The Peace Child

Just so you know, I didn't make up that cannibal story. Okay, it wasn't in South America, it was in, what is today, Indonesia. Other than that, it was pretty much the way I remembered it. You can read about it in the Wiki article "Don Richardson (missionary)". I didn't remember the guy's name, but I did remember that he wrote a book about his experiences called "The Peace Child". I read a condensed version of it in Reader's Digest back in the 1970s. When those cannibals wanted to make peace with their enemies, they would exchange infant children as hostages. If anything bad happened to one of those kids, the war was back on. After Richardson found out about this practice, he explained that Jesus was God's peace child, and they bought it. After his success with those cannibals, Richardson went on to have a long and illustrious career as a missionary, so I guess they didn't eat him after all.

I suppose you could say that those cannibals were the exception that proves the rule, but maybe all of our cultures started out that way. What about Nazi Germany? Unlike those cannibals, the cultural norms of the Nazi society cannot be excused because they didn't know any better. Everybody blames Hitler for it, but Hitler didn't do it all by himself, he had help. I read somewhere that the Germans already had a low opinion of the Jews, and Hitler became popular by telling them what they wanted to hear. It's a good thing that we don't have any leaders like that in America today.

Speaking of Trump, I kind of do consider his consistency to be a virtue. What Uncle Ken calls "growing in office" may also be interpreted as betraying the people who put him there. People didn't vote for Trump so that he could grow in office, they voted for him because they were tired of the same old crap and wanted to try something different. I am starting to almost wish that I had voted for him myself, except that he's such an asshole.