Rough Draft Valedictorian Commencement Address Vers. 2.3

I was wondering if I could come up with some remarks that managed to avoid the platitudes and cliches that these speeches are invariably peppered with. Things such as, "not only does this mark the end of a long journey, but the beginning of a whole new one." While most cliches are true, they are only shallowly so, and don't bear repeating, though I guess that I've already done that. Being valedictorian is an honor, it truly is, but in a graduating class of only 22, it's not the absolute grandest of accomplishments. Most of the 21 other graduates here tonight have accomplish much more, and worked far harder than I. Many of them have juggled raising a child, working a job, often full time, dealing with problems such as gangs and or drugs, and going to school five days a week, thirty-six weeks a year, and, for most of them, four years. I have developed a tremendous respect for all of them, for getting so far, and overcoming so many hurdles, ones that I myself, for the most part, haven't been faced with. Through four years of going to this school, a rarity given its nature, and the fluid, transient aspects of its student body, there are many wonderful teachers and staff members that I've become indebted to. I'd like to recognize and thank, in no particular order, Sue Ann Dobbyn, David Hutchison, Shelly Hangen, Brandy Snyder, Doug Bickel, Bruce Marks, Jack Bonham, Linda Kincaid, Ken Schaeffer, Amy Carpenter, Ignacio Tebas, Mrs. Barber, Polly Staski, and many others. I must apologize for I know that I must have left a few people out that deserve my gratitude, and I did so only due to the frailties of my memory, and not through any desire to slight. I can honestly say that in my four years at this school, I have not had one teacher that I absolutely could not stand. I'd also like to thank my family, my mom and dad, brother and sister, and my grandparents and uncles. I'm extremely lucky to have so many people willing and dedicated to help me along in any way that I might need. I also want to thank all of my friends through the years, there are too many for a list, you guys were awesome, even you Bob, you raving lunatic. In all honesty, I probably could've done it without you guys, but it wouldn't nearly of been so fun. I'd especially like to thank Yeny, my absolute favorite and best friend, you've done more for me than you can know. In my time at this school, not everyone's that been involved in it has been nearly so benevolent and helpful as those I've mentioned. Two people in particular spring to mind. People who have been at this school long enough will know who I'm talking about, and those of you who don't, I'm sure those that do would be more than willing to tell you all about it. Two years ago, from the beginning of the 2005 school year, this disastrous duo began a seemingly systematic campaign that appeared to be aimed at dismantling and destroying the fundamental character of this school. I know not whether that campaign was of their own conception, or if they were merely implementing the wishes of someone or ones higher along on the food chain. Even if it wasn't their brainchild, they displayed in their administration an unnecessary, counterproductive, tyrannical, totalitarian, oppressive and vindictive attitude of general contempt not only for the students, but for the staff as well. One incident stands out above all the others, and there were many, that best encapsulates the zeitgeist of those times. A few weeks into the '05 school year, the then principal got into a disagreement with a teacher, David Hutchison, over a matter of discipline. In what can only be described as a blatant attempt to punish dissent, regardless of the negative impact on dozens of students' educations, would be for Hutch to switch the classes that he taught with Ken Schaeffer; Ken would take his, and he would take Ken's. With them being two of the most loved teachers at the school, this decision didn't sit well with their students. The very next day, a student managed to organize a way for the school to express their disgruntlement, and there was a school-wide student walkout to protest the unjustness of the whole affair. This caused the principal to review her actions, but also institute a regime of collective punishment, mainly against the students, but that also had a strong effect on the staff as well. The administration managed to create such an oppressive environment that they effectively forced numerous teachers to transfer to other schools, and caused quite a few students to drop out, who otherwise might have been here tonight alongside us. This lasted for the entire year, and was perpetuated for the first half of this year by her folically challenged successor. Their combined year and a half reign fundamentally altered and effectively destroyed the place that this school was. Much of the damage done is most likely irreparable. However, this semester, I've begun to see the beginning of mending happening. Most likely, this is due to the departure of the aforementioned administrators, and the arrival of new ones dedicated to more than just their ego. Our principal, Dr. Hobbs, as well as our assistant principal, Mrs. Staski, have managed to very quickly begin to turn this place around. I have an amazing amount of respect and gratitude for the both of them. They have replaced the former dictatorial, heavy handed management policy in favor of one that's more open minded, balanced, even handed, and dedicated to serving the needs of the students. They have given the teachers the proper professional freedom and latitude to perform the jobs they're tasked with effectively, and that is something that this school had been sorely lacking for the longest time.

