The death and destruction wrought by ISIS and their particular brand of hatred saddens and scares the heck out of me. They seem as inurred to the connections between all the humans on this one planet as the tyrants planted throughout our history. They are every bit as sadistic as Hitler was towards Jews and other Eastern Europeans, as Stalin was toward Ukrainians and other Slavs, as Idi Amin was towards Ugandans, as murderous as Milosevic was in Yugoslavia and and and..... Human history is peppered with unspeakable crimes of human against fellow human, each stemming from some intrinsic mistaken notion of the perpetrators own superiority and, hence, the disposability of those who stand in their march towards some nihilistic destiny.
What saddens and upsets me as well is the reaction of the haters, i.e. those who have decided to be judge and jury on events way out of the control of even the most enlightened among us; those who choose to cast a vote against compassion and justice; those who were born into the freedom of this great country, and especially those, who were themselves welcomed as immigrants and refugees, but who reject reason and succumb to the same hatred that spawned the great tragedy in Paris. How many of us who live comfortably in our warm homes, or how many of us who fled from any calamity remember how we are protected and saved, yes saved, from a fate as terrible as any faced by the refugees of today? On the other hand, how many of us can forget? We must not and cannot forget that it was the kindness and bravery of others who made possible the lives we and our children enjoy today, and it is our duty to pay it forward. Nobody asked my mother, my father or me if we would be model citizens...they just took in us refugees, gave us shelter and the start of a new life. It pains me to see hatred aimed at people even more unfortunate than I was back in 1949. All I can think is but for the grace of the universe, it would be me floating on an endless ocean only to wash up on a cold, cruel shore.
