i have no mouth and i must scream

I wish I had time to collect my thoughts and words to write them down with, but I don't right now so I'll just point you to Stavros:

It becomes easier when everyone else is Them. We didn't saw off poor Nick's head, it was those scum, those vermin, the evil-doers, those others. We didn't stick blunt objects up prisoners' asses, either, or rape them or set dogs on them, we didn't rip those kids apart with our amusingly-named ordinance. That was other people, a few bad apples, and they're not us! We're consumers of the images, don't you see? We didn't make this world! We didn't maim that boy! It was them. Them! We didn't slit Daniel Pearl's throat, we didn't knock over the gravestones, we didn't fly airplanes into the World Trade Centre! We didn't sell arms to Saddam, we didn't sell arms to Iran, we didn't ask for the double-anal pissporn, we didn't do any of that shit. We are watchers. Watching makes it real, and watching keeps it separate from us. Watching is a noble act, at least until it gives you a hardon.

The basic truth gets obscured. What's the difference between Osama bin Laden and George Bush? There isn't one. What's the difference between that fucker Amrozi who set the bomb that killed my friend Rick and me? There isn't one. What's the difference between the animals that sawed off Nick Berg's head and the animals that beat prisoners to death at Abu Ghraib? There isn't one. Between the Pope and Saddam? Between that old lady in front of the TV in a trailer in Alabama and that old lady digging up roots in a field in Kazakhstan?

We are one. We are all meat and electricity. And if there is more than that, we are all equally a part of that divine More. Or none of us are.


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