We are all a product of our times; my time has been ominously overshadowed by one issue above most others. Almost half a year before I started my first day of High School, and throughout my entire time there, our country has been involved in war on a scale like no other it's been in since the days of The Beatles, LBJ and Tricky Dick Nixon, Woodstock, and the Apollo moon landings. Since we started this war, over 3,300 of our soldiers have been killed; that is a number that surpasses the toll that 9/11 took on this country. There have also been nearly 300 fatalities of soldiers from other countries, mainly the United Kingdom, but also Bulgaria, Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia, Hungary, Italy, Kazakhstan, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Thailand, and the Ukraine. Besides uniformed soldiers, at least 400 civilian military contractors have been killed, the preponderance hailing from the states, but also citizens of dozens of other countries. This war has been the most deadly of any for journalists since WWII, with not less than 167 of them being killed. By far though, the population that has born the brunt and suffered the most is, ironically, the one that it was supposed to liberate. The people of Iraq have suffered 70,000 reported deaths, a bare minimum number, with 30,000 of them coming in the last year alone. The real number may be closer to 650,000. In a nation with the population one-twelfth that of the US, that's the equivalent of them suffering a terrorist attack equaling 9/11 somewhere in between two months and every week. Taken as a proportion of the population, that would be like the US suffering such an attack from as rarely as every five days four hours, to as frequently as twice every twenty-eight hours. Try to imagine the effect, if you can, that that would have on the core fabric of our society, the equivalent of 850,000 through 7,800,000 people dead. For the two or three soldiers we lose every day, they lose from 50 to 500 civilians, ordinary people going about their daily lives, trying to survive in a war-zone that we had the courtesy to create for them. They suffer several massacres every day rivaling and surpassing our most recent national tragedy, the Virginia Tech shooting. As of today, we have been inside of Iraq for 1,521 days; it has been 1,479 days since George W. Bush declared the end of major combat operations; of every US fatality, all but 140 of them have taken place after that declaration of his. It took us 174 fewer days to defeat the Axis nations during WWII, from Pearl Harbor to VJ Day. The example that the students of San Andres showed a year and a half ago is one that should serve as a template for a response to this war. A year and a half ago, we not only saw an injustice, because we see them every day, but we saw one that affected each of us personally, and we decided to try and do something about it. Even if in the end we didn't succeed, the point is that we still tried. What each of us must realize, not only those of us graduating, or you guys out in the audience, but us collectively as a nation, we must realize that even if we don't enlist, or have someone we care about sent overseas, it is still an issue that affects each and every one of us personally. Actions such as this are carried out in our name, and when they happen and very few people stand up and say, "This is not right", we give it our tacit support and approval. The nearly half a trillion dollar price tag that this war comes with is taken directly out of your paycheck, and, at the rate we're spending, that of your child's as well. Every bullet that's fired, every bomb that's dropped is paid for by you; it is the fruits of your labor that has allowed this war to happen. It has been clear since almost right after the fall of Baghdad that the Casus Belli for initiating this war was false, and the preponderance of evidence indicates, deliberately so. This war is the most massive mistake, the worst crime that this country has been in the middle of for my lifetime, and probably most of yours. Unfortunately, it's reached a point where it's developed into a civil war, with 150,000 of our soldiers caught in the crossfire. Effectively, the course of the war is now largely out of our hands, and the killing will continue no matter what we do, whether we listen to that wise sage of a man, George W. Bush, and "stay the course", or we admit our grievous mistake and bring the boys back home. We failed to contain this war when we had the chance, or better yet, before it even started. Many of us take comfort in the mythos of a mighty America, with liberty and justice for all; if we seek to be able to continue to honestly claim that mantle, there is something that we, as a country, must do, and that personally includes all of us here tonight. Each of us needs to demand accountability from the people who were the architects of this war.Such people as George Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Condeleeza Rice, Colin Powell, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, Stephen Hadley, George Tenet, and others unknown, must be impeached, censured, indicted, incarcerated, fined, whatever may be appropriate given their responsibility for what has happened, and the extent of their role in it. You should call you congressman, your senators, write them, write letters to the editor, occupy the offices of congressman and recruitment center, take to the streets and lie down in them; the situation is so dire, the stakes are so high, that no action of dissent, protest, or civil disobedience can be considered too drastic. I'd like to end with a passage from the Nuremberg Judgment of the Nuremberg Trials that encapsulates the massivity of what I am speaking. "The charges in the indictment that the defendants planned and waged aggressive wars are charges of the utmost gravity. War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime, but the Supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes that it contains within its self the accumulated evil of the whole." A war of aggression is a crime in and of its self that leads to all other war crimes, which are bound to occur in any war. The leaders of this nation are undoubtedly guilty of such a crime.

