If the state of today’s politics is any indication, peace is a pipe dream. We might as well give up trying to find any, much less create it in our world.

But since my awakening, I’ve majored in banging my head against walls, so we’re going to give it the old college try anyway.

Considering the news coming out of colleges these days. that’s probably not a good thing. For what I see, read and hear college is a major battleground of those political wars.

The most prevalent group we hear about — we’ll call them the left — stands for safe spaces and attacking anyone with a contrarian view.

Comprised of “liberal” students, professors and an unidentified mob known as Antifa, they espouse shouting or shutting down almost everyone right of the Communist Party.

To them, anyone who supports President Trump or any part of his agenda are considered Nazi fascists and must not only be ideologically opposed but also destroyed socially, financially and even physically.  Calls for violence against opponents (“Punch a Nazi”) are rampant.

Worse, students known as “snowflakes” are unable to even be in the presence of their “enemy,” using every effort to shut them up, shut them down, and force them out of public spaces.

Their vitriol is regularly regurgitated and extolled by a liberal media that exists to spread their ideology, praising them for “standing up” for illegal immigration, radical feminism, PC conformity and of course, opposition to Donald Trump.

On the other side is a growing group of conservative students, New Right and Alt-Right activists who try to espouse opposing views (some of which held by the Alt-Right are just as distasteful as those of their Alt-Left counterparts) point out the dangers of such an approach to the health and safety of citizens and society alike.  Any time they try to hold a public event to articulate their views, major protests are launched by the left to stop them.

As a result, their efforts have morphed from just sharing their political views and ideas into a free speech movement to protect the rights of all — including the left — to speak their minds on the issues of the day and the state of the system in which we live.

Even so, the free speech rallies are viciously attacked by Antifa and Black Lives Matter, and use elements of the big Democrat machine like MoveOn.org to draw large crowds to justify their actions and provide political cover.

 

Media Makes it Worse

It would be bad enough if the conflicts stopped there. But they don’t.

Main stream media has fomented a hysteria about Trump and his agenda that makes it hard for even the most center-leaning liberal to sit on the sidelines with objectivity and perspective.

Fed story after story from Deep State holdovers, Congressional Democrats and the Institutional Left, media has painted itself as a liberal attack dog trying to hold in place a system of power, greed and corruption upon which their allies have fed for far too long.

Yet, all they’ve accomplished in the minds of many is the demonstration that they are little more than partisan shills for their liberal benefactors.

The battle cry against them — “FAKE NEWS” — is well-justified by the barrage of lies, distortions, conjecture and innuendo they continue to feed the American people.

Just this past week numerous such stories came out, including ones by such “respected” news sources like NBC, CNN and others trying to excoriate Trump. Rather than strike blows against him, all they did was further damage their own credibility and reputation.

We all know, too, about how Democrats and Republicans hate each other, and refuse to even consider working together on even the most important issues. And when they do, it’s usually to rubber-stamp some Deep State program like extending federal FISA surveillance powers over us.

Their battles, and the vitriol they elicit, are regularly spread through the news and across social media, dragging even more legions into the fray.

Yet, still they persist in their efforts to drive us apart, filling their audiences’ heads with a subtle form of brainwashing through a steady assault upon their sensibilities that is hard to resist. As the zeal of their troops grows, so does the divide that separates us from each other.

 

Where will it all end?

I don’t know that it will, until we reach the precipice and we are forced to change or be destroyed by our own propensity for conflict.

Each side is so tied to their own beliefs and perspectives that they are unwilling, and often unable, to consider anything other than the rigid positions they’ve locked themselves into.  Compromise being impossible both practically and expediently, they’re content to bash each other and look for ways to subvert the efforts of their opponents who want another way.

 

 

Finding Another Way

My experience has been that these energies of conflict must be dissipated before new approaches can be considered. That means

 

the conflicts will continue until their cost gets so high and the chance for victory so low that neither is willing to accept that risk and become ready to work together. 

 

Until then, it’s going to be more of the same — at least, so long as we the people give them our support that allows them to play their games.

It is to address this support that I do this — to empower you with choice over whether to participate in the power games that are threatening to destroy our nation, and if so, how to do so without surrendering your own consciousness in the process.

For you must open your eyes to their efforts to convince you to enable them to perpetuate their battles through your votes, your contributions and your support for their causes.

And from there, to realize that neither side sees the whole picture, and that there are more ways are possible than the ones they feed us.

This is why I talk about taking an inner approach to our outer affairs, so we can begin to defuse the buttons they push that goad us into battle.  Only when we have addressed our own inner propensities to take sides and engage in conflict can we hope to move forward together — that is, unless one side totally annihilates the other and claims the spoils as victors in their war for power.

Part of this means dealing with the inner conditions that make us this way. Part is also releasing our attachment to the beliefs and practices that are fueling their battles so that we can consider the value of other ways.

This isn’t some magic wand that we can wave and make things better. Rather, it will take lots of work by each of us, individually, upon ourselves — then bringing the best of what we find to the common affairs that we now use to drive us apart.

It starts in you, and me, and in every other person who wants peace and is willing to change in order to get it.  The path may not be easy, but it does offer hope we can find a common vision and ways to move toward it together.

Or we can keep on fighting. The choice is yours.

 

 

 

 

John Dennison
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