Because the rest of the world is just like them
From another self-immolator at sorryeverybody.com:
Please don't forget that most of us are just like you.
Hmm.... You can just picture the people inside that beautiful country farmhouse in the idyllic rustic countryside of Massachusetts... you can almost feel the warmth radiating from the self-satisfaction that resides within the walls of that million-dollar estate.
One must wonder just what exactly the residents of that quaint little cottage mean when they observe that the rest of the world that is just like them... Perhaps on a cold November night, they huddle together by the fireside, sipping cognac poured from the crystal decanter their parents gave them on their fifteenth wedding anniversary, wisftully thinking back to times past... They share stories, sometimes about their younger years, when they lived in a tent camp in the deserts of Eritrea... The blazing equatorial African sun on their backs... the clanging metallic sound of their empty ration tins knocking on the rocks after a hearty international food aid meal...
Or, perhaps they wax nostalgic about their feisty activist years — such rebels they once were! — like the time that they fought bravely for the cause of democracy in their native homeland, defying the ruling dictator, and risking their lives! The years in jail were hard at times, but the sense — no, the certainty — that they were making a difference, that they were helping to bring a free republic, with a free press, free from government oppression to their beloved Myanmar! — it was enough to get them through the constant sickness and starvation.
Oh, to be thin again. But fighting for the right to free speech — and when fault is to be assigned, of course, the right and duty to bravely and boldly admit that you're sorry — was no more poignant in the lives of these seasoned freedom-fighters of Massachusetts, the day they were burned alive at a checkpoint in a dangerous warzone, when a violent extremist detonated a car bomb at their post.
You know. So, they can relate.
They know, they've been around the world. They know with their own eyes the true strife and horrors that the world faces every day, and they look on with sadness that the worst of these tragedies — the re-election of George Bush — has come to pass within their own borders. They know it's their duty to tell the rest of the world that they are not pleased. The rest of the world needs to know the depth of their commitment and their sorrow. Because the rest of the world is just like them.
They are sorry.
Posted by Matt at November 15, 2004 8:46 PM
