TM 151: The moral of the story is...
Gather round, kiddies. It's storytime with Professor W.
Once upon a time, long, long ago and far, far away - meaning America in the 50s, but don't worry about breaking your brain too much kids, it's gonna get relevant real quick - there lived an evil mad scientist. Well, that's not fair. There lived an evil mad group of bureaucrats, rather, who happened to include a mad scientist. I'd call him a genius except it takes a certain brand of extreme stupidity to try a stunt like this.
These great minds and great paper-pushers get together, they think, hey, mutants. Scary buggers. We ought to be able to defend ourselves against them, right? But since we're evil mad scientists, we can't just do what normal mad yanks do, go out and buy ourselves a nice big gun for a security blanket. No, we've got to think bigger than that. What happens if it comes down to a war between mutants and humans, huh? We've got to be prepared for the worst! And how do we prepare? Well, we need more data, of course, being mad scientists and loving that sort of thing. And how do you gather data on a war between mutants and humans? We start one, of course.
Not like they're the first. Seems like every lunatic on the planet's trying to start up some revolution or hate rally or what have you. But they weren't satisfied with drawing a line, humans here, mutants there, and then getting both sides riled up. No, they figured it'd be a lot more convenient to just take the ordinary human citizens of San Francisco and turn them into a bunch of monsters on crack, nothing in their head but murder, then send them out to slaughter their neighbors. (And no, no relation to the H.A.T.E. crew Tabby's been on about lately. Apparently this sort of thing's becoming a trend.)
Miraculously, someone up the line of paperwork had two brain cells to rub together, realized that they had a bunch of lunatics about to lose them the reelection - oh, and commit mass murder, right, that too - and pulled the plug. The day is saved! Drinks all around!
Except that it's not, really, because apparently they really have to work on their cleanup skills. This ticking chemical time bomb gets left in the ground. Fast forward about fifty years, San Fran goes boom, and yours truly flies in to clean it up.
Since cleanup is my job, I actually do it right, and this time around the day really is saved. As much as it ever is. By which I mean we kept the casualties as low as we could manage, but when it's all over, here's a whole city full of people who are either dead, traumatized, or suffering a bit of heaven-sent amnesia. If they're real lucky, they get to remember what it feels like to freak out and kill their friends and family. Go team. Drinks all around, everyone? No?
And what's the moral of this story, are you wondering?
Yeah, me too.
We could say Don't trust the government except hang on, I'm government and I'm the hero here. Keep going. Might just keep it simple, Fucking yanks, but those are the victims, not just the morons in charge. Could come up with a nice little point about detachment, I suppose, looking at people as numbers and charts and probabilities and acceptable losses, losing sight of the actual blood and guts and death of the thing. What do you think, is that the life lesson that makes it all worth it? It's all okay because now we've learned something?
It's nice to try and make sense out of it. Bad experiences are there to teach us things, help us grow or some such shit. Yeah, sure - just like acceptable losses.
You do what you can, where you can. It's never going to be enough, but you do it anyway. And that's all there is. If you want to make up some moral to the story in those times when you weren't enough, hey, whatever helps you sleep at night.
Once upon a time, long, long ago and far, far away - meaning America in the 50s, but don't worry about breaking your brain too much kids, it's gonna get relevant real quick - there lived an evil mad scientist. Well, that's not fair. There lived an evil mad group of bureaucrats, rather, who happened to include a mad scientist. I'd call him a genius except it takes a certain brand of extreme stupidity to try a stunt like this.
These great minds and great paper-pushers get together, they think, hey, mutants. Scary buggers. We ought to be able to defend ourselves against them, right? But since we're evil mad scientists, we can't just do what normal mad yanks do, go out and buy ourselves a nice big gun for a security blanket. No, we've got to think bigger than that. What happens if it comes down to a war between mutants and humans, huh? We've got to be prepared for the worst! And how do we prepare? Well, we need more data, of course, being mad scientists and loving that sort of thing. And how do you gather data on a war between mutants and humans? We start one, of course.
Not like they're the first. Seems like every lunatic on the planet's trying to start up some revolution or hate rally or what have you. But they weren't satisfied with drawing a line, humans here, mutants there, and then getting both sides riled up. No, they figured it'd be a lot more convenient to just take the ordinary human citizens of San Francisco and turn them into a bunch of monsters on crack, nothing in their head but murder, then send them out to slaughter their neighbors. (And no, no relation to the H.A.T.E. crew Tabby's been on about lately. Apparently this sort of thing's becoming a trend.)
Miraculously, someone up the line of paperwork had two brain cells to rub together, realized that they had a bunch of lunatics about to lose them the reelection - oh, and commit mass murder, right, that too - and pulled the plug. The day is saved! Drinks all around!
Except that it's not, really, because apparently they really have to work on their cleanup skills. This ticking chemical time bomb gets left in the ground. Fast forward about fifty years, San Fran goes boom, and yours truly flies in to clean it up.
Since cleanup is my job, I actually do it right, and this time around the day really is saved. As much as it ever is. By which I mean we kept the casualties as low as we could manage, but when it's all over, here's a whole city full of people who are either dead, traumatized, or suffering a bit of heaven-sent amnesia. If they're real lucky, they get to remember what it feels like to freak out and kill their friends and family. Go team. Drinks all around, everyone? No?
And what's the moral of this story, are you wondering?
Yeah, me too.
We could say Don't trust the government except hang on, I'm government and I'm the hero here. Keep going. Might just keep it simple, Fucking yanks, but those are the victims, not just the morons in charge. Could come up with a nice little point about detachment, I suppose, looking at people as numbers and charts and probabilities and acceptable losses, losing sight of the actual blood and guts and death of the thing. What do you think, is that the life lesson that makes it all worth it? It's all okay because now we've learned something?
It's nice to try and make sense out of it. Bad experiences are there to teach us things, help us grow or some such shit. Yeah, sure - just like acceptable losses.
You do what you can, where you can. It's never going to be enough, but you do it anyway. And that's all there is. If you want to make up some moral to the story in those times when you weren't enough, hey, whatever helps you sleep at night.