Yes, we're all monsters

PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris. He publishes a weblog entitled, "Pharyngula: Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal."

The skies are clear here and the sun is shining, I think I'll put the computer away and go for a walk, do a little lab work and tidy up my office. No worries here…it's just another quiet Saturday. We're going to watch a play this evening.

Say, do you remember—I think it was only a few years ago—when we watched with horror and fascination as our military bombed Baghdad and our tanks rolled across the Iraq? We were assured our smart bombs would make this a clean war that would only help the Iraqi people, and our pundits crowed about our easy victory. I felt rage and pity, I was on the streets with a sign protesting, I wrote to my representatives and complained and cajoled and threatened. I howled in fury at the futile waste of lives and money, the jingoism, the injustice.

So today I'm going for a pleasant walk.

Does anyone care anymore?

Anyone?

This is how the monsters win, you know. They launch horror after horror, and as long as we have our electricity and orange juice and the quiet comforts of our homes, after a while we stop flinching, we just sit benumbed, we tell ourselves, "I'll rouse myself for the next really big one," and we remind ourselves that we couldn't stop the last war, so how can we be expected to stop the next one? We tell ourselves that the democratic way to stop this ongoing nightmare is to elect better leaders at the next election (always the next, it rarely seems to be this one), and then we vote for soft, rotten representatives who, with rare exceptions, simply surrender to the insanity.

So I'm going for a walk.

I'm a monster, too.

here in buenos aires, the sun is shining, it's refreshingly cool, the sky is brilliant blue and i'm about ready to go heat up water for coffee...

as i type this, i am looking out my front window and watching the early-morning comings and goings of the neighbors, taking their kids to school and heading off to work, the city workers sweeping the street, and trucks making deliveries to the corner store... i will spend the day packing and getting ready for tonight's flight and a three-month absence, staying with family in the states, teaching a university class, working again in the balkans... to all appearances, god is in his heaven and all is right with the world...

of course, things are far from right... the world is on a disastrous course, headed rapidly down a greased slide to who knows where, with the president of my country at the head of the parade... pz myers is right... here we sit, drinking our coffee and making note of the daily destruction...

i'm a monster too...

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