In that sense, The Descent becomes a rehearsal. We are them, unless we consciously choose not to be. “I would never do such a thing,” we say.īy writing about monstrosity, I am drawing a map of borders between us and them, and then ripping it to pieces. Every time we pick up a kitchen knife, we hold an executioner’s tool, and nothing but geography and circumstances separates us from the sand and a victim on his knees in front of a video camera. Then along comes a modern nightmare like ISIS, and its terrorism is that much more visceral because of its primitive means. The hadals are the barbarians at the gate, but that phrase itself, “barbarians at the gate,” has become almost comical, a Monty Python punch line that diminishes the horror it once promised. We read about long ago atrocities as if they belong to an earlier, deniable version of our species, but evil R’us. I was a monitor in Bosnia’s first democratic election, not long after NATO arrived and quick-froze the slaughtering. I was in Cambodia as their first election approached and the Khmer Rouge would still emerge each night to place their mines on the road, and each morning retrieve them and melt back into the land. I spent decades doing my small bit to preserve what was left of Tibet. Time and again I have seen how slight the veil is between civilization and its destroyers.
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