Posted by pancho from pool0245.cvx20-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.250.245) on Thursday, January 09, 2003 at 11:11AM :
Under the title, WE SHOULD NEVER FORGET, he's listed yet again the dreary list of chopped fingers, raped virgins, betrayal and murder that seems to be the high-water mark for Christians. We aren't ever supposed to forget our losses and sufferings. He doesn't say what we're supposed to do with these memories. What CAN you do with them?
Has remembering Simele made us any wiser this time around? Have we neglected to remember that Muslims also took us in, gave us shelter in Iraq when other Muslims were doing these god-awful things to us...and that we betrayed their trust by going over to the British...as we're eagerly doing again?
Why not tell us to "always remember" the generosity of the Iraqis who gave shelter to us when by all accounts they too, as Muslims, should have chopped us up some more? Is the idea that only we have suffered such things...or do we need more propaganda for Jesus...look at what crucifixions we too suffered for HIS sake?
If Black South Africans can forgive in order to move on, why can't we? If Jews can speak to Germans again why can't we move on? We seem to prefer to remain fixated on all of our miseries and losses, ensuring thereby that we'll never get past them either.
If Raman was a psychiatrist dealing with children or adults who'd suffered extreme trauma...would he be saying to them, "NEVER FORGET"? If a man had been raped at 13, would he tell that man on each succeeding birthday to never forget he'd been raped...till the guy was 80?
Certainly people should know their history...but only we are fixated on the worst parts of it On the anniversay each year of his gang rape by Turkish soldiers at Deraa, T.E. Lawrence would strip and beat his back raw with a whip. He refused to ever forget. We revel in the events that show us to be trusting sheep, stupidly led to slaughter, the one real virtue we exhibit in the modern era being our silly trust in some Jew carpenter who'll make it all right in the end.
Apparently we have no need to grow up...no need to get over it. If we fell off of a horse the last thing we'd do is get right back up again. We'd spend the next 100 years laying there yelling about it...or if we did get back on it would only be to make certain we didn't forget how we fell, what mistake we made...so we could make a spectacle of ourselves, a pious and a virtuous one, by falling off that horse in exactly the same traditional way over and over again, because we also NEVER LEARN.
-- pancho
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