It's not about being emotional. It's about the opposite of passive compliance.
I do not, by any stretch, want to compare this to the Holocaust. But there's a lesson there that I learned from watching a video by this Arab author who is Islamic yet quite vocal about fighting islamic terrorism. I wish I could remember her name.
She said something to the effect that moderate majorities never matter. And she used examples such as various genocides throughout history to demonstrate her point. In the case of what happened in Germany, she, quite correctly, said that while the vast majority of Germans did not agree with the Nazi's and were "moderate" their inaction, their lack of engagement, their passive compliance, their lack of "fire in their eyes" made them irrelevant. Moderates do not act and by not acting they serve no purpose when faced with something even as horrible as a genocide.
Again, not comparing this to a real genocide. I guess we don't have a comparable word for being responsible for the death of half a forest.
Yet the point is that a different attitude of active and passionate engagement against nonsense is badly needed. The moderates, the people who just sit idly by and let it happen. the people enough passion or "fire in their eyes" to oppose these forces quickly become irrelevant. And that pretty much describes every single professional politician. They've all been neutered by their need to survive by pandering for votes. And so, they do nothing and the extremists, just like the Nazi's, have free range to do as they wish.
This isn't a simple problem and, to be sure, we've created it or allowed it to be created for decades. And no, by "fire in the eyes" I don't mean Rambo. I mean passion to do the right thing. Which also means passion to demand responsible decisions while making common sense choices about issues in front of us. Killing half a forest is criminal.
I do not, by any stretch, want to compare this to the Holocaust. But there's a lesson there that I learned from watching a video by this Arab author who is Islamic yet quite vocal about fighting islamic terrorism. I wish I could remember her name.
She said something to the effect that moderate majorities never matter. And she used examples such as various genocides throughout history to demonstrate her point. In the case of what happened in Germany, she, quite correctly, said that while the vast majority of Germans did not agree with the Nazi's and were "moderate" their inaction, their lack of engagement, their passive compliance, their lack of "fire in their eyes" made them irrelevant. Moderates do not act and by not acting they serve no purpose when faced with something even as horrible as a genocide.
Again, not comparing this to a real genocide. I guess we don't have a comparable word for being responsible for the death of half a forest.
Yet the point is that a different attitude of active and passionate engagement against nonsense is badly needed. The moderates, the people who just sit idly by and let it happen. the people enough passion or "fire in their eyes" to oppose these forces quickly become irrelevant. And that pretty much describes every single professional politician. They've all been neutered by their need to survive by pandering for votes. And so, they do nothing and the extremists, just like the Nazi's, have free range to do as they wish.
This isn't a simple problem and, to be sure, we've created it or allowed it to be created for decades. And no, by "fire in the eyes" I don't mean Rambo. I mean passion to do the right thing. Which also means passion to demand responsible decisions while making common sense choices about issues in front of us. Killing half a forest is criminal.