Exempt - Jan 11 2022

 

Exempt

Jan 11 2022

There is unrest, once again

in some faraway place

with a difficult name

I can't pronounce.

I'm not sure quite where

because I was never good at geography.

And feel even more detached

from the hardship there,

because it was easy to think that here

in the peaceable kingdom

history had exempted us.

But now I've lived long enough

to recognize the thin line

between civilization and anarchy.

That human beings

are often irrational,

and that desperate people do desperate things

ethics be damned.

Because I've felt that primal fear

and have seen the inner animal

that lurks just beneath the surface

ready to spring,

its red reptilian eyes

blinking blankly,

its tightly coiled body

sucking the warmth from mine.

It knows who belongs

and who's an outsider,

who is weak

and who is strong.

It smells danger,

gets restive

if too long left unfed.

So far, the social constraints are holding.

The shortages are transient, we've been reassured;

be patient, normal will return.

And predators

are known for patience;

stalking for miles, downwind and silent,

crouching motionless

until exploding out

to ambush their prey.

So always be wary

of the quiet ones.

They also have long sharp claws

which are now merely retracted.

And isn't silence

a clever tactic?

I'm sure they're hiding something

behind the benign facade.

Once you dehumanize and demonize the presumed "enemy", anything is possible. Not just in Cambodia, Nazi Germany, Rwanda (I could go on . . .and on!), but also here. We do not possess some essential quality that makes us exempt from personal wrongdoing and collective atrocity; we are merely privileged by the accident of birth to live in a country that — for whatever reason, and for now — works.

But then, I'm a congenital pessimist and misanthrope, so perhaps I'm seeing through a distorted lens.