pimping for piety

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Vietnam, June 8, 1972

If you want to worship or speak sweetly of the  goodness and understanding of which people are capable ... if you want to bless a god who blesses you... if you like to imagine how much kindness and decency are on exhibit in your life ... if enlightenment and compassion fill your waking hours ... if you can speak endlessly of Buddha or enlightenment or compassion ... if you wave your flag with pride and patriotism ... if you vote for those who promise to do the 'right' thing ... if you promise never to forget and then perpetrate worse atrocities beneath that banner ... if you join a revolution that extols a new vision that then proves its capacity for rapacious indignities...

There is no end -- literally, no end -- to little and large horrors in the world.
 
It is the little horrors that are probably worse as they coalesce like blobs of mercury on a table top until, until, until ... until they become big and shiny and whole and horrific and the prating and promises are burned to extinction in a flash of recognition.

Philosophy and religion are no excuse. Intellect and emotion are no excuse. Dropping dead and going to heaven is no goddamned excuse.

It is forty years since the iconic photograph of a naked little girl, fleeing the goodness and horror the world can inflict. There is no escape from either the photo or the worse-than-criminal horror it depicts. For those intent on future horrors, future goodness, the photo may inspire a distaste for horror that will do little more than nourish the horrors of the future. Peace that is defined as the absence of war is little more than an open-armed invitation to the next war.

But a naked little girl makes it clear to anyone with eyes....

There is no escape from the horrors of this life.

Take all your goodness and stick it where the sun don't shine. Don't be a pimp for piety.

Just...

DON'T ... YOU ... DO ... THAT!
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