Why is it so perennially popular with some to 'destroy an enemy'? It's like some sort of inhuman strain of anti-diversity, anti-competition as a road to some perfection that of course never comes. In practice it's like that cartoon where Elmer Fudd has killed 'da wabbit' in a Bugs Bunny opera cartoon, or in the real world more like a lot of miserable people trying desperately to not be a square peg or even think original thoughts under some 'strong man' at the top. It's been noted that in U.S. politics things somehow went from a Republican president Reagan and a Democratic speaker Tip O'Neil working together, to the present of, well, genuine personal physical violence threats in the same building today from some of the most extreme of one party against the other (with some proudly displaying a photo of that same 'great communicator' Reagan on the wall as if their great cause's hero)! Of course if one party did destroy the other in a two party democracy guess what you can't have anymore? A democracy! Generations of people voting and quoting in lockstep is hardly a good foundation for one, but forthrighteously dedicated to wiping a party and democracy out no matter what the lowest means required? That's a revolution devoutly not to be wisht.
Just look back at U.S. commercial comic books of a different time, way back in 1992 (October dated comics), and a few comments by hype master Stan Lee...
It's time to correct a mistaken notion! We often get letters from loyal Marvelites gloating over the fact that some of our books may be outselling the competition, and wishing us well in our mission to conquer the comic book world by defeating our rivals!
And therein lies the mistake! The last thing we want to do is conquer anything or defeat anyone! Sure, we have competitors, but just between us, most of them are friends of ours.
Stan got it! I think this wasn't the first time he made the point in his soapbox feature either. He was doing his small part. So how did so many people get so far off the rails, often becoming more corrupt than that they wish to expose the corruption of? To go back to the controversial Ronald Reagan, I think he was right in calling the soviet union of socialist republics an "evil empire". It was the kind of thing you could point to as an example of what a democracy isn't. Only a generation and half in politics later and the same people who crudely link any socialism to the worst horrors of communist fascism, who proudly display their Ronnie photos, are willfully oblivious to the left overs of that CCCP with a top KGB agent pulling the strings, lapping up disinformation the CIA links directly to that land that gave us Lenin and Stalin. Talk about weakness inviting attack! They were living it and enabling it, thinking they benefited somehow, while rotting away the structure of their own home of the free!
The rhetoric of violence and absolutes is not for a nation of human beings. Calls to 'destroy destroy destroy' are not only bad for business they are bad for the whole enjoyment of life. Christianity teaches to love your neighbor, to not cast the first stone, to look first to the timber in your own eye rather than focusing solely on the mote in anothers! Again, the worst of the zealots will pose with the Christian bible while breaking it's most central tenets... or do they really need it spelled out literalist style not to gas thine citizens for yonder photo op at the house of the Lord?
