Leaders of nations serve as role models. Many of those “models” should be preserved in a perpetual bath of formaldehyde and corrosive acid. The speeds of Earth’s revolutions around the Sun feel dangerous. Worse than that—deadly, as if the slightest deviation away from perfect balance will thrust us into the swirling, razor-sharp spinning blades of a murderous rage designed to rip, shred, and torture. The only evidence I need to confirm that monstrous revelation: an article on the Associated Press website, which reports that a 9-year-old was found last Monday, locked in a van in eastern France since 2024, in Hagenbach, near the borders with Switzerland and Germany, malnourished and unable to walk. Brutality and its miserably cruel cousin, sadism, placed the boy in such impossibly bad circumstances. The only excuse for such horrors? Twisted expressions of so-called “humanity.” The only legitimate reactions to it? Rage. Compassion. Hatred. Love. Clarion calls for the incineration of humankind. Oh, there are more. Among them might be the imposition of unimaginable levels of pain on the responsible parties for thousands of years. But there are so many other incomprehensible crimes that deserve at least the same, if not more horrible, eternal agony. No matter how much I think humanity needs redemption, though, it is not attainable. It is undeserved. There is no power anywhere—on, near, or beyond the edges of the Universe—sufficiently powerful to grant it.
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Solutions to insoluble problems do not exist. The only reactions to those problems are, at best, acknowledgements. Reactions, no matter how extreme and no matter how punishing, barely touch on the fringes of the deep revenge that should shake every foundation of every emotion ever felt. I hate the loathing I feel for the perpetrators and I hate the fact that my loathing is too late in coming and too mild in reply. On the other hand, would I feel any better if I could plunge a sharp screwdriver into the eyes of the perpetrators? Would my own rage or compassion or a deadly, violent, convulsive, frenzied response relieve my anger? Probably not. But that’s not what anyone should be after, is it? My relief is not part of the pursuit. What, then, should be the end-game? For past acts, perhaps it should be comfort for victims. For potential actions not yet taken, maybe it should be prevention and training. There’s never an answer, though, to any of the millions of questions we always have when we stumble into ugly reality. I want to sprint, head-first, into the limitlessly powerful propellers of a jet airplane. But that is, still, NOT the reply we need to give. Somewhere in our little emotionally fragmented tiny brains we should be able to find the ONE SINGLE reply that will “fix” all our human problems. It must be this: the confluence of immeasurable regret and endless compassion, all wrapped into a soul-consuming reaction that dwarfs every other emotion and leaves every one of us with a sense of finality that’s far greater than every beginning and every end we have ever embraced.
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Humanity cannot be cleansed. That weird dream has always been nothing but delusion; intended to save us from ourselves.
