August 2, 2018
In 1839, English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote, “the pen
is mightier than the sword.”
Words matter.
Today we’re told they do not. We are told that what we’re seeing, and what
we’re hearing, are neither what we are seeing nor hearing. But words do matter; they can be everything. And just perhaps, in the hands of a very few,
they can become the most important things.
Words move armies and nations.
Words craft law and policy.
Words preserve history.
Words impart love and care, and want of it.
Words splinter families, wreaking damage beyond repair.
Words spark anger, inflaming hatreds and resentments; in
their extreme, they incite violence.
Words once lifted this country out of its malaise into the
hope and optimism of a shining city on a hill.
Words live on. Long after
the brutes and bullies depart the schoolyards and we set about our predictably
and vastly separate lives, their words matter, a distant and dissonant sting in
our ears, a reminder of the ugliness lurking just beneath the surface of men.
Words matter, and it matters enormously who wields
them. The words of this essay might inspire
thought or reflection, but their author carries neither weight of office nor
responsibility for the safety and welfare of many millions, and more.
Words comprise the very fabric of our communication and of
our community, the conveyance of our shared responsibilities. Without them, there is no learning, no law,
no society, no civilization.
And words formed the thin veneer of inherited civility we now
recklessly toss into the air like a china vase, molded and crafted in the
enduring penmanship of giant intellects gone long before us, breaking it into a
thousand shards; whether or not it can be pieced together again is unclear. The shattering of our compact with one
another as citizens, however, was done quite on purpose, and doubtless on the
part of some to make America great again.
It may yet succeed.
Though its measure and complexion will not be what they imagined.
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