It’s a little depressing to acknowledge, for the umpteenth time, that a disturbingly large number of our fellow human beings simply can’t abide the very existence of a lot of us, and really aren’t at all ashamed of this.

Today it’s Israelis vs. Arabs, Teabaggers vs. well, everyone, and alleged Russian separatists vs. airplanes in the sky. But that’s just today; people who can’t get a proper beauty rest knowing that somewhere, someone they don’t like continues to breathe, or let their children play on a beach, without becoming bugsplat, seem to be flourishing like kudzu. Their targets, not so much.

Hint: If your belief system requires that many people you don’t even know must suffer and/or die for your own personal comfort, you might need to check into a rubber room. This includes sexy yet casually genocidal selfie-sending Israeli youths just as much as god-bothering American sociopaths shooting abortion doctors, assaulting LGBT people, harassing immigrant children, brandishing weapons in public, and on and on.

And there simply is no basis for saying that both sides do it; dehumanization and its associated eliminationism is exclusively a phenomenon of the right. One of the chief targets of both groups, here and abroad, is their own people who show any sympathy for the hated Other.

Thus, we see neo-Nazis all over the world also attacking a vaguely defined “left” that prevents them, in their murderous minds, from getting rid of their dusky-hued enemies once and for all. See, we’re not racist, we hate white people, too!

But what, in the end, would ever satisfy such demented urges? Do the Zionists really think it’s possible to somehow just get rid of millions of Palestinians? How closely can you “mow the lawn” before only dirt is left? Do the white supremacists at our border think the same of even larger numbers of immigrants from the south? Do the bible bangers think LGBT people and their slutty straight sisters could be similarly eliminated? These disgraceful people need to be asked these questions every time they are allowed a public forum, which is far too often, and that’s pretty much the opposite of what is happening.

Just today, an Egyptian American reporter was removed from Gaza by NBC News for what can only be his accurate reporting, which is strictly verboten in the US media.

Worse, President Obama told horrified Muslim guests at a deservedly boycotted White House Iftar (!) dinner that Israel would continue bombing them, the NSA would continue spying on them, and if they didn’t like it they could pound sand. (Sand, get it? That Nobel prize winner of ours sure is a card…)

Not in so many words, of course, but it was revealingly closer than usual. And too close for comfort. Until the bipartisan tolerance for bloodthirsty authoritarianism and the media’s complicity in it ends, more innocent people will continue to die.

For nothing.

Photo by Mohd Khawaja under Creative Commons license