by George Salamon
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| Rahul Gandhi delivered a lecture at Cambridge University [February 28, 2023] on “Learning to Listen in the 21st Century.” Recounting how the yatra [the march he recently led through India] changed him, Gandhi said the interactions with the people who held his hand during the yatra trusting him as a brother and confided in him changed him as a politician, his perspective. As the yatra entered Kashmir, Gandhi said, "As I was walking, a guy came up and showed me a few men standing nearby. He told me they are militants. I thought I was in trouble because in that situation militants would kill me. But they did not do anything because this is the power of listening.” —Hindustan Times, March 3, 2023 |
Can anyone ever reach you?
Would we have to dissolve
into the white hot fire inside
of you to see you?
Would you talk with us then,
touching the rivers of fire
cooling in our own blood
so we too become weightless
like you, no longer capable of
joy or grief, and rise for the
journey that unbinds us and
knows of no return?
Most of us remain weighed
down, unable or unwilling to
submit to the exuberance of
terror that nothing can appease.
Terrorism is not merely an act
of terror, but also one of
nihilism
Its fire burns all—motivation,
victim and terrorist.
George Salamon recalls reading Hermann Rauschning's 1939 book TheRevolution of Nihilism meant as a warning by depicting Hitler's National Socialism as, at least in part, a "revolution of nihilism," a pact between leader and people for destruction and self-destruction.
