For "Nevada Downwinders" and Others
The bomb was created.
It was tested and used.
It's effects were known,
yet knowingly it was used
and used again-
Secretly, under the guise of "tests",
But it was used
and people died.
This was murder.
There are laws against murder.
But no one went to goal for this massacre of the innocents.
The serial killers walk proud and free,
Feted and rewarded for their devotion to duty-
Defenders of the realm.
So what of those who haven't died?
What happened to them?
No pains are spared to cover up their plight,
To deny responsibility,
To deprive them of all avenues of redress,
And when all else fails
"Sovereign immunity" is invoked.
For those unversed in legal jargon
This is a system devised for the protection of tyrants.
Let me put a spin on this
To explain a system which sanctions and rewards mass murder.
People are reduced to objects
to be manipulated, used and controlled.
Without taking this first step of objectification,
None of the rest can follow.
I would leave it at that,
But I feel obliged to add
that I regularly objectify my fellow human beings.
I don't commit mass murder,
but I always pay a price.
In objectifying others, I dehumanize myself
and construct an impenetrable barrier between myself and them.
I suffer instantly and continuously
as long as the objectification and the barrier remain.
I might hope that the tyrants suffer more,
but I don't assume this to be so.
Nevertheless, I know
that objectification is the first and final injustice that I must
address.
Philip White, Nagasaki, 7 August 2000