The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of paraheliotropic trees

So says the proud deontologist, exalting the means above the ends, arguing that duty is all, that the person who matters most is the one wearing the eyes and that person should never pull the trigger —

or perhaps it speaks to universal imperatives — absolute rules — and better that there should be one less murderer than one less murdered — the world is a broken, terrible, cruel, and horrible place, and We, the Living, the Most Horrible, the Long Legged Sons of Murder, the Survivors who lived on, munching on the bones of others —

How long ago was it that the Germans shoved my people into trains, people like my mother, brother, and lover, so close that they were standing on top of each, endless torture of endless days, darkness and night, on iron rails to dark gates and clouds mixed with the ash of my people. That is real. That happened. Seventy years ago. Within the memory of those still living. Not once. Not for a moment. For years — to six million.

And that is just my own personal real nature — me and my lover, separated at the camps, never to see her again — watching my father fall beneath their whips as he grows weak — the pain of waking — These are True Nightmares. True Nightmares. These things happened. They were done. Right across the water.

Let justice be done though the heavens fall. After the war, mankind lost its justification for existence. We were tested and found wanting. We should be punished collectively for what was done. All of us — Jew and Gentile, German and American, Arab. It happened, and it was allowed to happen. There is something in the human spirit that permitted it to happen. Something in the human spirit that walks up to two boys on the street, one in a wheelchair, and opens up and pulls the trigger. The single murder on the streets of Philadelphia is as evil as the Auschwitz gas chamber.

We are fragile weak-willed bags of pus and fluid. Easily broken. Worth little. And yet the wailing and the weeping and the gnashing of teeth when a baby is thrown against the wall and his brains leak out. Somehow, we seem to care.