Chicago who guns down some other
Chicago kid - "you disrespect me, I'll disrespect you!" The anger of
both sets of kids has at its base a despair spawned by a life of economic
deprivation.
•
Lincoln, maybe
quoting Gandhi [“Poverty is the worse form of violence”], might very well
propose attacking that economic disparity, on the assumption that redressing
economic inequality will dissipate the appeal of Isis for otherwise despairing
Middle-Eastern youth, as well as street gangs for otherwise despairing US
youth.
But then, if Lincoln happened to be a
candidate for President in 2020 and proposed such a policy, his opponent would
paint him as a heartless proponent of Isis/gangland violence.
And you and I might howl in agreement.
[But what if Lincoln were right?]
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