Why do lovers tolerate cruelty from each other while enemies rarely do? The speaker extends this paradox to nations: those that loudly proclaim brotherhood often commit mass violence against their own people, while those without a language of community keep citizens isolated but unharmed.
We may well ask why the viciousness witnessed between lovers would not be tolerated anywhere outside conditions of open enmity. Then, to build bridges between shoes and nations, we may ask why countries that have no language of community or citizenship usually leave their members isolated but unmolested, and yet why countries that talk most of love, kinship, and brotherhood routinely end up slaughtering great swaths of their populations.
