please stop saying this!!!

So I was having a conversation with someone at the language school earlier today.  We were discussing the violence at the recent villages as many have been stricken by murder and thievery and are on the brink of war.  The conversation soon turned to child soldiers, then Darfur, then the Holocaust, then Schindler's List, and finally Hotel Rwanda.  During the discussion I realized something.  There is a phrase that so-called liberals often use that really gets under my skin.  Maybe you have heard it: "I just don't understand how someone could do that to another person."  First, what this statement presupposes is that the speaker is not capable of such violence.  Always a total falsity.  The people committing the violence are just that, people.  Just as the speaker and I and all of you are people.  Further, much of the violence comes from two places.  Namely, desperation and indoctrination.  When a person, any person, is desperate and feels that their life or the life of any other person close to them will be threatened by hunger, poverty, some outside force or people who want to harm them they will normally respond by blaming an other.  We always do this to a small degree.  For instance, in our current financial crisis each side of the aisle is so quick to blame the other.  After the tragedy of September 11, 2001, many were eager to distribute "justice."  Now, I understand that most of you reading this may not have participated in the march to war in any way.  But I beg you.  Sit.  Think.  Give it a few minutes.  I am certain that you can find some situation where you have blamed the other.  

Often, our blaming does not end in violence, not because of some cultural superiority but because there are certainly levels of desperation.  My desperation in the financial crisis, for instance, is not the same as the desperation of a hungry person, or one who hears Israeli gun fire on a day to day basis.  On top of this, most of us "liberals" have not been a participant in fundamentalist religion or extreme nationalism that has drilled the message into our heads that someone else has or wants to hurt us and the only response is to hurt them.  Many people turn to this message in fundamentalism not because of religious conviction or love of country but because they find hope in ending or preventing their suffering.  These are just people.  People who happen to have heard a continual whisper summoning them to hatred.  By complete chance, you and I were not born geographically close to places where desperation meets this level (though, our government often acts as if we HAD been.)

The statement suggests that the people committing the violence are somehow less human than the speaker.  Thus, it is dehumanizing!  The speaker makes himself superior and so he can start a war or do anything to the bastards committing the violence so that it can end.  When we do not recognize our MUTUAL humanity with those committing violence we run the risk of becoming unwilling to sit and talk and try to end the violence WITHOUT violence.  THIS IS MOST URGENT PROBLEM IN OUR WORLD.  It has started the seemingly endless war against terrorism and countless others throughout the world.   In thinking this way the speaker risks committing the same dehumanizing crime that those committing the violence do.  We begin to distrust and blame the other.  This can create an endless cycle of violence.  If we cannot realize that the people committing violence are just like us then will will never believe that they are able to repent and stop violence if given another option. The world will make no progress.  We must look at ourselves and be able to recognize our own ability to hurt.  So that we can understand that, just like us, the people committing violence CAN stop.  From this point we can end the cycle.  May we see the humanity in every other so that ALL violence can become inexcusable.  Please, begin to end the violence.  Stop saying that stupid statement.  You and I are no greater than any other human.