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I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown. The voices that speak loudest to me are those that seek to navigate ideological differences.

Here, so often, I heavily ponder our spiritual condition and connection.

I'm drawn to voices that work to see trust, empathy, and harmony,

voices that work to counter the destructive forces we faced.

In imagining a planet without conflict,

I claim what could be seen by some as naivete.

Violence and aggression are widely accepted as part of a natural order

as an indispensable tool to solving geopolitical issues. Yet, all the while, we must contend with the fact of death and its aftermath.

Global conflicts in the 20th century led to the loss of well over 200 million lives.

Our history carries that grief.

What is the role of poetry during war?

Does it have a function?

Philosophers and poets have attempted to answer this.

One said, poets are unacknowledged legislators. Another pronounced that poetry makes

nothing happen. And another said, it was barbaric to write poetry after Auschwitz.

Nonetheless, then and now, poets and readers of poetry see language as the terrain where we find ourselves heard and

affirmed in our beliefs.

Poets protest.

Bear Witness. Poets protest, bear witness, and mourn.

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