In 1986 a man entered the home of a family of five, tied them up, and strangled them each one at a time. There was no evidence of torture, gratuitous physical abuse or any sexual abuse. Three days later a neighbor entered through the open front door concerned that he hadn’t seen the family. The man was at the kitchen counter eating Cereal from a large bowl. He told the police he was sorry. He had been a member of the UCC (united church of Christ) but he rarely attended services, did not tithe and he didn’t own a bible. He said he was sorry.
In 1918 a Canadian pilot with the RAF returned home to Ottawa with twenty two confirmed kills of enemy fighter plane combatants. A decade later he was found asleep in the bed of a young woman he had killed in an apartment complex. Gunshots had been reported. The method was consistant with ten similar murders. He confessed to them, eventually. When asked why he went to sleep in the last victims bed he said ‘because I was tired and needed a nap’. The was no record of him ever having any religious affliations. The army chaplain associated with his base didn’t recognize him on questioning.
In 1945 the United States ended the war in the pacific by dropping atom bombs on Hiroshima and three days later on Nagasaki. Hundreds of thousands were killed, many immediately, many suffering for weeks with radiation poisoning. In Early 1968 Lt. W. Calley , commanding a brigade of American soldiers ordered us soldiers to fire on the village of My Lai killing hundreds of unarmed citizens. In both cases the partys involved said they were following orders. Lt. Calley was convicted and court martialed. The pilots who carried the payloads Fat Man and Little boy (the names of the respective atomic bombs) were not tried.
You would think my point would have some sort of liberal agenda to it. It doesn’t. My point is a bit frightening.
One of the common ways of deflecting the crippling fear of ones personal death is imagining some manner of the end of times. It’s easier to be desensitized to the death of everyone else than it is ones own. In my lifetime the two most prominent theories on how the world ends is in religious conflict or political conflict or some combination of both. These theories get very complicated and often involve ancient texts or prophecies or a bunch of names of unlikely people you’ve never heard of with covert political intelligence and a plan for world domination.
Most political atrocities boil down to something only as complex as just following orders. And the orders themselves? Guys who eat cereal in their victims home and who are sorry or sleep in their victims bed because they are tired.
Humanity is bat shit crazy. Not devine crazy, not ambiguous crazy, just crazy. I don’t think most people have it in them to kill; I think everyone could have it put in them if there’s enough incentive. But I do think humanity is bat shit crazy. There’s a lot of crazy that doesn’t need a blood sacrifice, in fact would be more horrified by the blood sacrifice than they are of their own crazy. We’ve been in and are currently in the type of wars where our adversaries count on the type of crazy that’s horrified by blood sacrifice. Though it isn’t working so well. Yes, the bartender at Mac’s will put down his shotgun if you decapitate a customer in the name of Allah or even anybody else, like, say, mac, but the guys who signed up for the war won’t; they’re there because they are expecting decapitating crazy.
Again, my only agenda is suggest that it doesn’t take a movement, an anti-christ, a turban with a nuke to end the world. Little chips of crazy are knocked out of the marble that sculpts the end every single day.
But, still, not my agenda. I know how to fight it, I know how to keep the end of times at bay. You, you personally, just you, try going a day without crazy and if you can manage it try another, and keep on going, I suspect it probably gets a little easier with each small success. How to measure success? Absence of crazy. By you, however, I mean the lot of y’all and probably me, and, I think, if I were addressing the entire world right now folks would be looking over their shoulder to see if anyone was starting. Yeah, don’t look at me, but I did just spend the last twenty minutes typing and though it may not be the absence of crazy it’s certainly demonstrative of a benign crazy, right?
Loading comments...