I'd like to thank everyone her, and, if I managed to make it this far, I'd like to thank whoever decided not to cut my microphone for, admittedly, straying outside the bounds of my prerogative. The only reason I did that was because the opportunity to speak before such a large crowd gave me the chance to change possibly even just one person's mind, and I had to take advantage of it. I'd just like to say again how much I admire and respect these men and women that I am here with tonight, thank you.

Limbo

Pope Benedict’s removal of limbo from the Catholic Church’s doctrines raises an important and interesting point. It is reasonably safe to assume that there exists a specific way that reality actually is. There are different models that people subscribe to that attempt to explain the way things are. The current most popular scientific theory states that approximately 13,703,987,124 years, three months, and fifteen days ago, the universe exploded into existence from an infinitely dense, infinitely small singularity. The matter that we see all around us condensed out of a soup of energy into quarks, leptons, protons, neutrons, electrons, x-tons, and hundreds of other different particles; ever since that world creating explosion the universe has been expanding outwards faster and faster. The scientific explanation has a simplicity that theological ones lack. The Catholic Church’s model includes a heaven, hell, purgatory, and until recently, a limbo for the unbaptized children to go into. Those kids wouldn’t be let into heaven, because of something stupid the first man did 6,000, 50,000, or two million years ago. (hardly seems fair, doesn’t it?) Two thousand years ago, they believe God screwed a virgin, who gave birth to a person named Jesus, who was actually God, and who was tortured 33 years later and killed so that someone would be punished for our sins, because apparently God can’t forgive someone without somebody getting hurt. Their model of reality also includes a slew of saints that can help you out when God has his hands full. The excision of limbo was made in order to make the Church more appealing in places with high infant mortality rates, because apparently people don’t like the idea of their children not getting into heaven. Whether or not we can ever know for sure the true nature of reality, we can rest with the assurances with the knowledge that there was actually one specific way that things happened. Nobody knows for sure the identity of Jack the Ripper, and at this point, we can probably never know for sure. There are many different theories, one of them might be right, or none of them, but not more than one of them can be. We can be sure that there was one specific person, a man who had a name, and maybe a job, that was responsible for that string of dead and mutilated prostitutes over a hundred years ago in England. That is why it is interesting that the model of reality that up to a billion people believe in can be changed by executive fiat, ostensibly for marketing reasons. Either there is a limbo, or there isn’t one, and it is supremely odd to think that any humanly decision can in any way affect its existence or non-existence. If they say it doesn’t exist now, then it has never existed, and they were wrong for hundreds, over a thousand years, but if they were wrong once for all that time, what gives that institution any credibility now?

They Care.

