An Ordinary Account of Evil. It has seemed to me, often, perhaps too often, war is paralleled with evil, the ultimate of evil, and all the other evil that surrounds man, is omitted as natural observations of the ordinary. We have many accounts of war by Civil War writers, WWI poets, WWII, historians, Vietnam Veterans; coming home mentally disturbed soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan. CNN news, and BBC news, and for that matter, all the news media have written of the horrors of war most interestingly and intensely, whereas, the account of the evil men do outside of war, gets a day’s headlines, and then thrown to the wolves to eat and digest, and never to be seen again. Can we not hope to see the real, if not interesting facts about evil lurking out there in our backyards, down the street, wherever we walk nowadays, for more than a day? And punished accordingly? When a young lad was taking a bus ride across Canada recently, an ordinary traveler for the most part, was at one period of his course sleeping and a man, surrounded by people, alone, pulled out a knife and cut his head off, considering this evil, it got one or two days in the paper at most, and over the internet, and on television. And thereafter, nothing appearing to remain in the news he existed, thus lie down and die, and make the most of it, the beauty of this evil did not catch the eye of the news broadcasters for very long. I could not contemplate the evil this man did. Shortly after this, in Argentina, without the blink of an eye, another human being, with admiration for evil to be done, did it, planted, and watered his plan, to perfection in the obscure part of the world; this evil was quickly hushed up, which appears to be because of tourism, and the evil done was a man in a jealous rage who killed his prey, and cut the victim up, put the person into a suitcase of all things, and the media and its world looked to more interesting things after the first day, with unconcern eyes for the Argentina evil, even the news media in Buenos Aires, where it took place… evidently, the situation and suffering of creatures formed after God’s own image, must somehow produce a more lasting despair to keep the publics curiosity. There was a man in Austria, most recently, who had kept his daughter in his basement for twenty-years, having sexual intercourse with her, and producing a number of children by her. His wife and family living upstairs, and oblivious to all this; when he was found out, put into jail, and observed like a rat in a cage by the media, psychologists, and criminal officials, for two weeks, for some reason kept the attention of the media, he protested being called a beast, or alike, and folks looked at him and treated him as inhuman. Here is man who deserves to die, who can’t stand the shame of his own evil, and when looked upon for his evil, as a beast, wants his rights as a civil human being. That’s our society though. It is a shame we need such misery to moll over, showing disregard, and hunger for disappointed evil, evil man wants to digest, and if it is not tasty enough, then it is not worthy the journey to the movies, or reading the second day’s issue on the subject. (Why then do I write suspense stories you may ask? To reminded people in the future, the past was black!) In war the dead are dead and forgotten, like animals, we become a frequently overlooked species, but interest holds because war too often has a certain opportunity to observe, it is in the raw, it is ongoing like a movie, civil life is destroyed around the war, as recently in the war with Palestine, or Hamas, and Israel, it got headlines for 21-days, and even the United Nations cursed the Jews, for killing so many Palestinians, they even started to entertain thoughts, of what really is moral and not moral for the Jewish nation to do, to allow them to do to secure their people, on rare occasions they do that, yet for six months prior to this, the United Nations approved the ongoing rocketing that Hamas did on Israel, and to my understanding, Hamas at times shot 300-rockets a day into the land of Israel (perhaps 10,000, in that six month period), and during the war, it weaned down to 50 or 10 a day. It seemed to the world, and news media, and the UN, a fitting enough sight to watch from the accustomed distance they usually give to Israel, and looked less incongruous there than they would by stepping in and condemning Hamas. Speaking literally, one can hardly say they really wanted to stop evil, per se, rather they wanted to stop Israel from acquiring a lasting peace, had they continued, they would have destroyed the enemy, as we normally do in a war; now, long dead is this peace that could have been. Regarding another case, most recently, in a small village in Peru, a sibling, took a hammer—over sexual jealousy, and pounded her sister over the head with it until she was dead. Again the news media, and the officials involved, accustomed to the sight of death, shocking as it was when it was, it was soon forgotten. I remember, when I was fifteen years old, a boy of nineteen I hung round with, just started to hang around with, this person I quite thoroughly thought was of whole mind, killed his two nieces, one eighteen months old and the other, six years old, in a rampage, it was in the paper for one day. Perhaps the discussing occurrence did not agree with the reader’s reality of horror, it was a quality of unreality, yet fact. It had been so immediate and the event was perhaps unpleasant to write, that was back in 1961, nowadays, it would be in a different category, they would send an expert to obtain accuracy of the observation, to confine himself nearby to get unlimited access to the slayer, and then try to sell the greatest number of papers, withdraw from the project and go onto the next. They do this now so fast; it is bagged and completed before the dead are buried. As time goes by, decade to decade for me—for me anyhow, each day, the races of the world allows more evil to grow unabated, and the dead grow larger in number—stacked high like mounds, I am waiting for the earth to burst open her guts and vomit out the stink. We’ll have to send them in balloons up to the moon soon, they are scattered about like dead maggots all over the place.
Dr. Dennis L. Siluk’s has published 72-International Book. He is a poet since twelve years old, a writer, Psychologist, Ordained Minister, Decorated Veteran from the Vietnam War, Doctor in Arts and Education, and Doctor Honoris Causa from the National University of Central Peru, UNCP. He was nominated Poet Laureate in Peru. One of his books, “The Galilean”, took Honorable Mention at the 2016 Paris Book Festival and received an award from the Congress of Peru, for his cultural writings.
