Pen-Elayne on the Web

Pro-Peace Is Pro-America

Please read this entry by Atrios discussing the Clear Channel-sponsored (and government-sponsored) "patriotic" pro-war rallies held across the country. If any of these got a minyan it was probably due to the music and freebies, but I haven't been watching statecorporate-run TV so I couldn't possibly say. In any case, it sounds awfully close to Nuremberg, a point also made by Ted Rall a few days ago (as mentioned in yesterday's entry). The difference between the folks who attend peace rallies and the folks who attend war rallies (as opposed to the corporations who organize them? We aren't calling for them to be jailed or move to Argentina or implying they don't love America, because we know they do just as much as we do. We know that sometimes people do reprehensible things in the name of love. We're just suggesting that love should perhaps express itself as something other than hatred or xenophobia or jingoism.

A very revered prophet a couple thousand years ago made a direct link between love and peace. It would seem obvious to many of us that to be pro-war is to be anti-love, anti-Christian, anti-life, and certainly anti-American. But we must remember these people are all capable of great love, the same as we are. And we must appeal to that capacity for love if our message of peace has any sort of prayer of getting through to them. Working Assets' billboards are, I believe, a nice example - although, again, I'd like to see their website proclaim them as "pro-peace" rather than "anti-war." (In any case, as they're my long-distance carrier and my last statement showed a credit of $12 or so I've just e-mailed them telling them to put that credit towards this fund.) I'm trying to bear in mind, especially now, my old switchboard training wherein I was taught to only use positive words. If someone's away from the office when they receive a call, you don't say "He's not in," you say "He's out." Conveying the exact same information but eliminating the negative words (not, anti, never, against, etc.) not only puts the listener or reader in a more receptive frame of mind, but challenges you as the speaker or writer to find more inspiring ways of communicating. I think this is vital for the pro-peace and pro-democracy movements. The more the war efforts assault the language, the more peace efforts need to prop it up and make it stand for something noble and righteous again.