In Douglas Adams’ work of genius, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a trilogy in five parts, in one of the books, I think maybe it could be The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, I do remember it was the one about Krikkit, a character, probably Ford Prefect, makes a comment. Referring to the killer white krikkiter robots, he says something along the lines of they care, they care more, we don’t, not quite as much, they win; apathy will always lose out against fanaticism, there’s no reason to believe that that isn’t the case. In the abortion debate there are pro-life/anti-choicers, pro-choice/pro-death/anti-lifers, and those such as I who don’t really give much of a fuck one way or the other. While a pro-choice proponent might hold that a women’s right to control what goes on inside of her own body as a very deep and fundamental right, the ones opposing abortion believe it to be a matter of life and death, they equate abortion with murder. They care more than the other side does, they win. It’s as simple as that. No pro-choicer feels so strongly about their cause that they’d go out and shoot priests and bomb churches, but some pro-lifers, for example Eric Rudolph, who do feel so strongly that they will, and they have, gone out and shot doctors and nurses, and blown up clinics where abortion’s were performed. They feel so strongly about it that they feel the murder of someone who they consider guilty is necessary to save the life of an innocent. Not all feel that way, and many do condemn such acts of terrorism, but their faction contains that segment, while the pro-choice side doesn’t. There’s no way to compete against such rabid fanaticism, ultimately, they will win.

Of Iraq and Virginia

Though it certainly is truly extraordinarily tragic, the only thing about the Virginia Tech shootings that makes it shocking or unthinkable is that it happened in Middle America, and not the Middle East, Africa, or almost any conceivable place in the world besides a narrow band where such things are relatively rare. The murder of more than a score and a half people is something that occurs on a regular, steady basis. If instead of a headline reading “Thirty-Three Dead after Deranged Gunman Rampages at Virginia University” it had instead said “Gunmen Massacre Thirty-Three Students at Baghdad University”, absolutely no one would bat an eye, yet the worth of the lives lost is exactly the same. Such headlines can be found multiple times every day. It’s always worthwhile to maintain a sense of proportion and perspective. What is the worst spree shooting in United States history is what we have caused Iraq to suffer daily, many times over. That is a point that one shouldn’t forget. We, through our allowance of George Bush and his associates, have caused thousands of tragedies on a scale that equals and surpasses that which happened April 16 in Virginia. The day after the assault, George Bush even traveled to speak at the University, yet he refuses to acknowledge his culpability in a much larger number of equally tragic, barbaric events. Independent of the Casus Belli for the war, the fact remains, unassailable, that this is what we have done; this is what we are responsible for. Whether or not the war was “justified”, there have been, again and again, actions that taken cumulatively, dwarf the tragedies that people in this country mourn: Virginia Tech, Columbine, Oklahoma City, Jonesboro, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and others.

Inhuman Events

In the course of inhuman events, sometimes a people are faced with an imposing dilemma, or dilemmas, and the way in which they choose to react to that trying test determines the way in which history will remember them. The baby boomer generation was faced with twin problems, the Vietnam war, and the application of civil rights to everyone equally. Looking back on that time with the benefit of hindsight, despite a few shortcomings, many people met the burden that the circumstance of the day forced them to bear. In our time, we have many problems, and many threats that are all to real and grave, some of them from forces abroad, and others by people right here in the USA. Unfortunately, no swath of the population is willing to stand up and put themselves in the way of these unholy juggernauts. Look at just a few of today’s crises. We have let yet another African genocide continue on unimpeded. We have the US in a disastrous war of aggression in Iraq. This country’s other war, in Afghanistan, is now facing the very real possibility that the Taliban may eventually triumph. The calls to do something about catastrophic global climate change remain unheeded. A country that literally enslaves its citizens, and puts them in concentration camps for mere suspicion of sedition, has been allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, and repeatedly threaten a litany of other countries. The guarantees of liberty that define this country are being eaten away from within by people overreacting to a perceived terroristic threat. I do not understand why people are so apathetic to such senseless perversion of the human condition.

