Boys will be boys. Just ask the president.

At a gathering of Republicans a few days ago, Donald Trump talked nonchalantly about the recent sinking of an apparently unarmed Iranian frigate by the US Navy—in the Indian Ocean, more than 2,000 miles from the Persian Gulf. A total of 104 crew members were killed and 32 more were injured.

The president proceeded to make this more than merely another brutal, pointless act of war. He turned it into a glaring—shocking—revelation of truth... about the American-Israeli war on Iran and, quite possibly about all wars: about war itself. He was upset at first, he told the crowd, that the Navy sank the frigate rather than capturing it. But when he expressed this to the military officials, one of them responded, “It’s more fun to sink them.”

And the crowd laughed. Uh... are we “playing” war or waging it, with that trillion-dollar annual military budget America has? No doubt we’re doing both, but normally the “fun” part of war—the dehumanization of the enemy, the abstraction of people’s deaths (including those of children)—is airbrushed from public discussion by politically correct strategic and political blather. But this is Trump, spouting the quiet part out loud—in the process, causing the global infrastructure of nation-states, borders, and militarism to tremble. Could it be that war is based on the least of who we are, the least mature aspect of human nature?

A “global structure of nonviolence” is emerging—pushing, pushing against the deeply embedded infrastructure of war and us-vs.-them consciousness.

In contrast, I quote from a recent essay written by my friend Laura Hassler, founder and director of Musicians Without Borders:

Well, guess what. There are other forces alive in today’s world. Decades of resistance to domination and colonialism, the learnings of movements across the Global South, the freedom that Western hegemony for a few decades inadvertently released on its majority population, and access through social media to some of the reality of the actual horrors perpetrated in our names have together led to a worldwide awakening to fundamental injustices, and a worldwide longing for a livable, connected, survivable future.

She calls this worldwide awakening “Radical Empathy,” a term in widespread use, which means a deeply rooted sense of connection among people, well beyond merely sympathy and shared feelings. We are one planet, one people, and we will survive together or not at all.

“Radical Empathy must be fierce, stubborn, creative, persistent,” she continues. “We must hold on to each other, build community, be willing to take risks and accept consequences. Seek alternatives. Stand in solidarity with all who resist oppression and the violence of power and greed...

“And we artists must nurture artistic bravery, using the power of the arts to tell truth, to build community, to turn our capacity for radical empathy into a force for........

© Common Dreams