Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Beware the banal

I must admit to something of a fascination with WWII and the persecution of the Jews. It is one of those things that we should never forget, never reduce to the trite nor the banal. The world said never again, and then there was Rwanda. In fact, the last century was the century of genocide (and interestingly, whilst the church often did not help, it is hard to pin the tail on Christianity).

An example of the effect of our facile media age has on people's ability to deal with such horrors is the response a 10 year old boy gave to Holocaust survivor Primo Levi. After he had

"listened to his description of the camp, then solemnly told him what he should have done to get away - cut a guard's throat, switch off the power to the electric fence - and urged him not to forget his advice if it should happen again."

What?! OK, he's ten, but what crap has he been watching to work this out? Rambo, Arnie? I don't mean to be a killjoy - I've washed all this sort of stuff, but at least I had something of a grip on reality. Of course, there are even some boneheads who make a career out of denying the Holocaust altogether.

I'm now off to shoot a few *insert favourite bad guy race* without a scratch.

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