Who is My Enemy? Winter 2001

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He smiled and nodded: I know why it is better to be shot at on a Sunday afternoon than not be shot at. Because it means maybe there is an enemy after all. If there is no enemy, then I am either mad or living in a madhouse. Peace is only better than war if peace is not hell, too. War being hell makes sense.—Walker Percy, The Second Coming

Sometimes an enemy can be the best sort of news. In a landscape defined by popular whim, consumer desire, and political spin, the appearance of a real, honest-to-God enemy is nothing short of a miracle: like coming upon something solid in a world of shifting sands. Which is why, despite the blood and bruises, a good, reliable enemy is always worth uncovering. And why it's never really a relief to see a supposed enemy vanish before our eyes. All this could be the beginning of an ironic skewering of one of humanity's basest instincts. People who see enemies as good news are, after all, the very sorts who show up on the evening news torching American flags in foreign capitals or picketing the local gay pride parade with those GOD HATES FAGS posters.

But the real irony is this: we all need enemies more than we realize, and those of us who are most uncomfortable with the idea of having a real, concrete enemy may not be a step ahead of the flag-burners and gay-bashers, but rather a step behind.

Let's start with a simple experiment. Read the following lines, from the Fifty-eighth Psalm, and think about how they make you feel:

O God, break the teeth in their mouths;

tear out the fangs of the young lions, O Lord!

Let them vanish like water that runs away;

like grass let them be trodden down and wither.

Let them be like the snail that dissolves into slime;

like the untimely birth that never sees the sun.

Perhaps ...

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