NOVEMBER 18, 2016
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Banishing the Forces of Darkness & Hate “We cannot have a civil society, a democratic society if our language, attitudes, and perspectives demonize one another— or worse, demonize and attack groups in our society that have endured this kind of madness for a very, very long time.”
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e have moved now nine days from our Presidential election here in America, and tomorrow you all will travel into the country and world in need of goodness, civility, and discernment. We are now living in a time where, in the words of New York Times writer Thomas Friedman, “we need to be aware of the fragility of our democracy.” We cannot merely assume that it will snap back into shape, into a coherent whole. To heal our division, return to our senses, learn from history, and embrace new unity in this country, we are going to have to work together. Friedman quotes Lesley Goldwasser, who came to the United States from Zimbabwe: “You Americans kick around your country like it is a football. But it’s not a football. It’s a Fabergé egg. You can break it.” I ask you tonight, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, to start the healing, the communicating, the uniting. What we need to be worried about right now is that the fire, vitriol, and anger of the election unleashed forces of hatred and division that lie dormant in every country and culture. In periods of economic dislocation, sudden technological and cultural shifts, the forces of intolerance and division invariably see their opportunity and move in to capitalize on fear, emptiness, and frustration. These forces are always alert and eager to exploit such openings, and in the world of mass communication and social media, they can spread their poison on a massive scale. And this perversion of humanity is spreading across the world right now, even in places that witnessed profound atrocities in their histories, rampages that had their source in these expressions of hate and intolerance.
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