Conservatism and Liberalism

Conservatism is by definition the preservation, maintenance, and protection of the status quo. It’s right there in the name CONSERVATism, the conservation of the way things are, keeping them the same way, it places tradition over progress, stagnantation over growth. Opposed to conservatism is liberalism, or more accurately, given the semantic subtlety of our current lexicon, progressivism. That political ethos strives for progress, the making of things better, as opposed to keeping them the same for the sake of sameness. It preaches improvement over dogma, growth over ritual. People are conservatives because they see change, any thusly, progress, as a negative, something to be protected against. They see any change as degradation. Governments and theological institutions rely on conservatism to maintain their hegemony. They are threatened by change; they feel it’s incompatible and contradictory to the corporations that give them meaning, the ones that they devote their lives to. All advancements in human history was brought about by liberals/progressives, and resisted and impeded by conservatives. Conservatives were on the side of the red coats during the revolutionary war; conservatives defended the genocidal institution of slavery, they supported segregation. Liberalism or progressivism is named because it wants to make things better, to improve society. The term liberal comes from the Latin “liber”, and doesn’t come from anything relating to wasteful. Liber means liberty or freedom, and liberalism has always been about bringing liberty to as wide a group as possible. What sounds more appealing, Liberalism or Conservatism?

North Korea

By scale, perhaps the most egregious thing going on in the world today is the situation going on in North Korea. North Korea is in a very real way 1984, and in some aspects, surpasses the heights of paranoid totalitarianism that was Orwell’s nightmare. It brings to mind Stalinist Russia, with its gulags for those that don’t precisely toe the party line, Nazi Germany, with its assembly line concentration camps, and takes tyranny to a level that those countries only dreamed of. That something like that would be allowed to exist in this world of today is absolutely shocking to me. Concentration camps were, I thought, a nightmarish anomaly that only existed on the pages of history books. There are camps covering the area of Washington DC, or Los Angeles, with 50,000 people who committed, or were suspected of committing, crimes injurious to the state along with their parents and children. Not only will the son pay for the sins of the father, but the father will also pay for his son’s sins. Human experimentation, public executions, mass famines, gas chambers for whole families, forced labor; it really is at least as bad as the world the George Orwell feared. It is absolutely frightening. In North Korea, you have no rights at all; you are the property of the state. You do absolutely nothing unless you are told to. You don’t get food to eat, a place to sleep, you get nothing unless the state grants it to you. Every single aspect of your life is beyond your control. Not one minutiae of freedom is allowed. And the leader, Kim Jong-Il is deified, worshipped as God incarnate. If you don’t follow and fall into lockstep with the party’s ideology, you are as good as dead. The leadership of the country has a messiah-complex, and partakes in the fine products of western culture, while nurturing his delusions of being a benevolent patron of the arts. While sipping champagne, spraying on hairspray, and watching the latest that Hollywood has to offer, thousands are starving while working 12 hour days, to support Kim Jong-Il’s expensive tastes, and to provide him with the most destructive weapon on earth. It is truly bizarre, nearly unbelievable, and nauseatingly barbaric; there is no lack of adjectives that would be apropos. The dark fantasies of the most cynical, misanthropic of novelists could be based on that country, with no need of exaggeration or artistic license. It is a country of slaves, with almost an insect like mentality reminiscent of the fanatical loyalty exhibited by honey bees, termites, and ants. That suicidal, blind obedience that they impart on people is quite simply terrifying. North Korea is so demarcated, separated from the rest of the world that the people there are clueless. They have been brainwashed into believing that their’s is a utopia, a paradise on earth. They believe that anything good happens because of the supreme ruler, Kim Jong-Il. Everything comes from him. That there is this type of society in existence while the rest of the world goes about things obliviously is incomprehensible.

