Dead is Dead

My heart is so filled with sadness. There is violence all around us. There are justifications flying about. People are dying and, in the end, they're dead. They're gone. Dead is dead.

A Muslim's child wants to play, just like a Christian's child wants to play.  Just like a lion's cub wants to play. They have no say in the circumstances of their deaths. When they're dead, they're dead. Those of us who remain living, however, will justify or demonize the fact of death.

This is a rant; follow me if you wish.

As I said above, my heart is filled with sadness.

Hate has become a principal means of association and violence a first resort to combat perceived enemies.

My sadness comes with an acknowledgement that my country has been the instigator. For years and years and years, republicans have sung the rallying cry of hate and divisiveness. That hate begets violence is of no concern to them. They won't suffer the consequences.

They said to hate abortion, and clinic bombings and assasinations ensued. They said to hate gays, and violence ensued. They challenged the fact of our racist heritage and that poor man in Texas was dragged to his intolerably gruesome death.

They waged war on Iraq. Now the Middle East has erupted in violence. Not violence, war. And children are dying. Children who have no concept of hate or prejudice. Children who don't know that, after their deaths, their pictures may be used to symbolize this or that worthwhile endeavor.

Yes, I'm having a Rodney King moment. How can I not? Here I am, a nobody, grieving about the state of things around me, yet still tending to the daily tasks of life that are, remarkably, removed from the world's bigger events.

And what I can't get past is this: Dead is dead. Whether it's a dead Isreali or a dead Iraqi or a dead American.

The dead part just seems so trivial now, but at the same time so important in the justification.

The violence, the war, the hate, it's all got to stop. (And so does this rant because I honestly don't know where to go from here.)

•  Even if this diary slips away without comment,

  I appreciate the chance to get some things off my chest. Maybe I need to lighten up, but I think that my sadness is, at heart, a reflection of why I'm a liberal.

  by VetGrl on Mon Jul 17, 2006 at 08:27:29 PM PDT

  •  Or As Some Crazy Wisdom Drunk Once Said

    ....that raw pink bleeding wound in your heart is the place where you feel your suffering and realize that it is no different from the suffering of all living beings.

    And that is the beginning of compassion.

    by greenskeeper on Mon Jul 17, 2006 at 09:07:31 PM PDT

•  Just let it all out...........

  cartharsis is good for the soul and there are so many here who will listen and give your hand a reassuring electronic squeeze.  We all have our moments of crushing sorrow, you are not alone.  I care.

  by Cronesense on Mon Jul 17, 2006 at 08:29:07 PM PDT

  •  Sometimes I swear I understand why people ...

    ... retreat to American Idol.

    Thanks for your nice comment.

    by VetGrl on Mon Jul 17, 2006 at 08:38:02 PM PDT

    •  Retreated to knitting tonight....

      I decided to make all my X-mas presents and clean my basement.  I can't solve the world's problems here/  Maybe in a few days, after I get the AC fixed, I can think better.  But you are right- this whole thing is so senseless and futile.

      by murrayewv on Mon Jul 17, 2006 at 08:52:25 PM PDT

    •  I periodically hide behind.........

      the covers of a romance novel because I know it will have a happy ending.  Wrongs will be righted.  The bad will be punished. Suffering will be short.  Bosoms will heave.  And the sex will be hot.  Since I don't drink I have to have some vice!

      by Cronesense on Mon Jul 17, 2006 at 08:55:10 PM PDT

•  A little Pascal

  to lighten your mood (not):

  "When I see the blind and wretched state of man, when I survey the whole universe in its dumbness and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe, without knowing who put him  there, what he has come to do, what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying deset island, who wakes up quite lost and with no means of escape.  Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair.  I see other people around me, made like myself.  I ask them if they are any better informed than I, and they say they are not.  Then these lost and wrteched creatures look around and find some attractive objects to which they become addicted and attached.  For my part I have never been able to form such attachments, and considering how very likely it is that there exists something besides what I can see, I have tried to find out whether God has left any traces of himself."

  Ok, not exactly light reading...but despair isn't new, either.

  by tjb22 on Mon Jul 17, 2006 at 08:39:44 PM PDT

  •  Poor Blaise

    He was disillusioned 375 years ago. Imagine how he'd be now.

    Great thinker on many levels. But I'm still an Euler man myself.

    by Trim Your Bush on Mon Jul 17, 2006 at 08:45:31 PM PDT

    •  Yes...poor Blaise...

      he made dying young almost seem like a blessing.  Ofcourse, what can one expect from a man who said "the more I see of man the better I like my dog"?

      by tjb22 on Mon Jul 17, 2006 at 08:50:59 PM PDT

  •  Sounds pretty damn good to me n/t

    by leo joad on Mon Jul 17, 2006 at 08:46:08 PM PDT

    •  Yeah...he predicted

      "American Idol"...who'd have thought???

      by tjb22 on Mon Jul 17, 2006 at 08:51:58 PM PDT

      •  Three judges= Pascal's triangle

        Coincidence? I think not!

        We may be on to something here.

        We'll square the circle, double the cube and trisect an angle.

        And we'll prove the Riemann Hypothesis.

        by Trim Your Bush on Mon Jul 17, 2006 at 09:07:24 PM PDT

    •  I'd better explain...

      Because of where the passage ended, well, there's the
      hope to me. I look around and I see traces and I look
      some more and I see more. Anyway, that's good stuff.

      by leo joad on Mon Jul 17, 2006 at 08:53:02 PM PDT

      •  Yes, Pascal embraces Christianity.

        A sect of Catholicism that was not widely accepted.  He's one of the Enlightenment thinkers who does not believe that body and soul must be separate.    And heck, read some of his writings, he had quite a sense of humor, too.

        by tjb22 on Mon Jul 17, 2006 at 08:55:13 PM PDT

        •  Struggling through

          the Pensées right now--and finding much to love.

          by slksfca on Mon Jul 17, 2006 at 10:35:19 PM PDT

  •  I'd like to offer a comment but...

    ... I'm terribly not up to date on Pascal's writings. I do think, however, that it's when people join collectively to see that what's going on in their worlds is common among them, that's when you sow the seeds for change.

    by VetGrl on Mon Jul 17, 2006 at 09:00:18 PM PDT

    •  Yes.

      When we become convinced that there are more important things than our distractions.  Pascal was part of an "Age of Enlightenment"...if having a whole "age" of "enlightenment" doesn't encourage us, what else can?

      by tjb22 on Mon Jul 17, 2006 at 09:02:58 PM PDT

•  Sign of the times...

  Sad to say. They have made this terrible bed, and others have to sleep in it. Children should never know of death, especially random, violent death.

  Hate breeds hate. And death. And intolerable sadness. Except for those pressing the buttons. They somehow derive a perverse pleasure from it. They show no signs of slowing down either.

  Death touched me last week as we lost my wife's mother. She loved everyone, and she's been spared the horror of watching this human tragedy unfold.

  She'd have been glued to CNN, walking around sighing with the weight of the world on her. She felt everything. That's the penalty of having a heart.

  Will it ever end?

  by Trim Your Bush on Mon Jul 17, 2006 at 08:39:56 PM PDT

•  A Rodney King moment

     Can't we all get along here? I forget the exact quote,
  but it has always been wisdom to me.
  Don't feel bad, feel good, for bringing sanity to us, here
  right now, reading your words, your wisdom. I thank you
  for that. Or should I say? : Thanks, I needed that!!!

  by leo joad on Mon Jul 17, 2006 at 08:42:40 PM PDT