As dead as You

Mutually assured destruction is a form of madness both readily understood, and strikingly perverse. When applied to the field of thermonuclear warfare between nation states, this balance of terror menaces even the irrational into immobilizing their aggressive tendencies; but when such forces loom over ideological factions within a community, they may prove insufficient to curtail the havoc wrought by divisive worldviews.

When compassion and respect for alternative viewpoints becomes viewed as weakness; when empathy and understanding towards those who differ is cast as capitulation; compromise and accommodation are deemed as intolerable vices, suitable only for the morally depraved.

Pride infuses doctrine with unassailable righteousness, and arms its adherents with the weapons of hate and intolerance. When the cause itself becomes the end, no sacrifice becomes too great; even those that nullify the moral obligations supposed to be the basis of such action. To prevent violence; violence must be used. In the name of truth, deception becomes viable. To prevent the death of innocents, the innocents die. The price of victory necessitates the desecration of the values which initiated the conflict, and the combatants become as expendable as the principles they pretend to cherish.

The death of ethics may prove just as ruinous as a corporeal demise; when the cultural becomes irradiated by the release of animosity's armaments , the resulting toxicity ushers in a moral carnage both devastating in scope and indiscriminate in its victims as any atomic blast.