Smiles of death

It's the smiles that get me.

Why are they smiling? Are they smiling because their supposed "lord and savior" is born, come to earth to save fallen humanity? Are they smiling because they're together as a family? Are they smiling because they're looking forward to a good meal?

Or are they smiling because they fantasize of what they could do with those guns? About the people to whom they will do these things, those unworthy of life?

I look at a picture like this and I think: How damaged are you? Who damaged you? And why do you perpetuate that damage to the next generation, and through them to society as a whole?

This country has a sickness. It's a sickness you find elsewhere. But that "elsewhere" is in countries like Somalia or Afghanistan. War-torn and warlord-ridden. Places where all order has broken down, and your only chance at life is to have a gun. Places where "kill or be killed" is a daily reality.

The United States is the richest country which has ever existed. It is the most powerful nation in humanity's history. Rome and the Mongols pale in comparison. The sun never set on the British Empire, but it never approached the hyper-power of the US. Even now, when China has made up territory, this country is still preeminent in power and prestige. 

But this country was born in theft and murder, and we have never acknowledged that. Theft and murder of the indigenous whose lands we stole. Theft and murder of Africans, whom we transported across an ocean to be worked to death on the cotton plantations, on construction sites, building the White House. This is a country born in violence, steeped in it, and even now, all these centuries later, unwilling to let go of it. There is a direct line from this picture to the violence on our streets. The idea that one must inflict violence on another before it's inflicted on him. Kill or be killed, dog eat dog. They smile because they know this is the true history of this nation, and they are fine with it. More than fine. They see themselves as the inheritors of this violent culture, and they revel in it. They want to inflict it on this generation, and the next, unto the ending of time. This is the way of the world. They see no other way of life, and are content with it.

I remember two people I once knew. One was a young man from Michigan. The other was a woman from France. They began dating. The man was a Second Amendment absolutist. He was of the mindset that the amendment was to "overthrow tyranny", and smiled at me as he professed his belief. That smile again. That smile full of thoughts of violence.

He, of course, had guns. And he tried to explain to his lover why they were important. He tried to get her onside. Love him, love his armaments. And she was horrified. She couldn't comprehend it. She was aghast. She went back to France, her adventure in America ended, this odd, violent race of people.

Darkness emanates from that picture. Where their souls should be, there are voids. Black holes sucking in all light, all morality. Those are smiles of death and hatred. They will smile as they kill you, like fictional sociopaths. And yet they are all too real.

Yes. It's always the smiles that get me.