Darkness of Deeds

Imagine an event that causes the entire population of Pennsylvania (~13 million) or Illinois (~12 million) perish. Would that event be horrific? Let’s say I am picking up coffee at a gas station in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and TV screen behind the cashier displays the fatalities, petrified news anchor exhorting the magnitude of loss. Would that instill any ripples in my serenity?

Well, there was such an event recently. A country with wealth and material means unmatched in human history decided to withdraw the material aid it had been providing to the poorest on the planet. Abruptly and acutely. The support was there– and then it was gone. A vast infrastructure of aid dismantled in a manner reminiscent of a raging debris front, avalanching and swallowing entire towns. The forecast is that, this action will result in deaths of nearly 14 million people (8.5-20 million) by 2030. Among them, nearly 4.5 million children under the age of 5.

The sheer cruelty of the perpetrators has been matched only by the silence of the bystanders. Serenity remains intact–rippleless.

Offering this oblation, the amoral showman elected by a callous populace has moved on to myriad other performances to satiate various additional perverse appetites of his worshippers. The richest sociopath, granted the arena to act out his psychological maladies, has tired of the performance and returned to his regular post– crowing endlessly about the absurd and mundane, in a microblogging platform, to a vast cult. Soaked in self-admiration for the precious time he invested in this venture.

Senators and House representatives have found new philosophies and convictions, prostrating themselves in loyalty to the ventures of the new populace, the new king. Judges stumble upon all kinds of clever tricks to assist the effort. The revelry rages on. No traces of doubt. No twinges of remorse. In fact, a pride– unhesitant in discharging the muscle of the federal power upon an entire city if the physical comport of one of its executioners is affected by a random event in that city.

It is frightening: how the darkness of these deeds is diluted in the mayhem imposed upon the collective conscience by the populace of this country.