Humanity Fail
I feel ashamed today. Ashamed, helpless, and livid at my city, my country, the entire class of human beings claiming to be from my gender, but most importantly, at the alleged leaders of my city, country, commune who so much as dare to look at today and the horizon and tell me to my face that things are GOOD.
How can anyone claim that our country is progressing, that our society, far from being the decadent cesspool that it is, is in fact vibrant and active and climbing the ladder of success, when we haven’t yet so much as approached the first step? What good is anything we have, anywhere across the world, if we can’t guarantee the most basic of human needs: safety, to all our denizens, and especially to that half who we claim openly in our chauvinist, ribald moments as the weaker gender? What is the point of a term like that, if the corresponding term for men isn’t the slacker or helpless gender (in equal measure)? Or even, in fact, the decadent, sick or perverted gender?
I lately watched an episode of The West Wing, when the president is faced with a dilemma. A citizen of his country is shot down by terrorists, and he is asked to respond proportionally. I quote verbatim from his speech, asking the virtue of a proportional, tolerant response instead of an outright onslaught against the propagators:
You may term me and idealist and my views impractical when I look towards a society free from any type of criminal act, and people with perfectly reasonable thoughts. But I’m not budging from the fact that any society where even a single act of malicious intent goes unpunished is just NOT worth being proud of. You didn’t want a society based on love, fine. You made a society of rules. Rigidly defined rules of blind, fierce justice. Why then, now that you have the rules and people who know and accept the rules that exist, can you not carry out your bloody vision?
How can anyone claim that our country is progressing, that our society, far from being the decadent cesspool that it is, is in fact vibrant and active and climbing the ladder of success, when we haven’t yet so much as approached the first step? What good is anything we have, anywhere across the world, if we can’t guarantee the most basic of human needs: safety, to all our denizens, and especially to that half who we claim openly in our chauvinist, ribald moments as the weaker gender? What is the point of a term like that, if the corresponding term for men isn’t the slacker or helpless gender (in equal measure)? Or even, in fact, the decadent, sick or perverted gender?
I lately watched an episode of The West Wing, when the president is faced with a dilemma. A citizen of his country is shot down by terrorists, and he is asked to respond proportionally. I quote verbatim from his speech, asking the virtue of a proportional, tolerant response instead of an outright onslaught against the propagators:
“Did you know that two thousand years ago a Roman citizen could walk across the face of the known world free of the fear of molestation? He could walk across the Earth unharmed, cloaked only in the protection of the words Civis Romanus -- I am a Roman citizen. So great was the retribution of Rome, universally certain, should any harm befall even one of its citizens.”
Where is this protection today? And why is it not even guaranteed anymore even to a citizen walking across his or her own country? Why is it that the people we do finally end up punishing still don’t deter the rest from following in their path? Why do our laws not STOP crime? I know we’re supposed to accept such minor acts as a tenet and live our lives, but WHY? Why can’t we hold our government, and our people up to a standard we WANT them to be at? Why is crime of any malice accepted at all?
Where is this protection today? And why is it not even guaranteed anymore even to a citizen walking across his or her own country? Why is it that the people we do finally end up punishing still don’t deter the rest from following in their path? Why do our laws not STOP crime? I know we’re supposed to accept such minor acts as a tenet and live our lives, but WHY? Why can’t we hold our government, and our people up to a standard we WANT them to be at? Why is crime of any malice accepted at all?
You may term me and idealist and my views impractical when I look towards a society free from any type of criminal act, and people with perfectly reasonable thoughts. But I’m not budging from the fact that any society where even a single act of malicious intent goes unpunished is just NOT worth being proud of. You didn’t want a society based on love, fine. You made a society of rules. Rigidly defined rules of blind, fierce justice. Why then, now that you have the rules and people who know and accept the rules that exist, can you not carry out your bloody vision?
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