Monday, October 6, 2008

Atrocity

A friend of mine passed this on her myspace blog today, and I feel compelled to speak about it: http://www.daytondailynews.com/n/content/oh/story/news/local/2008/09/27/ddn092608evacweb.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=16

WHO THE FUCK GASSES CHILDREN?!

I know that there are some nutjobs out there who happen to be Muslim, but let's be fair -- there are just as many nutjobs out there who happen to be Christian. It's just as bad to bomb a women's clinic that happens to perform abortions that has innocent patients in it as it is to bomb a marketplace packed with civilians. Either all of it is bad or none of it is bad -- you can't pick and choose when it comes to demeaning human life.

The fact that the Ohio police think that this is not a hate crime just baffles me. A group of Muslims are just as much of targets as a group of women, a group of gays, or a group of Jews. If this had been a group of Christian children, the media would have been screaming about this, and religious groups throughout the country would condemn this act as atrocious and hateful. Do Muslim children not deserve the same treatment? Don't they smile and laugh and want to play too? At the end of the day, aren't they just kids?

An act of aggression like this against children is unconscionable. It's downright evil. I wish that I had the words to articulate the extreme disgust that I feel at this moment, but every language that I speak fails me. Adults fighting is one thing (and even then, it's not right); attacking children is just LOW.

Moments like these spark serious fear within me. I am reminded of atrocities throughout history and in the present, and I fear the truth: the human race has learned nothing. It simply does not get the message when it comes to playing nicely with others. Christians have been fed to lions; pagans raped and conquered; Jews rounded up and slaughtered; Bosnians ethnically cleansed; Darfur... *shudder*. It keeps getting worse, as though genocide is in a game of one-upmanship with itself. No one makes an attempt at understanding someone who is different. All religions are guilty of it.

Someone asked me once if I was an atheist. My answer is the same: no. I have no use for religion because it corrupts. I think that whatever higher power there is has turned its back on this race in shame and weeps; we will never know anything higher than ourselves because we can not treat each other as equals worthy of respect. Every holy book has the same core message: love one another. Yet human beings need to have someone to blame and degrade; someone to get rid of for fear of polluting the atmosphere. There's always one group of people that isn't getting into heaven because of who they are, not what they've done. Nothing has changed over the course of human history. We are the scientific concept of inertia.

Are we going to start rounding up Muslims into interment camps ala the Japanese in World War II? Will we be smashing babies against a brick wall until there is nothing left of their heads like the Nazis did in the Holocaust? Will be be feeding people to lions as entertainment because they pray to a different god? All of these acts are extreme, but if we don't stop this shit right now and start learning how to live with each other, the list is only going to get longer. And years from now, when our grandchildren read about these acts, how will we be able to answer them when they ask, "How could you let this happen?" Would you say, "It wasn't me"? Or would you say, "I tried to fight it"?

I'm not saying that we shouldn't be angry when these things happen in our own backyards. Just make damn sure that you're going after the right people. Find the real terrorists; don't harm children. Don't become one yourself in the name of acting as god's warrior. I leave with the words of Friedrich Nietzsche: "Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one."