Is There Love For This Too?

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This was the only message in meeting for worship today.  It left me so upset and triggered.  

Love for this too?  

What is the messenger referring to: 

• the billions of dollars of graft and corruption engaged in by the White House? 
• the theft of our private data by DOGE? 
• the taking of SNAP benefits away from poor children, the handicapped and disabled? 
• the kidnapping of heads of state? 
• the firing of lethal weapons at fishing boats in the Caribbean sea? 
• the summary execution of Americans in the streets of Minneapolis, Minnesota? 
• the turning of the DOJ, the FBI and other government offices into tools for political vendettas? 
• the kicking in of doors by ICE without judicial warrants?
• the jailing of 70,000 people of color in just the last few months?
• the export of people to CECOT in El Salvador? 
• the so-called "Dept of Peace?" 
• the ...  list is too long to even contemplate ...   

Can I love any of this?  

It is hard to express my revulsion for what has happened in the last year.  As a Quaker who has worked for peace it is very hard to use the word love for any of this ... should I?  My prefrontal cortex that controls my higher brain centers forces me to consider my values and what I hold dear and say no to violence, yet my lizard brain wants to pick up arms and fight the injustice.  I'm neither happy nor proud to admit that, but it's right there alongside the revulsion. An inconvenient duality. 

I keep raising the question in my mind -- could I love Hitler? Stalin? Pol Pot? Mao? Or any other crazed homicidal nut with a desire to hurt people. 

Don't we have a duty to protect these people?  But how? 

My queries today are: 

• How do we protect and defend ourselves and others from our own government? 
• Is standing with a protest sign enough? 
• Is complaining to a supine congress enough? 
• When do we take a stand and say ENOUGH? 
• At what point do we simply stop cooperating and say THIS WILL NOT STAND!

Honestly, I'm at the point where I'm willing to be that guy standing in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square declaring with my body: YOU SHALL NOT PASS! One person is a start and a symbol, but (for real) it is going to take all of us. 

~ Joseph Olejak