Ephrem Endale: Contributer
How many times have you said, “How I hate this place!” Oh, you never say such things? Of course that is not news for many of us. Because we don’t feel comfortable admitting such things because of the backlash that may come from sides you never knew even existed.
“What! Did you hear what that fellow said?”
“What did he say?
“He says there are places which he hates.”
“OMG! You mean he used the word ‘hate?’”
“In fact his main emphasis was on that word.”
In the times when those of us claiming to be holier than the pope seem to be hijacking the spotlight putting things in their true context could be a daunting task. I’ll tell you there are a number of places I really hate. Not because of their architectural design; not because of who the owners are; not because of who the people working in it are; but because of their services or the non-services. At first you might stick to that worn out excuse “Well people can’t always be right. It’s only human to err!” then as things are repeated over and over again you know it’s not about people sometimes making mistakes; it is about what should have been mistakes being included in the unpublished rule books.
Yes, everyone would tell you ‘hate’ is toxic. It indeed is. It is the one curse that is messing up this world in almost every corner. Someone might say to you; “You don’t have to hate anyone or anything. The poison will be working on you!”
Cheers for the nice words at a time when nice words are in short supply. Many of us feel the world has stopped working we’d have liked it to. Many of us are still holding those Shangri la types of images we wish this world to be; that place next door to heaven where all the bad things of earth don’t appear and everybody is happy! Write a screenplay for Hollywood with that theme in mind and they will not only throw away the script as far as they can; they’ll probably run you out of town and anywhere within a two hundred mile radius. It simply doesn’t work that way. Action! Action! Action! That is what matters when it comes to box office returns. I mean the billionaires over there aren’t the ‘chosen’ people, though they make it appear as they are. They are not out there to change the world for the better. In fact anyone who thinks that way in the film industry would be in for quite a shock.
But then nothing spread hate throughout the globe and over multiple ages like the film industry did. Hate comes in subtle ways. You hate the guy? Then what are you waiting for! Do something about it.
In ‘action’ scripts, there is one factor which is a ‘must-be-included’ thing’, Hate! That is it! Rambo would have been in the Asian wilderness if they hadn’t hated those people. The characters Wesley Snipes plays wouldn’t have broken all those jaws had they not ‘hated’ the enemy which, for them is everywhere. The ‘elite force’ of so and so country wouldn’t bomb an entire city of people who aren’t the aggressors or pounded their villages with heavy weaponry had it not been for hate! The sad part is mostly the innocents, the blameless and the defenseless are on the receiving end of hate.
Trying to dissect the why’s and how’s of the Ukraine-Russia war is not only tricky but also dangerous ground. For most of us it’s so complicated that no wonder there’s is so much fake news and hate-filled commentary. Maybe no modern armed conflict generated as much commentaries most of them not even trying to hide their hatred for one side or the other. Yes ‘the experts’ and ‘the commentators’ are all over the place. The world is witnessing the global media which should have been in the forefront of the campaign against ‘hate’ itself working on ‘hate platforms.’ Some top-of-the-trade TV station or newspaper carries the analysis of a certain ‘expert’ on the Russo-Ukraine war and you wonder who is in his right mind changed the definition of ‘expert.’ Never has hate been used with such fervor at trying to lift up the side they ‘support, and bury the one they don’t. You watch and hear one expert or that talking about Putin or Zelensky and you know they are talking about their hate filled prejudices and not the facts on the ground.
In fact especially the reporting and commentaries of that conflict has blown apart the cover of would be heavyweight media organizations which try to tutor you in decency 101.
Hate whether we like it or not is here to stay. When they paint someone as a two-legged monster while they don’t have any supportive evidence, that is hate of the crudest type. Hate is in their actions, in their words, in their overall demeanor. It’s sad to hear even so-called spiritual leaders with quite large followings calling for one country to bomb another one! Yes recently I heard some spiritual guru saying that for a certain county to live in peace a neighboring country with tens of millions of people should be bombed! In fact he was even prophesizing it’d happen in the next few months. That’s how bad things have become; Someone supposed to be the vanguard of peace and brotherhood calling for blood to be spilled! He even tried to quote from the scriptures to justify his call for what could be nothing but mass murder. And the global media seems not to care about such issues where the call for war comes from the very people whose most important goals in life should have been opposing war and conflicts of any kind.
By the way, we know that storyline only too well. When Mussolini’s marauders were dispatched to roll into Ethiopia with their death machines they had all the ‘spiritual’ blessings in Rome, the tanks, heavy artillery and, yes, the poisonous gasses included. And our country never received the apologies it deserved.
“hey I’d like to invite you to dinner tomorrow night. What do You say?”
“I’d be glad to.”
“We’ll go to so and so restaurant.”
“Oh!”
“What’s that ‘Oh!’ about?”
“Look I’m glad that you invited me. But, sorry, I hate that place.”
“Why do you hate them? What did they do to you?”
“I don’t hate anybody. I hate their service and the way they handle things.”
Confession; there are places I never want to go again. Never, ever again! Clean up your acts and we can take it from there.
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD SUNDAY EDITION 8 JANUARY 2023