“Gosh, tell us how you REALLY feel…!” In your own mind, you don’t have to give anyone the benefit of the doubt.
I want to take the chance here to reiterate that the SpiderForest Webcomic Collective, of which I’m a member, is running a Kickstarter campaign right the hell NOW! We’re printing our first group anthology, and it’s really a good one, I think – I drew a short story for it, and there are 20 others as well. We’ve also got a bunch of other rewards, including prints (one of mine, in fact!) and we really need your help! Please have a look and consider supporting us!
All the best, folks!
You expropriated their families, leveled their farms, shipped their men off to forced labour and their women into factories- every one of those men have a family story of Great Uncle Hryhory shot in his front yard for resisting some confiscation, or Grandfather Iori deported to Kazakhstan with his whole family but only he survived the journey, or, or, or…
…and you wonder why they hate you?
Go far enough back, sometimes not very far at all, and we’re all bastards to somebody. I have the great honour to be friends with a man who, late in life, discovered that his fagher had been an officer in the Waffen SS, one of many hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who joined up with the Hitlerites to seek revenge for the Communist treatment of their families during the Holodomor, the great artificial famine sometimes known as the Wheat War. They persected the Jews terribly and killed over a million in the advance across Ukraine and Russia, hating them for their very significant presence in the Communist Party. But why had so many Jews turned Communist? To avenge their own persecution and mistreatment by the Czarist government, of course! And in the end, it all comes back to “…and you wonder why we hate you.”
Well, Evelyn Waugh said that “When you hate with all that energy, it’s something in yourself that you’re hating.”
People cling to their negative feelings out of a sense that they’re right or justified, but the vindication of violence is an illusion and only leads to the kind of cycle you describe. The real challenge of what I’d consider a “worthy” civilization isn’t in justifying one’s own rightness, I think, but in getting past it and finding common truths people can all adhere to. Mankind has a mixed record on that, and we’re not doing so well with it at the moment; we’re backsliding into factionalism and self-righteousness and fear, right at the moment when an actualization of respect for individualism and respect for the dignity and integrity of our fellow human beings became a real possibility. I live in hope, though.
And in the end it all goes down to the fact, that regardless the side, there are the very same human beings “we” are.
Each with their emotions, passions, feelings and hopes.
And reasons.
Curious thing, how every next generation drowns in hatred of previous ones and turns into hellish zealots of causes they never experianced.
Still it is a warcrime.
Poor dead commies
Very fine, and quite powerful page, great work.
Tho I can’t help but wonder – how did Mike access his memories?
I like the page don’t get me wrong, but really it should’ve been Col. Haulley, not Sarah to have that discussion about blame and hatred. Col. Haulley’s demons can give this guy a run for his money, with Sarah it’s little more than a philosophical debate.
Besides, this Alexei fellow is acting like he’s never killed anybody somebody else loved…
I think that’s the point. Col. Haulley would grok already- this is about coming to grok another person’s pain in fullness, about the growth of empathys.
And for the good Colonel here, well… I think it’s important to remember that even in wartime there are percieved grades of horror, a gradient of atrocity. Death by fire, whether from a flamethrower or brewed-up vehicle, has become one of the chief terrors of 20th and 21st Century mechanised warfare, and rightly regarded with horror. An essentially random bullet from an enemy rifleman is written off as one soldier killing another as soldiers must, but a sniper can only hope never to be taken alive. The Col. says “You didn’t just kill her-” demonstrating that to him death is death, but atrocity… “…you -burned- her!” …is another matter.
And yes, he probably doesn’t consider that he’s killed people’s loved ones. He’s a commissioned officer in the armed forces of a Communist state- he’s been working with, and feeding people to, a Political Commisar since he was picked out for the Academy. But for him, those people were Malingerers, Wreckers, Sabateurs, Enemies Of The State, Counter-Revolutionary Elements, etc… and that, I think, is the whole point. Sarah may learn to empathise with her enemies, but we expect that- she’s a “good guy,” after all. But the good Colonel learning to empathise with his own victims, engage with his own monstrosities… aah, now THERE’S a story!
UN has the high ground
Russians: “WE HATE YOU”
Obviously we didn’t do a good enough job, you’re still here.