POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL BY JOHN MOSCOWITZ
Evil is an out-dated, mumbo-jumbo word.
Indeed, it explains nothing, serving only to consign
something to a dark corner of extreme disapproval with zero understanding.
The author in using it makes himself slightly ridiculous.
The truth is that this terrible event is one more brutal
proof of how unbalanced the human mind can be.
That most complex of organs can suffer from countless faults
and errors in its construction, just as simpler organs - hearts, kidneys, and
livers - so often suffer from faults in their make-up.
And just as people sometimes have parts of their bodies
missing - a hand or a leg - a portion of humanity have key bits of their brains
either missing or mangled.
Such an event has no more "meaning" than does a
stroke of lightning or a tidal wave killing innocent people.
It is terrible, but life goes on.
But, yes, a society which actually cares for its children
would have effective gun laws, knowing such things are going to happen at
intervals.
But where is the concern for children in America?
What of the children slaughtered in Gaza? No chest-beating
over them. Indeed, Israel gets resupplied with all the bombs and munitions
expended to kill Palestinian children.
What of the thousands of Iraqi children killed and mangled
by America's pointless invasion? Thousands more made refugees?
And what of the tens of thousands more murdered by a decade
of horrible American sanctions against Hussein?
How many children have Americans killed in Afghanistan?
In Pakistan?
And now in Syria through the weapons and fighters imported
into that country to undo its government?
The countless killed in Vietnam and Cambodia in a war to no
point?
Indeed, today, the seas of Agent Orange America left behind
go right on killing and crippling babies and children. What of them?
If America, that brutal imperial force, cared one whit about
children, none of these questions could be raised.
