For a long time, he has wanted us to stop holding our ideals, to believe everyone is as depraved and horrible as he is. By doing so, he has dragged many people into his quagmire of malevolence. Don't let yourself get dragged there. Condemn the war crimes he calls for, yes, but...

...do not let yourself get dragged into your own quagmire, where your hatred of those who had been manipulated by him into turning into mirrors of his worst self prevents you from compassion for anyone, including Iran. Do not say you hope they will all take their guns overseas...

...that their children will be drafted and die killing other people's children, a world away, while you continue to sip your coffee and scroll through feeds on your phone. The death of your own countrymen and the death of Iranians is not a theory to bolster your argument.

Do not succumb to the psychological warfare being waged against your ideals. The people who've been, perhaps momentarily (optimistically, anyway), dragged to the deepest of this pit might come out of it again, and better for them to come out alive, without having killed anyone.

If your hatred of your political enemy causes you to wish upon them trauma and death, with the collateral damage of destroying millions of lives in Iran, you need to examine yourself. Decide who you will be now. Be that. Not what they try to make you into.

Also, bear in mind that when you are wishing destruction upon other people's children--I use this phrasing deliberately, because YOU are using it--who would fight--you are also assuming, with a great deal of prejudice, that people are of a "kind," and some kinds are disposable.

People do not always share the views of their parents. There are plenty who might want their children to go to war while they themselves don't. Many young people have their own ideas. The draft could theoretically compel them to fight. It doesn't mean they would want to fight.

And it doesn't mean that they will (not that I anticipate the draft being reinstated, the way so many of you seem to be salivating for it to be). They, as did generations before them, will try to find ways not to go. Will you care, or are they of the disposable kind to you?

I am actively guarding myself against the psychological warfare I believe is being waged against the American public, though sometimes I fail. When you find yourself tempted to lump people together, to consider some complete enemies, stop and ask why and who benefits.

It will summon all of our emotional strength not to cave, not to decide we'd be better off without half the country, not to conclude that people in "those places" deserve to suffer, not to fantasize about their suffering, not to engage in ridiculous infighting.

There is a war being waged against our own minds. If we are ever to become the country we had hoped we might be, we have to fight that one first, inside ourselves. We can't lose it. We are, as a nation, too big to fail. If we do, it won't only be us who suffer.

For the sake of the world, we have to resist being consumed by the flames of hatred being flamed by the people who really are our enemies, the ones who really would benefit from our suffering, who don't care who else gets hurt. There is no us and them. There is only us. FIGHT.

Part of that fighting, yes, will mean that our own countrymen become temporal political enemies. But nobody is an ULTIMATE, eternal enemy. As Richard Nixon said (yes, I'm quoting Richard Nixon), "those who hate you haven't won unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself."