Of Mice and Men

Of Mice and Men

the recent beheading of another american in iraq made me wonder again why people who are about to be executed don't resist; criminals who are led into the death chamber, these poor souls in iraq.

it's not that i'm calling into question their courage. resisting would do nothing. but that it would do nothing is also the point: if compliance cannot conceivably effect an improvement in your circumstances, why not at least get in a shot at your killer(s)?

i remember ted kennedy saying once that he just hoped that if someone was going to try to assasinate him that the killer would do it from the front so that he could at least get a swing in at the guy.

obviously, there's something psychological going on here. is it that the fear of death is so overpowering and certain that you don't want to get yourself all worked up for nothing? or you can't move, a la deer-in-the-headlights, or that resisting might turn a swift, relatively painless death into a torturous one?

file this under the category of "easy for you to say" but you know that "the ultimate act of defiance" cartoon of the eagle swooping down on the field mouse and the field mouse giving the
eagle the finger? i'd like to think that if i knew that i was going to be beheaded and that it was being videotaped that i would act as the field mouse and fight back or utter an islamic curse, or say something like "you're just mad because i fucked your mother in the ass last night," or SOMETHING.

i hope i'd be a mouse and not a man.



-benjamin harris