Lost, But Now He Is Found
It isn't a question whether any individual person is eligible for redemption (a very Western, Judeo-Christian concept) -- it's whether, first, they've made any acknowledgement of what they've done, and shown how they will attempt to atone for the harm they've caused.
When there is no recognition of that harm, it simply continues -- deforming everyone involved (including the perpetrators), handed down like a dark heirloom to later generations (remember that the trauma of the camps reached down into the very DNA of survivors, their children born with genetic predispositions for anxiety and fear). Bombing, torture, secret prisons; the maimed and the blind.
And where the perpetrators are allowed to grow old in comfort, it presents particular challenges when talking about justice, or equality, or rule of law.
"Lil' Boots" Bush is a weak, stupid, unindicted war criminal, now being treated as a respected cultural figure -- only because he is the son of an old, one-tenth-of-one-per-cent, blue-blood American family in the Great Calvinist tradition. And of course our Owners deserve comfortable lives and treats. Because freedom. And take that cap off. Show some respect. Don't be disagreeable.
It isn't a question whether any individual person is eligible for redemption (a very Western, Judeo-Christian concept) -- it's whether, first, they've made any acknowledgement of what they've done, and shown how they will attempt to atone for the harm they've caused.
When there is no recognition of that harm, it simply continues -- deforming everyone involved (including the perpetrators), handed down like a dark heirloom to later generations (remember that the trauma of the camps reached down into the very DNA of survivors, their children born with genetic predispositions for anxiety and fear). Bombing, torture, secret prisons; the maimed and the blind.
And where the perpetrators are allowed to grow old in comfort, it presents particular challenges when talking about justice, or equality, or rule of law.
"Lil' Boots" Bush is a weak, stupid, unindicted war criminal, now being treated as a respected cultural figure -- only because he is the son of an old, one-tenth-of-one-per-cent, blue-blood American family in the Great Calvinist tradition. And of course our Owners deserve comfortable lives and treats. Because freedom. And take that cap off. Show some respect. Don't be disagreeable.
FREDERICK: I watched TV. You missed a very dull show on Auschwitz. More gruesome film clips, and more puzzled intellectuals declaring their mystification over the systematic murder of millions. The reason they can never answer the question, "How could it possibly happen?" is that it's the wrong question. Given what people are, the question is, "Why doesn't it happen more often?" Of course, it does; in subtler forms.
But you see the whole culture -- nazis, deodorant salesmen; wrestlers, beauty contests; a talk show -- can you imagine the level of a mind that watches wrestling? But the worst are the fundamentalist preachers. Third grade con men, telling the poor suckers that watch them that they speak for Jesus. And to please send money. Money, money, money! If Jesus came back, and saw what's being done in his name -- he'd never stop throwing up.
-- Max von Sydow / Frederick, The Artist / Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
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