from Antigone:
ANTIGONE
Wouldst thou do more than take and slay me?
CREON
No more, indeed; having that, I have all.
ANTIGONE
Why then dost thou delay? In thy discourse there is nought that pleases me,-never may there be!-and so my words must needs be unpleasing to thee. And yet, for glory-whence could I have won a nobler, than by giving burial to mine own brother? All here would own that they thought it well, were not their lips sealed by fear. But royalty, blest in so much besides, hath the power to do and say what it will.
CREON
Thou differest from all these Thebans in that view.
ANTIGONE
These also share it; but they curb their tongues for thee.
CREON
And art thou not ashamed to act apart from them?
ANTIGONE
No; there is nothing shameful in piety to a brother.
CREON
Was it not a brother, too, that died in the opposite cause?
ANTIGONE
Brother by the same mother and the same sire.
CREON
Why, then, dost thou render a grace that is impious in his sight?
ANTIGONE
The dead man will not say that he so deems it.
CREON
Yea, if thou makest him but equal in honour with the wicked.
ANTIGONE
It was his brother, not his slave, that perished.
CREON
Wasting this land; while he fell as its champion.
ANTIGONE
Nevertheless, Hades desires these rites.
CREON
But the good desires not a like portion with the evil.
ANTIGONE
Who knows but this seems blameless in the world below?
CREON
A foe is never a friend-not even in death.
ANTIGONE
Tis not my nature to join in hating, but in loving.
Sophocles, Antigone
When we don't stand for equality, we condone the murder of those less equal. We stand for the murder of those who stand in the way of our 'economic interests'. We stand for the murder of those who are inconveniently in the way of empire. We stand for the murder of those enlisted in the furtherance of empire. We stand for the murder of those whose lack of privilege holds our 'saintliness' upon their broken, starving shoulders that they still have the courage to square every day.
We kill those that have respect for their kin, their humanity. We exterminate every good sentiment that humanity, univeralism, has ever felt. We don't respect the dead, and we certainly don't respect those that respect them...
The bodies pile up, the bodies of their kin pile up, the bodies of our kin pile up... and we don't care.
Maybe it takes acts of treason to care.
Maybe it takes reason to care.
But if this doesn't end, our mindless pissing fest will end us.