Yet More Words and Thoughts on the War

Each generation must face down its own unique conflicts, and must come to task to them in their own personal, peculiar way, and some generations do that more effectively than others. Others shirk their responsibility, and misdirect that burden on to others to bear. It is too soon to tell how the naught generation will be judged, but I suspect that it will be seen as one that largely failed to meet all of the things that could reasonably be expected of it, one that wasn’t up to the task of its time. Some generations face more problems than others. As things go, the nineties weren’t all that bad. The baby boomers faced a total war in Southeast Asia, and the fight for people to enjoy equality here at home. Today, we’re facing a war of attrition in southwest Asia, a worldwide guerilla war being fought from the shadows, and an inept regime of rabid ideologues at home doing their best to undue everything that comprises this nation’s soul, everything that has given it the reputation for justice and greatness that they are now jeopardizing. What we do now is how we will be viewed for the rest of history. How shall we be judged? Will it be as the generation that backed down from the set of the biggest crises in this nation’s history, or will we rise up to meet the challenge? Our choices now will determine what our legacy will be, whether one of cowardice and capitulation, or one deserving of a country as righteous as we like to believe ours is.

Mr. President, how long will you allow this to go on? How many more families will be sent home their sons, brothers, fathers, daughters, sisters, and mothers in flag draped coffins? How many more will be made to lose their sight, their hearing, how many will you allow to be maimed and brutalized? How many more must lose their lives because you can’t live with the thought that somewhere along the line, you made a mistake? How many will you force a life of nightmares, PSTD, and guilt upon? How many will it take for you to finally admit that you were wrong? Do you believe that whatever you thought necessitated this war, is worth the price that’s been paid, the one that continues to be paid, and will continue to be paid for as long as you allow it to? Is it worth the half of a trillion dollars, and the almost four thousand Americans? Was getting Saddam at the end of a rope worth the lives of half a million Iraqis? I bet daddy’s proud now, isn’t he? He couldn’t be happier with the legacy you’ve made, the one thing that will forever be attached to your family’s name, could he? Are you that base, that vain that you would let this tragedy, this catastrophe continue, so as not force upon you the difficulty, the shame of saying: “I was wrong.” Three little words that are such an affront to your pride that you would let hundreds of thousands die to save you from the humility required to utter them. Do you seriously believe in the notion that what you did was right, and would you, if you were able to make that decision again, knowing all that you know now, would you choose the same course of action? Does the burden of what you’re responsible for at all bother you? Does the thought of the children that are dead because of you keep you up at night for even a minute? Do you believe, do you seriously believe that all of this is justified by the phantasmal specter of terrorism? Michael Jason Williams, Gregory Paul Sanders, Jay Thomas Aubin, Lori Ann Piestewa, Ruben Estrella Soto, these are not numbers, they are names, the names of people, Americans killed by your decisions, and there are over 3,500 more just like them. I fail to believe that Hassan Hashin, eleven, was a threat to this country, or Had Naam Mhebs, fourteen; or Afra Hashin, eleven; or Zhra Ali Hsen, eight. I cannot believe that these children were a threat to the security of this country. These names are but a handful of the scores and scores of thousands who have died in the past four years. Nagham Abaas Nahi, an eight year old schoolgirl killed by an American bomb, paid for by our tax dollars and dropped on your orders, in the town of Al-Taheria Al-Mahaweel on April 2, 2003, was most definitely not a terrorist.

Theology and Mortality

Nothing packs the same devastating wallop, a powerful blow to the gut, like the realization of the inexorable march towards death. For as long as I’ve been able to comprehend such things, I’ve known, in an abstract way, about my mortality. However, knowing that, and being able to say “yes, I know I’m going to die”, is much different from comprehending the real implications of such a fact. Knowing that at some point, exactly the same as right now, be it tomorrow or in 2073, there will be a moment when I draw my last breath, think my last thought, see the last image that I ever will see. Nothing has ever felt worse than thinking those thoughts, imagining how it would be like, ever since I first fully realized that, when I must’ve been eleven or twelve. The only thing I can hope for, the only thing I can want is that when the moment comes, to not be afraid, to actually want it to be over, to accept the ultimate. It is hard for me to imagine how it would be possible for me to not be afraid, to want such a thing as that. I can’t imagine anything worse than facing that final hour accompanied by a pervading fear of that last breath.

