by Mark Sashine

OpEdNews.Com

 

I read a fairy-tale "The Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors" in my childhood.

In that kingdom whenever you look in the mirror, the reflection would always be happy and satisfied. If you were hungry, the reflection would be full; if you were sad, the reflection would be laughing its head off. The rulers of the kingdom were grotesque monsters, but in the mirrors they looked like handsome and noble people. A poor person would reflect as a guy with lots of money, a greedy bastard- as a cool philanthropist, and a warmonger- as a fighter for peace. The legends said that there was one real mirror but it was broken and its pieces were scattered. Tough punishments were promised for spreading such rumors, so eventually the people got used to that illusory world and even if someone found a piece of real mirror, he wouldn't want it. They didn't want to know the truth.

We don't want to know the truth. We don't want to remember the stench of Waco TX, the name of black immigrant, peppered by forty bullets in Albany, the charred bodies of the Saddam Hussein's children on TV. We are pampered. The images of the Abu- Ghreib, those are shadows, dimmed contours, not even looking like humans, and a pyramid of some naked bodies like a grotesque art. We don't hear voices, don't look into the eyes and don't know the names of the victims. Who are they and do they actually exist?

Our monsters take care of our well being. We are offered the movie Troy.

Lo and behold, there is a pile of naked bodies right there: magnificent Brad Pitt with female bodies all over him. The image sticks in your mind: there is nothing wrong in that distant body pyramid; it is just some entertainment like Achilles and his mistresses. No big deal. Back to your crooked mirror.

Let's greet the torturers; they are just simple American folk doing their job and having some fun.

Even the smallest piece of the real mirror would prove itself handy, though. Those torturers, do they know that they are doomed? They are the only remaining material witnesses to the abomination after we destroy the crime scene as our President promised. Do they understand that somewhere, deep inside the corridors of power they all are listed as those who still can talk? Do they have the slightest idea that those, who ordered them to do the unthinkable are monsters beyond belief and that for those monsters

they are clear and present danger? All those questions are piling up and

you look around in dismay. Maybe we all are in prison. In that fairy- tale kingdom the gloomy prisons reflected like beautiful gardens in the giant mirrors and the prisoners floated like ghostly shadows. Exactly like in the Abu - Ghreib.

Something very wrong is happening in our country if we resolve to crooked mirrors for help. It is high time to wake up and smell the coffee:

we screwed up. We are guilty of incredible sin of sleepwalking through the life of a mankind. We developed a society of greed and cruelty embedded. We cultivated vampires as leaders and torturers as raw models. We deserve the consequences of our actions and if those torturers multiply and start torturing us, we will have no one to blame but ourselves. We have built and fortified an Abu- US prison and it the one we have to destroy.