Blessed are the Warmakers?...

[The picture is of Thomas Merton. You can read brief bios of him and many famous and lesser known peacemakers here.]

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called Children of God".

Whatever one's relation to the fellow to whom that phrase is attributed, I assume most agree with it, if not literally, then with the validity of its sentiment. In my opinion, the latter is the more important.

If peacemakers are children of God, what then of the warmakers? Of whom shall they be called children?

It is too easy to be glib, so I prefer not the obvious, antimonian, "children of the devil", or "satan". If for no other reason than the fact that so much evil has been instigated by painting other people with a filthy brush of castigation.

No, I would call them:

"Children of a Hole in the Ground"

or

"Children of 4 Billion Years of Evolutionary Love Shat and Pissed Upon and Flushed down a Gleaming Toilet Bowel into an Endlessly Restless Night"

-- for this will be the result if we do not turn aside from the path we are on!

[This is an updated version of the call for something resembling sanity peacemaker MLK, jr made several times including the day before the hit man finally snuffed him]

What is a peacemaker as opposed to a warmaker?

Indeed, what is the difference?

First off, I suppose the peacemaker does not see violence as a useful means of resolving conflicts. They know that, even when it is unavoidable, violence creates more problems than it resolves.

To the warmaker, violence is not only a useful but a preferred method of resolving conflicts of interest. Weak and immature morally, the warmaker seeks the direct and immediate attainment of goals regardless of the pain and suffering inflicted on others.

The peacemaker is not necessarily a pacifist, certainly not a quietist and, of necessity, usually a person of great courage.

The warmaker is usually a coward, both morally and physically, often not prone to violence and, if aggressive physically, a coward in the exact way bullies are cowards.

If this was the Third Galaxy, I would add:

If warmakers are blessed, I suppose they will be called assholes -- and the greatest of them all shall be called The Supreme Hole