2/15/16

      Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the hater, and this was an immutable law.

                                                            James Baldwin,  from Notes of a Native Son

     We like to see the bad guy get his due when we go to the movies.  This has driven the popularity of many hit films.  The drive for justice is mixed with a desire to destroy and it is that unexamined murderousness which inevitably destroys us.  I think that for many readers it is not easy to understand the pent up, personal, distorting, and crippling anger that he talks about and even less easy to resolve that anger rationally as he does in this essay, concluding that it will destroy him as it destroyed his father and is destroying his community.  And then making the decision to amputate it rather than die from its poison.  How many of us can let go a legitimate injustice, to forgive a real, and unacknowledged wrong?