Man's Inhumanity to Man

SO much violence. What Hollywood used to call essential for any good blockbusting plot was the sad fact of man’s inhumanity to man. We are that. 

After watching the purposefully slow and painful black and white rendition of the Nevile Shute classic ‘On the Beach’ last week, it’s depiction of a world ended, civilization destroyed, by nuclear war, people opting for mass suicide instead of guaranteed agony and suffering, I wondered if any of the other Shute novels offered any glimpse of hope for man. Since I am a fan of his succinct style and purposeful prose, a little research gave me the option of over forty choices. After a quick analysis of plot summaries, I selected ‘A Town Like Alice’, and ordered it from the local library. 

Sunday in the PowerBarn we watched the fourth episode in the fabulous Taylor Sheridan series, Sicario: Day of the Soldado. That epic drama was preceded by Wind River, Hell or High Water and the first Sicario. For the sake of a shallow translation, a sicario is a hitman, in this usage a Mexican drug cartel assassin. Soldado is a seriously bloody skirmish or, if you choose, outright guerrilla warfare where there are few, if any rules of engagement. You get the idea. There will be blood. And while I found the ending a hair too over the top indicative of a fifth episode, Benecio del Toro’s delivery and performance is breathtakingly brilliant. 

Afterwards I get back to the Alice drama where, towards the end of WWII, a group of English women have been ‘taken’ by the Japanese and forced to march, along with their children, 500 miles in malaria infested Malaysia at gunpoint. The descriptions by Shute of this ordeal, where half the POW’s die along the route is nothing short of harrowing. So much so that while reading in bed I had to close the book along with my eyes and convince myself that this was during a time of war and we have learned the lessons of our inhumanity, moved along the evolution path and pledged to never repeat those heinous crimes. 

And I wake to the headlines telling of the president of the United Sates issuing a rallying cry for what can only be labeled as more inhumanity to man. More violence.

This is who we are. It is who we have always been and with great probability, who we will continue to be. I find this fact appalling. It hurts me at such a cellular level and cuts do deeply into my soul to acknowledge that such a large percentage (30%?) of American citizens have no problem with the levels of hatred, discrimination and the propagation of suffering violently subjected upon it’s citizens. America: WTF?

I implore you to play the last card left to us as a functioning democracy, please my dear friends, vote against this escalating violence, examples and lessons of which are found from Singapore to Soledad, Malaysia to Mexico and Australia to Arlington. 

Vote Blue. Let's talk about our future.