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Thursday, May 06, 2004

THIS IS A TEST: HOW MANY TRAGEDIES DO YOU SEE IN THIS PICTURE?

1) One clear and distinct tragedy is that of human suffering: the suffering of men beaten and frightened and dehumanized.

2) Another tragedy altogether is that of the torturers, oblivious to the first tragedy, who have lost a part of their humanity so precious the loss cannot be called anything but a spiritual death, a turning-to the bad-of-heart that conjures the motives of the anti-Christ.

3) A third tragedy immediately suggests itself: these once-normal Americans will be repatriated one day, and our country will immediately have scattered over it the seeds of spreading this same disease. Even nephews and neices of returning servicepeople, upon receiving some wanton malicious treatment whose emotional origins lay in the occupation, could take that hurt to heart and carry on the hurting.

4) The next tragedy that comes to mind (perhaps the most frustrating tragedy of them all) is the realization that this monstrous behavior from our soldiers was entirely predictable, predicted during the Stanford Prison Experiment of 1971 (Click any part of this blog entry at all to learn the shocking details), and could have been prevented, controlled, and/or managed.

5) The tragedy whose fruits we will witness to bear later is the vicarious tragedy of millions of Arab men who at a fundamental level sympathize with those victims, not because the victims are Arab men and they are also Arab men, but because the victims are Arab men helpless and dehumanized and dominated by US (military) and corporate ("contractor") interests, and those millions feel the same oppression, even if electrodes are not literally linked to their nads.

6) The aforementioned fruit will hang heavy with poison: millions of men who want nothing but to die killing Americans, who will do so at every opportunity. Mothers, daughters, brothers, fathers, husbands, sisters, friends, and lovers will die bloody deaths, we will live in fear of driving across the next major bridge, flying on the next trans-Atlantic, dancing at the next beachside hotspot. Some think we're at that point already, but we're not. Israel is. And we will be there far too soon.

7) And good people, people who would have lived happy, normal lives raising children, going to work, and loving their family, will suddenly find a horrible tear in the fabric of their lives: a missing loved one, purposefully taken by a hateful vengeance: they themselves will be filled with resentment, hatred. The entire nature of their lives will turn black. They will applaud death, and be enraged by talk of peace.

How many tragedies can you find in one little picture like this? I wonder if the true number isn't infinity.

¶ 2:54 PM

With love, from me to you!

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