Hatred has overcome modern day Babylon. All over America, stores are looted and burnt, cars are torched, places of worship are vandalized, and people are beaten and shot. Who cares about the coronavirus now? When hatred sets in, fear is trampled, as is reason.
But if there is anything we should have learned from the virus, it is that we are all in this together. You cannot hurt another human being without being hurt yourself. We are living in a circular system, and what goes around comes around, invariably. If America does not wake up very soon, it will fade into the dust of history, as did Babylon and all other great nations of the past.
But America is not gone yet. Its numerous ethnicities are its biggest bane, but also its biggest boon, provided the nation rises to the challenge. For centuries, America has been unable to create equilibrium among blacks, whites, Asians, Hispanics, or Native Americans. It tried harder than any other nation in history, but the chasms are too deep.
Now that the fantasy of evenness has been shattered, America must take the only possible alternative: let the differences be, and leverage their benefits. Now is the time to comprehend that hurting Americans means hurting America, that America is all its ethnicities, faiths, races, and colors, and without one of them, it wouldn’t be America.
Rising above differences in order to create a greater whole, a greater America, may not be what every American wants. But what is the alternative? The only option for America today is to find unity above the rifts and make America an example of courage to unite above hatred. Make the world see how people can make peace among themselves if they truly want to. Babylon, too, was overcome by hatred. Now we’ve come full circle and today’s Babylon also consists of countless fragments, which will either disassemble themselves and perish, or rise above their hatred and be the world’s beacon of hope for peace.
[Photo by Julian Wan on Unsplash]