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Given I’m of the Quaker persuasion (there’s a more formal name) my angle on politics is who cheerleads wars? These are the ones I’m biased to disown, but I train myself to hear their arguments, partly so I understand what I’m up against.

Usually people who cheerlead for war are coming from a victim mindset, which typically involves wanting vengeance and redress, fantasizing about having someone get their comeuppance and so forth. That’s the pattern.

Does this mean Quakers don’t play victim? Of course we do. Speaking as a victim is like a tense in the language, akin to the subjunctive. 

Quakerism is more a monkey-bars / jungle gym of potentially beneficial workout practices, doing committee work, than it is a geopolitical ideology. 

Hatched in the 1600s, it knows nothing of many 21st Century obsessions. Yet committee work in support of a Meeting (a kind of business) remains an important opportunity.

Work out in a Quaker gym, so to speak, and you’ll probably become a more effective hotelier or restaurateur, because you were already not an avatar of violence, and therefore receptive to our teachings. 

However, if you’re an advocate for war, yet wish the attention of our Overseers (supervisors), don’t presume that your victimhood will go unchallenged, if indeed that’s what’s driving your despicable warmongering.