Yesterday,
the United States commemorated the attack on the Twin Towers on September 11, when
3,000 people were killed in an act of religious violence. This action is a terrible reminder that human
beings are capable of destroying their own kind on an individual or massive
scale.
Our
propensity for violence carries all the way back to our origin: to the
religious fiction of Cain killing Abel.
Even the gods we created in our own image mimic our violence and cruelty.
We
commemorate September 11 as the tragedy it was, but we are silent on August 6
and August 11 when the United States committed the greatest mass murders in
history.
On August 6, 1945, we dropped an atom bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan, killing 140,000 men, women, and children – noncombatants.
And if that
wasn’t atrocity enough against fellow human beings, five days later we dropped a
second bomb on the city of Nagasaki, killing 70,000 men, women, children, babies,
dogs, cats, birds - all living creatures on the earth within the kill zone.
We can not
change these events; this is who we are - it is in our nature. But in atonement for these actions, here in
the United States, we should hold commemorations of regret on August 6 and
August 11 – a commemoration for peace and against the cruelty and carnage we
are capable of against our own kind.
Old man
yells at clouds:
the Ol’Buzzard
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COMMENT: Ben Franklin said, "I imagine a man must have a good deal of vanity who believes, and a good deal of boldness who affirms, that all doctrines he holds are true, and all he rejects are false."