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Sunday, September 24, 2006
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 THE HORROR. THE HORROR
Kurtz: I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies. I remember when I was with Special Forces. Seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate the children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for Polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought: My God... the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not monsters. These were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us.
The horror... the horror...
-Marlon Brando, Apocalypse Now
Prior to the nastiness of 9/11, the most horrible thing I had ever seen was in Vanity Fair. That journal had publised an article about the then-raging atrocities in Sierra Leone. There was a civil war in that country over who should be the government that calls elections. The government, installed by a military coup, was campaigning on the slogan of "the future is in your hands." A rebel militia responded in their own quaint way, by hacking off the arms of pretty much anyone they could find.
In their article, Vanity Fair decided that it was necessary to publish a photograph of a three-year-old girl to illustrate the ugliness of the conflict. She was a beautiful child, with eyes possessed of both hope and an infinate sadness. And both of her arms were hacked off above the elbow.
In a lot of ways, that picture still haunts me more than 9/11 did. September 1, 2001 was brutality on such a massive scale that it almost staggered the ability of the human imagintion to process it. 3,000 people who were guilty of nothing other than showing up for work on time were slaughtered in a terrifyingly deliberate way.
But 9/11 was too large an event to imagine the individual suffering. There were so many awful stories of that day that they human mind finds itself unable to process any of them properly. Unless you knew someone who died that day, 9/11 was so enormous that it was almost impersonal.
Sierra Leone was very different. That was just about as personal as you can get. Never before had I considered that someone would permanently disfigure an infant to make a political point. When I saw that picture, any hope I had for humanity evaporated completely. Any species that can do that to their own is doomed to extinction. Furthermore, it should be. Images like this should be all the proof a rational adult should need.
As it happens, Barbara Streisand isn't helping matters.
Despite having one of the of the most naturally gorgeous voices known to man, Streisand has seemingly devoted her entire career to destroying the idealization of male sexuality. In doing so she will forever be remembered for her portrayal of an adolescent Hebrew boy. And an unsightly one at that. Should you ever want to see the great Dr. Reverend go off on a tear, bring up Yentl in his pesence. If you've never seen a Jew go on an anti-Semetic tirade, you're really missing out. For proof of this, I suggest that you all go to his blog now and ask his thoughts on Alan Deserhowitz.
After years of confusing Iraq wth Iran and generally enlightening everyone to what Noam Chomsky would sound like if Chomsky were retarded on her dopey website, Streisand has decided to remind us all that she does indeed have breasts.
Breasts that remind people everywhere of African genocide, to be sure, but they are there.
And I'm not sure that I'll ever have an erection again.
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: Eisenhower Blues By: Elvis Costello and the Attractions From: King of America
PermalinkLabels: Celebrity Skin
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