For Whom Do We Feel Compassion?

We have shifted into an era in which violence is strength. This shift happened gradually and began at the cultural level, with Western society filled with people at odds with one another. First, this division was hatched and nurtured within the nest of politics, where liberals and conservatives were fed the pablum of hatred. Mainstream and social media, therefore, was filled with videos of stupid “Libtards,” or deranged “Trumptards” deriding and vilifying each other. All this was framed within the contest of “globalists” versus “patriots,” of “progressives” versus “traditionalists.” It was all about “truth” versus the “lie,” about “reality” against “fake news.” There was the “deep state” forever conspiring against “sovereigntists.” It was the “woke” against those with “common sense.” Enemies to the right and left. Outrage all around.

When society becomes a place of contention between two irreconcilable “camps,” violence is the only “logical” way forward. The one camp must be overcome, for there can only be the one camp that survives. Such is grim Darwinism. Hence the “cancel culture” which both camps practice very efficiently once given enough political power (as Trump is now proving with DOGE, and he is far more brutal about it than his predecessor, who also was good at it).

Now, it is not an exaggeration to say that hatred is the fuel that drives nearly all aspects of Western society; it is even its pervasive “culture.” Hated is what is meant whenever the term “our values” is mentioned. Foes can never be friends, must never be friends. The one must annihilate the other.

When the currency of politics is hatred, where one side must win over the other—forever—then, all aspects of foreign relations, or International Relations, exist solely to further and promote the pervasive culture of the dominant camp. And since, currently, the dominant camp is the Western one, its culture of hatred becomes the purpose of its diplomacy, and the "logic" of its behavior in the world, as clearly seen in the Ukraine and the Middle East.

Some people decry the absence of “diplomacy,” but they fail to see that diplomacy is not an independent creature that somehow serves to tame the politics of the very camp from it emerges. In fact, the current victorious camp in the United States (MAGA) abhors independence, and demands that all who serve it “stay on message.” They frame it as "loyalty" to Trump. Independence would necessarily require a “deep state,” an unaffiliated structure which would ensure that no politician could ever override the welfare of a nation’s people, down to the individual level. But achieving and maintaining such a structure is beyond the ken of the West today.

If war is the extension of politics by another means, then war is also an extension of culture, for all wars are ultimately, and only, culture wars. Wars are never fought for the defense of warm and fuzzy ideals (“democracy” or “freedom”). They are fought to further the ambitions of the dominant camp in a given society. More importantly, they are fought to demonstrate strength. In order for a group to maintain cohesion, it must practice targeted violence, in the form of war, intimidation tactics, summary arrests, physical brutality, or legal persecution. Bribe, bully and then bomb is the good-old American way.

And now that the culture of the West is one of hatred, whereby (like Western society) the world is divided into two camps—foe and friend—war is a necessary means to sustain cohesion within the West. And that cohesion means a unity of those who support the war or oppose it. Notice the duality, which is an extension of hatred, for often it is less a rejection of war and violence, and more a hatred of the now-dominant camp.

Diplomacy is understood as the dialogue between nations, by way of go-betweens, and the word itself derives from the Greek, diploma, which means, “charter.” Ultimately, in Greek, it bears the meaning of a document “doubled” or “folded over.” Diplomacy, therefore, has a double purpose—dialogue and dominance, through charters and treaties (bribe and bully), always backed up my military might (bombs). Might is right.

The recent amateurish blunder of “Signalgate” shows all this perfectly. The current outrage is focused entirely on legal niceties, whether such a discussion by top government officials should have been happening on a publicly available messaging service, and whether this, then, constitutes the release of “classified” information.

What no one care about is that what we were shown is cold, unvarnished hatred which decides what is to be done to other human beings, in this case, the Houthis of Yemen. Once humans are labeled as "foes," they can be killed without compunction, and with glee.

Among those who participated in this planning to bomb Yemen, not one even considered whether killing people thousands of miles away is morally reprehensible. It was all Gung-ho, adolescent bravura, a video game, in which the “bad guys” are eliminated, followed by a round of emojis and back-thumping. A job well done. Never mind that to kill one targeted Houthi man (and that unsuccessfully), an entire apartment building was flattened. The result, 53 innocent civilians killed that we know of, including women and children, and many others injured. The point of it all? “Peace through strength”—military power as the primary tool for achieving US national security goals. There can never be any sort of dialogue with the foe.

Most important of all, what “Signalgate” has shown is that Western politicians have no conscience to speak of. All that talk about “Christianity” in the Trump camp is merely the echo of a vast moral emptiness, a pile of rhetoric jumbled into the trough of the will to power. The very foundation of the Christian faith is compassion—and love for those human beings one chooses to call “enemies.” In Christianity, there are no irreconcilable, opposing camps (Matthew 5:38-48). For a Christian, it can never be acceptable that solemn calls for peace in Ukraine are then followed by more and more slaughter in Yemen, Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, and perhaps even Iran.

The souls of those 53 Yemenis murdered by Pete Hegseth and his chat-groupies will continue to demand justice. No matter what cover politics may provide. And justice may be delayed, but it always comes.

Perhaps, one day, the West will return to compassion, once its greatest and dearest currency. If it does not, it will never know peace and it will destroy itself.

Might is right is a “very dangerous doctrine when it becomes the creed of a stupid people, for it flatters their self-sufficiency, and distracts their attention from the difficult, subtle, frail, and wavering conditions of human power” (Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh, England and the War [1918]).

Or, to revamp an old saying, “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American politician.”

Featured: The Musicians' Brawl, by Georges de La Tour (ca. 1625-1630).