It gives me some comfort to believe that this, all this that is life, with its peculiar topography of peaks and valleys, is not just an aptitude test, set up to judge us and determine where we should place our reservations in the hereafter. I don’t understand why a god would create conscious beings, and endow them with traits in such a way that it knows, and in a sense even causes, every thing that this being would do, given the situation that it would be placed in, all the variables controlled absolutely by and perfectly understood by the god. Only a sadistic god would create people that it knew would end up in hell, which, I suppose, might very well be the case. Why should a god necessarily be benevolent? Sure, people prefer the idea of a perfectly good god, but what about god-hood makes it necessary for it to not get a kick out of flooding the world, just for the hell of it, or turning people into pillars of salt?

The beliefs and rituals of religions don’t jive with the way I think the world works, from my admittedly limited experience of it. A god capable of creating something as majestic as the universe, ought not care about who sticks what body part in whose orifice. I don’t think that such a god would be so insecure as to require our unquestioning devotion. Such a god shouldn’t care what day of the week you worshipped it on, or what name you called it by. Such a god wouldn’t care if you ate pork, reptiles, amphibians, shellfish, beef, or any other food that’s considered taboo by at least one religion. Such a god would have no reason, nothing to do with arbitrary laws. A god as mighty and as awesome as the one that many people claim to believe in, would not be so vain and insecure that it felt it needed the respect of such a tiny, insignificant group as the human race, a group of beings that would owe their very existence to it.

All it Would Take

I am here, all of us are here, because of an incomprehensible chain of a series of events, each of them as vital as any other, any of which, if they had happened to happen differently, would’ve negated our existence. If anything, any part of it, no matter how seemingly small or trivial, hadn’t happened, I would not be here right now. Possible, someone else would be here in my place, or no one would be here at all. If at the moment of conception, or to be a little more accurate, and pedantic, slightly before it, your father had sneezed, which caused him to shift his position ever so slightly, the lucky sperm that won the race, and specifies half of your genes, would’ve been a different one than the one that it was. That different one would only share half of its genes with the one that it actually was, which would’ve caused the child that resulted from that conception to share only three fourths of its genes with you. While that child would be similar to you, more so than any siblings you may have, it would not be you, it would be a different person, it may even have been of the opposite sex. So a sneeze, caused by a grain of pollen, could have prevented you from existing. Or if a comet that some ancient king took to be an omen, had been struck 78,391,326.0067 years ago by a meteor the size of a grapefruit, which shifted its orbit ever so slightly, and caused it to plunge into the sun 60 million years later, which caused the king to decide that he war he would otherwise have started wasn’t that good of an idea as he first thought, which caused a person who would’ve been killed to give birth to a child who’s great-granddaughter murdered one of your distant ancestors. The tiniest event causes ripples of changes to spread throughout the universe, each of these changes causes its own ripples, and these chains of changes have the power to alter the course of history. If almost anything, no matter how seemingly insignificant had been different in the past, the present would be a different one. Everything that has happened up to and including now relies upon similarly long, complicated, winding, and drawn out chains of happenstance and extraordinarily unlikely and improbable events. What I have trouble getting my head around, is the thought if my sense of me, my ego, would’ve been removed from existence, or if it would belong to someone else.

Ontological Proof of No God

Ontological Proof of the Non-Existence of God

1. The creation of the world and the universe is the greatest, most marvelous achievement imaginable.
2. The merit of an achievement is the product of its intrinsic quality and the ability of its creator.
3. The greater the disability or handicap of the creator, the more impressive the achievement.
4. The most formidable handicap for a creator would be non-existence.
5. Therefore, if we suppose the universe is the product of an existing creator, we can conceive of a greater being, one that created the universe while not existing.
6. Therefore, god doesn’t exist.

