Periods of National Disgrace

Remember when words like torture and car bombings would disturb you? Remember when you couldn’t hear words like atrocity without feeling sick? When the world can come together over a disaster just to sell collector’s items and create memorabilia for it, when letters are sent immediately to acquire a copyright on a personal photograph of people jumping to their deaths we have something to worry about. Remember when you used to worry? It’s not that we are numb; I really don’t think that is it exactly. I think the word numb like many other words are thrown around too easily. After all, can you really recall off the top of your head what qualifies as an atrocity, or genocide? I don’t pretend to have the answers, all I know is that it doesn’t seem that enough people take the horrible events in this world seriously enough. How easy is it to read a headline about a child strangled in a public restroom and then walk into one the next time you walk into a mall?


- Chris Mansel