When will they ever learn?
Viewing entries tagged
War
and counting...
Antiquated brotherly rivalries.
Men fighting religious wars.
Crucifixions.
Yes,
Crucifixion.
In my lifetime, we are truly witnessing the re-emergence of crucifixion.
Somehow I thought that fell out of fashion with the Roman Empire.
Not so.
The witch in me shudders with memories.
The humanitarian in me shakes her head with something darker than disbelief.
The woman in me sees sons.
The sister in me sees brothers.
The daughter in me sees fathers.
The friend in me sees comrades.
The lover in me sees hands once used for tender touch and sweet caresses, slung lifeless over wooden crosses. Necks once used for gentle kissing, hanging down limp and absent.
Souls in scores, brutally torn from this plane, climbing their own, personal stairways to heaven.
Khalas.
Enough.
Shameful.
Shameful behavior.
At what point is self sacrifice necessary? At what point is it foolish?
Need logic be mutually exclusive from and take the back seat to chivalry?
It seems history paints and perpetuates a romantic picture of those who willingly accept defeat, capture, and death when in times of war. Setting the stage for the silent acceptance of small, every day self-sacrifices in the battles that are waged across the generations-long war of attrition between "us" and "them". Whichever us and whichever them may be en vogue at the moment.
Talk about patriarchal conditioning --> men start war, men defeat and starve a city, men demand a humiliating and fatal sacrifice, woman spares their lives, men idolized for their acceptance of "fate", and the kings and conquerors and fools continue their Hundred Years Wars for hundreds of years to come.
And repeat.
Anyone stop to think that maybe the emperor has no sword?
Rodin's Burghers of Calais
Stanford, CA
