Fsck this noise. Ugly as this was, anyone who expects better behavior when two groups of domesticated primates hold one of there rumbles hasn't been paying attention over the past 5000 years.
Which isn't to say I don't feel sorry for the poor bastards who got caught in the crossfire. If any of you have loved ones who were lost or hurt, you have my sympathies.
It could have been worse, far worse. I've thought of ways to do far worse, in those dark hours when the memetic demons roam my mind. If you say that you haven't had those thoughts, too, I'll call you a liar right now.
Given the wrong circumstances, any of us could be a Bin Laden, or an Eichmann, or a MacVeigh. Hannah Arendt said it best, after seeing the very, very ordinary people who were in the dock at Nuremberg for crimes which make even this horror seem pale: she called it 'the banality of evil'.
One of the greatest signs of the progress of Civilization is in how society copes with the Crazy Monkey in all of us. Today, that ape murdered thousands, as casually as it might flick off a flea. Tomorrow, wearing a different face, it will very likely go into a revenge-seeking frenzy, and more bystanders will join those who were slaughtered today.
I do not mean to diminish the horror felt by this, but damn it, I refuse to demonize someone, especially when they may not even be guilty. We will not mature as a species if we keep refusing to face the Madness that is in all of us.
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The greatest strength of The Conspiracy is that it doesn't exist.
The greatest weakness of The Conspiracy is that it does.
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