writing in the raw: stop.making.sense.edition.

(arghhhhhhhhh that damned FP box – promoted by pfiore8)

If you’re ready to stop making sense… then take a jump below the fold…

^{part II}

Oh, the horror…the horror

Kurtz: “I’ve seen the horror. Horrors that you’ve seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that, but you have no right to judge me . It’s impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face, and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and mortal terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies.”

I remember people saying (Marlon) Brando had lost it with this crazy manifesto: Make horror your friend. I thought, no, this is brilliant. Yet I could fractionally begin to grasp it:  you can only act against the horror if you can look at it, understand it. If not, you freeze like a deer caught in the mystery and terror of oncoming headlights.

“I remember when I was with Special Forces–it seems a thousand centuries ago–we went into a camp to inoculate it. The children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us, and he was crying. He couldn’t see. We went there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile–a pile of little arms. And I remember…I…I…I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it, I never want to forget. And then I realized–like I was shot…like I was shot with a diamond…a diamond bullet right through my forehead.”

Transcendence.

“And I thought, “My God, the genius of that, the genius, the will to do that.” Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they could stand that–these were not monsters, these were men, trained cadres, these men who fought with their hearts, who have families, who have children, who are filled with love–that they had this strength, the strength to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, then our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral and at the same time were able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling, without passion, without judgment–without judgment. Because it’s judgment that defeats us.”

^{from Apocalypse Now
written Francis Ford Coppola & John Milius, book by Joseph Conrad}

OMG… Because it’s judgement that defeats us.

To stop BushCo… or anyone, we have to stop judging them.  Bingo.

Seems to me we think we’re working at understanding them, the bad guys. Otherwise why do we insist on keeping the arguments chained to right, wrong, good, and bad. Like once the bad guys get the magnitude of suffering caused by their actions and decisions like Iraq War… and once they understand the FUCKING ice caps are really melting… and certainly when it sinks in that there are millions of American children with no health insurance::: THEY WILL ACT with us to stop the madness. Not bloody likely.

You know what I think we’re really trying to figure out? Who the fuck are these people? Because they are in no way like us. Why don’t they get the world as we get it?

Here’s accepting the horror part: They, these others, don’t think they’ve done anything wrong. That’s the point. They think they have a right no, they are entitled, to run roughshod over you, me, and every living creature on this planet. THEY DO NOT THINK THEY ARE WRONG. THEY THINK THEY HAVE THE RIGHT TO TAKE WHATEVER THEY WANT. And simply create realities and science to back them up. I read a great comment today (stonemason i think):this time, the rats are going down with the ship. But these rats don’t see it. They never will.

So here we go then. Let’s look into their eyes, lean into them, and whisper: we let all that go. It isn’t about right or wrong anymore. There’s only this: finding your weaknesses, exploiting them, and making this all about the way we choose the world to be.  Simple. Everything fades to background noise.

I can tell you this: those people who’ve done this to our country, they are all in. Their chips are all in.

Are you? Am I? Are we?  

You all know… it’s transcending the horror in order to act.

^{reworked from one of my old dKos diary}

______________________________

i can only think of love
of doing this out of love

the sun comes up and goes down
on all that i love

not just the people here
but the earth itself

she is my mother, too