Snap quiz: Explain the differences among

·      Adversary
·      Opponent
·      Rival
·      Contestant
·      Competitor
·      Enemy

                  Language teaches. Saying forces understanding. Dog-pal Henry ribs me for getting lost in words but only by defining do we find out what we think.

                  Growing up I had no enemies. Hitler had been but he was gone. Communists were bad guys but at least until the Missile Crisis harmless. Storybook characters had enemies, but in life? Enemies were scary. If you rule the roost you’re the rooster and no one scares you. Affluent white Christian Americans were the roosters then. We had adversaries, opponents, rivals, contestants, competitors – Democrats! One had to keep an eye out. But no one hated us, how could they, we were wonderful. Our “colored help” loved us, of course they did. How could they not?

                  Our attitude toward others is shaped before we know any better. I was raised overconfident, cocky, condescending. Anyone who hated me didn’t know me, they were confused. I was plenty insecure – but that’s because I wasn’t up to the challenge of being magnificent me. I would never meet expectations – but that was my doing. No enemy prevented me.

                  The Nameless One and his flock were raised with a different attitude. Everyone was their enemy, out to get them. Who were those enemies? Anybody who differed from them. Coloreds, immigrants, Jews, transgenders, scientists, Communists, journalists, intellectuals, environmentalists, homosexuals, hell, the woods were crawling with enemies. It was a dog-eat-dog world, screw or be screwed, no holds barred.

                  The explicit policy of the current American administration is to destroy their enemies. That means most of us. They dislike democracy with its ridiculous notion of equality. Enemies can’t be equals! They foresee a government of a few – the winners! – against the rest. The winners must stick together and praise the babble of their Leader. Dissent is betrayal. You can’t be too careful.

                  I had trouble adjusting to my enemy status. They were kidding, right? We had different points of view, but we didn’t hate each other. We competed, but we respected the system, with its ground rules of truth, justice, decency, fairness, etc., didn’t we?

                  Live and learn.

                  Enemies spawn enemies. Name me your enemy and I name you mine, in self-defense. In a do-or-die world, count me among the doers not the dead. Allow no quarter lest you end up quartered. I do not dream of beating the Nameless One but smooshing him, as he would me.

                  We must hate for a while, as we hated Hitler till the shooting stopped. Then what? We must reconstruct America on a post-hate basis. We must learn again to be one, not irreparably two. We must remain alert to risk – our team was caught flat-footed by our rivals’ determined turpitude. But we must shush the rhetoric of permanent, inescapable hostility. America’s ruler is “we the people” not “I alone.”

                  America’s present crisis is as much moral as political. We must fix our hearts before we fix our state. We must learn again to be decent to each other and insist on the obvious virtues. We must believe in reformation, rescuing ourselves from the sucking cycles of revulsion and retribution. Bold windy words, I grant, even pie in the sky, but without that pie in our sky our system of self-governance is doomed.

                  Our hour is dire. But, unless I’m smoking something, hope’s sneaking back into our dreams.  We the people are waking to our mistake. We do not want ballrooms, larceny, whimsical wars, triumphal arches, civil violence, vendettas, cage fights, non-stop lies. Let us be adversaries, opponents, rivals, contestants, competitors, but enemies no more.