I try not to get political in my blog but today I am breaking that rule by linking to a mosaic made up of the photographs of 4,000 American soldiers killed in Iraq. It's a political statement because the mosaic of the dead makes an image of George Bush.
Whether you agree with the sentiment that the deaths are directly the president's fault, you can't help but be moved by seeing the faces of all those people on the screen at once.
1 comment:
Supposedly Stalin said, "The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.". My corollary is "Politics is about statistics, not individuals.". From this one would conclude that politicians imply the deaths of millions, but that's not my point.
I think it's something in the way our brains work, but at a certain point the numbers get large enough to become abstract. Which is the point at which I think it can become dangerous. You don't want the commander to be unaware of the individuals being commanded, but you also don't want the commander to be paralyzed by concern for the individuals.
I have neither the information nor skills necessary to judge whether Bush is acquitting himself well as commander-in-chief. I do have, however, the capacity to sympathize with those who have lost family and friends and hope that the deaths of those thousands have prevented the deaths of tens of thousands more.
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