killing sadly

KILLING SADLY


Last night I finished up “Homo Luminous” by Mike Frost, purportedly a post-apocalypse novel. I will say, the author seems talented. I had no problem wanting to pick the story back up and reading on. One’s interest was kept. However, it was rather the steaming pile of dog puke as far as its genre. I was ready to forgive the early introduction of the mystical aliens inducing pole reversal and the bitch with the glowing hands healing dudes, but when the guy attacking the Very Bad And Evil People ( who were a bit cardboard cutout like ) started reading their minds to gain a tactical advantage in his attack, I had to call bullcrap. As I said, well written ( perhaps not perfect, but certainly no where near atrocious ) but NOT post-apocalypse. I would not recommend the paper version, high priced at $15 for under 300 pages. I don’t think the Kindle version is too bad of a bargain if you are still interested in it. One thing that stuck in my mind about the story was one part when one character admonished another for taking pleasure in killing. Bad Spot! Bad! No biscuit! You can kill, just don’t enjoy it and then it is a-okally dockily. Yes, a bit gay. Next we might flash backwards to a Native American cradling a slain buffalo to his bosom, dear fellow creature, thank you for nursing my spirit. You have died so I shall live. Praise Earth Mother. Or some such crap. I feel like we are back in “Dies The Fire” with its tree hugging Super Warrior Princess’. And speaking of princess’, here’s a joke for you. If you can hear the wife in the living room when the TV is on, her chain from the kitchen is too long.
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Anyway, I might not agree with the “kill with a heavy heart, grasshopper” ideology, but the basic point is valid. Set your boundaries beforehand on your Rules Of Engagement ( translated from Politically Correct Militarese, when its okay to kill ). If you figure out ahead of time, you won’t have moral quandaries over who you can cap. Mother in laws almost always qualify, but make sure to think several moves ahead. Is your father in law in possession of a primitive living skill? Will it make your wife difficult to live with? Most importantly, is she a MILF? But you get my point. You can kill kids if they are part of a descending hoard, or if one of the little bastards looks like he might be carrying a grenade, etc. This group is worthless, this one isn’t. Everyone is going to be different. But you will have a long list. There are over 300 million idiots out there wanting to be fed and post petroleum there is only enough farmland for about ten percent. As distasteful as it might be to play god and eliminate the competition for short supplies of food, if you don’t than you move from surviving to being culled by someone else that is in better touch of his reptilian brain. Kill or be killed is not a “yeh, but…” proposition. You either eliminate all the surplus or you become one of the surplus. Sorry if that includes babies, old bastards, cripples, etc. You want farm hands, not piehole stuffers. We have had such a surplus of energy and food in this country for four hundred years that we have lost all touch with reality. Reality is scarcity and hard choices. If you can’t make up your mind about killing others, not because you are more worthy but just because you want to survive instead of them, you are already dead.

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To my main point, it isn’t just making an enemies list, you must also create a culture your tribe will adopt to justify and institutionalize the killing. It is obvious you have no other choice, but there needs to be rules and boundaries. You must have the blueprints in place beforehand. Any moron can follow the basics- our tribe good, their tribe kill. But you also need activities to reinforce reward and punishment for following the standards. Let me give you an obvious, modern example. In our military, there are severe punishments for falling asleep on guard duty, or for failing to attack under order ( such as desertion in battle ). These are codified. Then there is the less formal peer pressure. Your squad mates are not to be disappointed. You can’t fail to hold your own under fire. All these reinforce the mandate to kill, even if you are scared crapless or are having qualms. They serve the purpose of removing any ambiguity. A soldier who hesitates, who stops to think, is dead. As are his fellows. I’m not talking about an unthinking killing robot. I’m talking about not having to think during combat ( you don’t have time ) because everything is already spelled out for you in black and white. So, the refrain from “taking pleasure in killing” is one way of not only justifying killing the enemy, you also prohibit unnecessary deaths ( killing armed combatants is cool, going on a rampage through the village, you drooling and grinning like an idiot as you sport wood, is not ).

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You definitely don’t want the classic 70’s refrain “kill them all, let god sort them out”. But you also don’t want today’s mamby pamby bullcrap about us all getting along eating tofu and singing kumbiya and how everyone is our buddy and we should all swap spit and how its okay to butt hump your pal Earl or any of that other nonsense. Christ on a cracker, reality is indeed a bitch. If you try to fight it. Embrace reality and it will treat you okay. And to veer off slightly to finish up my required word count, really? Eight votes! You have got to be crapping me if that doesn’t scream voter fraud. The bitch that is on record for implementing state run mandatory health insurance wins the Republican vote in Iowa. And they not only fix the vote, they insult us by claiming it was such a close count. It’s all fixed people. The main election is already decided. We just have to wait for it to be made official.

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