There’s got to be a better way

The thought has been simmering in my head and weighing on my heart for some time. I was reminded of it again this morning when I heard the phrase on the radio: “battleground states.” My mind went back to a time a few years ago when I heard a talking head tell his radio audience that those in the other political party were their “enemies.” Fellow Americans, their enemies.

Every election season we are informed of the “fight for the White House.” Not an election; not race; a fight. War Speak. Too, consider the word “war” permeating, sometimes absurdly, contemporary TV program titles: Storage Wars, Parking Wars, Design Wars, Sex Wars, Bartender Wars, Whisker Wars, Party Wars, Wedding Wars.

In 2000, there was an NBC news headline that shouted: “Bush Joins War On Illiteracy.” An expansive social welfare legislation introduced in the 1960s by the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson was referred to as the “war on poverty.” In June 1971, President Nixon declared a “war on drugs.” In the same year, signing the National Cancer Act, he declared “war on cancer.” Following 9/11, President Bush commenced the war on terror. In 2020, a documentary was released entitled “America’s War on Abortion.”

Just a side bar: To blithely label challenges and policies as “war” (ostensibly to attract attention and produce excitement) bespeaks a disturbing injustice to those who serve as the military shield to loved ones and cherished ideals. Their courage, deaths in the line of duty, the living sacrifices of the permanently wounded, the solitude of their watches on the wall are all forgotten or diminished by the shallow but popular, thrown-about term “war.”

Back to the or iginal thought: Even the religiously and spiritually devoted have difficulty distancing themselves from the tendency to violence; and for such petty reasons. Jesus’ disciples were in a particular village one day trying to make something like hotel reservations for Jesus as he was traveling to Jerusalem. The village refused their hospitality, so the disciples asked Jesus, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?”

Jesus must have been stunned. He turned and rebuked them, “You do not know what spirit you are of! for the Son of Man has not come to destroy the lives of human beings but to save them” (Luke 9). By the way, this is one of the reasons I believe that the hymn is no longer serving which sings, “Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war.”

Conversely, 15 years into the Vietnam conf lict, in 1970, Edwin Starr sang his protest lyrics: “War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing! Peace, love and understanding, tell me Is there no place for them today? They say we must fight to keep our freedom, But Lord knows there's got to be a better way.”

The late children’s poet laureate, Shel Silverstein, shared the sent iment, “there's got to be a better way,” in one of his poems I know most of us would wish to be universal. The poem comes from his book, Where the Sidewalk Ends.

Ironically, though his recorded version won the 1984 Grammy Award for Best Recording For Children, the book has recently been banned by the American Library Association, a result of America’s culture war. (However, you can still check out a copy from Melanie at our library.)

“I will not play at tug o’ war. I’d rather play at hug o’ war, “Where everyone hugs Instead of tugs, “Where everyone giggles And rolls on the rug, “Where everyone kisses, and everyone grins, “And everyone cuddles, And everyone wins.”