Though these days as you've noticed I've become very like the "Strelnikov" character in "Dr. Zivargo". (...see his armored train below.) A formerly idealistic kind man turned into a grim monster by the revolution. Though I'm now a monster that would sign all the death warrants it takes to kill off the American Klan, and Nazi hoards.
Despite that my core of empathy somehow still lives.
I'm stuck awake,...wide fucking awake. I haven't slept normally since this latest student massacre. A few hours here, and there maybe. I know worse happens daily in the world. In that bloodbath we left in Iraq. There was another 100+ dead suicide bombing. This in the religious civil war we stupidly ignited, and then walked away from.
However because this is close to home, and not as easy to ignore. I've gone into a kind of shock. Not just for this specific bloodletting, but all of them through the years. Including the routine murder of unarmed Black men, and young boys by cops all over this republic. I mean who cares about that right? There are much newer, and more entertaining flavors to be had now.
So my days are haunted by the bloody fall of my once beloved Republic. One that had such hope for it's people, and the world. Now we watch as we easily even calmly murder each other. Then shrug, and bury our faces in devices.
Meanwhile the cries of so many innocent souls here, and around the world keeps me awake. My eyes are wide shut.
4 comments:
At his core, Strelnikov was never kind. Remember the scene early in the film when Lara, who is planning to marry him, introduces the high-minded young Strelnikov to a grumpy middle-aged acquaintance who comes off as not so nice. After the meeting, when she presses him for his opinion of the idealistic young man, after some resistance grumpy gramps finally bursts out: “He is the kind of man who breeds misery!” - not at all what she wants to hear.
Ol’ grumpy got it right. The cold cruelty that ultimately manifests itself in Strelnikov was in him from the start, camouflaged by a veneer of idealistic ideological purity, and the old geezer was sharp enough to spot it.
I don’t think you’re like that. I think you’re pissed off for much same reasons I’m pissed off. The world hasn’t gone our way. People shoved their heads up their ass a long time ago, and just keep pushing harder. They turned mean, then meaner. Furthermore it’s now clear that our civilization isn’t going to improve or progress like we used to hope it would, but is instead rotting & decaying toward its inevitable fall. So of course we’re pissed! It’s a depressing situation. Stupidity and meanness keep sprouting up all over the place like poison mushrooms after a muggy tropical rain.
Maybe it’s better not to pay too much attention to the news. Most of it will continue to be bad. And definitely don’t lose sleep over it! That won’t help at all.
BTW, I think Strelnikov must have been modeled on Lenin, with his famous triumphal train ride from Sweden back to Russia. He was probably a lot like those other ideologically pure idealists, Che and Fidel: viz., ruthless.
Z
Actually, the fact that the news upsets you shows you still have empathy. Unfortunately, it is likely that the situation will only get worse. Personally the only way I know how not to get upset about things over which I have no control is not to engage them emotionally. As far as I can tell, my state of mind may be the only thing over which I do have some control.
Z
"The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization." – Ralph Waldo Emerson
If not "kind" certainly complicated. These are complicated times again. I have become "complicated". Yes I or former kindly BL Angel drawing Uncle. I could in my present state if I were a revolutionary cadre commander sign death warrants without a second thought.
This generations long national Culture War has made me this.
People's Special Operations Officer: "Comrade Uncle here are 150 more warrants for the executions of captured Klan, and Nazi militia men." "Will you review their pleas for clemency?"
Uncle: "Clemency?!"
"A waste of ink, and my time."
"Hang them in front of the mall, and have the town marched past them so they'll know they're defeated."
"Hang them all,...with piano wire."
"If there are any outbursts from the crowd shoot them. "...all of them".
"Comrade we are in a war of survival. 'Our' survival."
Right today as I post I can see me as this monster. I've changed into a dark mirror of myself.
Total war is coming. We must prepare ourselves.
I assure you our opposite numbers have been thinking along these lines for some years now.
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