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Wars are always ugly and messy... and full of so-called 'collateral damage'. But in the age of mass media they have also become ugly in another way. They have - for the mass of Western people who only see them on their tvs or smart phones, people who don't have to actually fight them or physically endure them - a ghoulish form of entertainment and an opportunity for endless emotionally-cathartic outrage and opinionising.

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Contemplation Of The Sword

by Robinson Jeffers

Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide.

The sword: an obsolete instrument of bronze or steel,

formerly used to kill men, but here

In the sense of a symbol. The sword: that is: the storms

and counter-storms of general destruction; killing

of men,

Destruction of all goods and materials; massacre, more or

less intentional, of children and women;

Destruction poured down from wings, the air made accomplice,

the innocent air

Perverted into assasin and poisoner.

The sword: that is: treachery and cowardice, incredible

baseness, incredible courage, loyalties, insanities.

The sword: weeping and despair, mass-enslavement,

mass-tourture, frustration of all hopes

That starred man's forhead. Tyranny for freedom, horror for

happiness, famine for bread, carrion for children.

Reason will not decide at last, the sword will decide.

Dear God, who are the whole splendor of things and the sacred

stars, but also the cruelty and greed, the treacheries

And vileness, insanities and filth and anguish: now that this

thing comes near us again I am finding it hard

To praise you with a whole heart.

I know what pain is, but pain can shine. I know what death is,

I have sometimes

Longed for it. But cruelty and slavery and degredation,

pestilence, filth, the pitifulness

Of men like hurt little birds and animals . . . if you were

only

Waves beating rock, the wind and the iron-cored earth,

With what a heart I could praise your beauty.

You will not repent, nor cancel life, nor free man from anguish

For many ages to come. You are the one that tortures himself to

discover himself: I am

One that watches you and discovers you, and praises you in little

parables, idyl or tragedy, beautiful

Intolerable God.

The sword: that is:

I have two sons whom I love. They are twins, they were born

in nineteen sixteen, which seemed to us a dark year

Of a great war, and they are now of the age

That war prefers. The first-born is like his mother, he is so

beautiful

That persons I hardly know have stopped me on the street to

speak of the grave beauty of the boy's face.

The second-born has strength for his beauty; when he strips

for swimming the hero shoulders and wrestler loins

Make him seem clothed. The sword: that is: loathsome disfigurements,

blindness, mutilation, locked lips of boys

Too proud to scream.

Reason will not decide at last: the sword will decide.

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To quote my friend there’s something about Israel Palestine which rots the brain

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True that!

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I think that's too dismissive. Israel/Palestine has the property that a faction of progressives put it heavily in the common framework of colonialist/native and white/POC, but there's another strong faction of liberals (broadly defined) who view it as exterminationist anti-Semitism and terrorism. The latter faction also has real physical safety concerns, so they aren't inclined to submit on this topic to the standard bullying tactics of the former faction. This is very unusual in terms of disputes within the "left".

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You missed the point

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