Darfur

I try to do my best to keep abreast of what's going on in the world, even if at times it can be totally overwhelming, depressing, heart wrenching, and soul crushing. There are far too many things in this world that are not as they should be, many profound injustices. The steady unrelenting march of news stories filled with accounts of murder, massacres, torture, bombings, imprisonments, and a litany of other abuses can be numbing in its monotony. The reality of wars that have been seen to take tens of thousands of lives has, I'm sorry to say, become commonplace, a seemingly normal, unavoidable aspect of humanity. It isn't very often I can learn of something I would have deemed unimaginable, a cruel relic of some past age, but which is being perpetrated as we speak (or more properly as I type and you read), and while the entire world turns a blind eye. I had heard of what's going on in Darfur, and I thought that I had a good, if broad, understanding of what was happening there. I had no idea the magnitude of the scale of that genocide, it can only properly be called holocaustal. Using Google Earth to get an aerial view of that region, and the immensity of the criminal slaughter becomes starkly apparent. To see where thousands upon thousands of villages, schools, homes, mosques, etc., have been levelled, is to see how horrific it really is. Being able to go from a vantage point where you can take in that entire region, on down to being able to discern the remnants of individual buildings is a singularly eye opening, yet gut wrenching experience. It allows you to gain an appreciation of what it means to say 400,000 people have been killed, and another 2,500,000 have been forced from their homes. How the world can stand back and do nothing more than condemn it using words not nearly approaching the strength or harshness that the situation calls for, is beyond my comprehension. I can't even begin to understand why we do this, why people find it necessary to judge someone inferior on account of their race, and deserving of execution. These things have always been a part of the world, and will probably always continue to be a part of it. I don't know if there's a more disheartening thought than that.

The Possibility of Genocide

Right now, we have about 160,000 of our fellow citizens, men and women whose prerogative is to defend this country, but who find themselves caught in the middle of a civil war that has engulfed a country that we have no business being in, one that has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with the security of the United States of America. Of those scores of thousands of our soldiers, at least three come home every day in flag draped caskets. Every day, several hundred Iraqis are killed, by bombs, gunmen, mortars, executions, being mistaken for insurgents, or caught in the crossfire. As of today, 68,141 people have been reported killed, a number compiled by going through news reports spanning more than four years, adding up the total incident by incident. That number is certainly a minimum, and many more times that number have probably actually been killed.

As much as I hate to admit it, George Bush may have a point. I fear that it is the presence of so many American troops, that while doing nothing to improve the civil war, may be the only thing standing in the way of all out, full blown genocide. Already, sectarian death squads roam city streets, setting up roadblocks to check people's ID's, searching for those that belong to a different sect, so as to summarily and systematically execute them. In the past year, more than 30,000 people were reported killed in an explosion of ethnic, sectarian warfare. That is almost half the total reported killed in four years of constant fighting. If every foreign troop, at this point almost entirely American, was to leave Iraq, it may become the equivalent of a Middle Eastern Rwanda, with tolls that might dwarf the already horrific ones that we're seeing today, as different populations do everything possible to exterminate the others.

This leaves us with an intractable dilemma: do we continue with our open ended support of the war, despite the thousands more deaths and hundreds of billions of dollars that course would ensue, or do we abandon the country to a fate that we have prepared for, risking letting it be absolutely consumed from within? One thing that must be done is to demand accountability from the cabal responsible for this monstrosity, such people as George Bush, Richard Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, and their ideological compatriots. Ultimately, it is up to the people of Iraq to reject violence and constant internecine warfare, but it takes only a relatively small group of dedicated people to derail that process of peace and reconciliation. Yet it is us that bear responsibility for creating this situation that exists now. Possibly, the best of many awful solutions may be the partitioning of Iraq into three autonomous regions, one for Kurds, one for Shiites, and one for Sunnis. This segregation of the country may be the only way for the violence to eventually end. Yet this option is still fraught with danger and many possibly insurmountable difficulties. There are no good options available, each one involves many more deaths, and much more time, given what is happening now, that's unavoidable. The best one would be the one that leads to the least number of deaths, and the one that might eventually lead to a nation, or nations, that has a degree of stability, and is able to function without constant foreign military support. Nothing good can happen...