Words matter. We tell this to our children and teach it in our schools and yet it is the adults that are consistently failing to comprehend this simple truth. When our elected leaders and those that aspire to be elected leaders choose words that embody hate and intolerance and prejudice, these words should be met with collective and decisive condemnation.

When violent and hateful rhetoric is increasingly met with silence and indifference, that violence and hate is allowed to flourish. It should never be a run of the mill news day when the GOP frontrunner states that the blood of immigrants is poisoning our country. It is in the acceptance of such rhetoric and the justification of it that our integrity as a nation is threatened.

The normalization of dangerous and violent rhetoric is the poison that we should fear, not the human beings who are being vilified and dehumanized by such speech. It is easy to vilify the nameless and the faceless as a source of the ills and burdens our country and economy face. It is easy to channel anger and frustration at a collective and vague entity. It is much harder to reckon with our own prejudices, our insecurities, and assumptions. It is much harder to problem solve, to compromise, and to recognize the source of these ills as both complicated and multifaceted.

We choose to ignore historical precedent at our own peril. The historical figures that have used such words linger in the pages of our history books and in our minds as a warning to our modern day. It is up to each of us to heed the warnings of history and condemn the hate that threatens to become our norm.

Maren Williams Warnick

Syracuse

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