The surreal is made real. The massacre in Times Square isn’t New York’s lead story. The fatal stomping of nine protestors during an encircled charge by the NYPD and U.S. military units is playing second fiddle to the ghastly crime at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
You undoubtedly know about the bearded man who announced that God wanted him to save the world from man’s misdeeds and then killed his son on the high altar. You’ve seen him shout “I fear God” on the Web while he waves that bloody blade, courtesy of the phone cams that must have lit the Cathedral as if it were July 4th.
The gory images went global in minutes, thanks to an inviting Google.
THE SPIRES ABOVE, THE BLOOD BELOW: ST. PATRICK'S CATHEDRALThey sound more striking than they look. The lighting was poor, the framing wide, and the man’s white clothing confused the sensors, so the unfortunate lad’s moment of death is more conceptual than real. The scene looked better on the TV news after some high-tech light therapy.
But hey, the sacrifice was not in vain. There’s much less fuss about those dead demonstrators. They were, after all, gathering illegally. I must have dreamed Freedom of Assembly. Was it old-fashioned of me to think that if the will to control is human, the will to resist is divine?
There are no vivid images of the state riot on TV, nothing to hold a candle to the ‘St. Patrick’s Sacrifice.’ Just wide shots of demonstrators chanting, some masked punks in black throwing things, and the unavoidable stampede when cops and soldiers followed orders.
Now that Google is barring ‘disruptive’ videos from its sites, the good footage is on the Web, overseas, still viewable if your ISP allows access. I’m not certain about the image that claims to show the late lab technician standing politely as a line of robo-clubs engulfed him. Practically speaking, it could be someone else being brutally assaulted.
Or it could be evidence of outright murder. It certainly shows what happened to people who didn’t run in panic over the mashed bodies of their fellow demonstrators.
The aftermath was a generously photographed press conference. Our mayor looked stalwart, solemnly flanked by the Commissioner of Police and the Generalissimo of Whatever, those imposing columns of state firepower. The citizens they killed weren’t victims, went the unmasked lecture. They brought death upon themselves by not respecting the law and our need for order. That’s what they get for chanting in public.
Incensed by Sanctimony
The official eye-wiping came moments later, when the masked media breathlessly solicited responses to The Sacrifice. An innocent boy lost, a deranged dad in custody, so sad.
Tomorrow will be a citywide Day Of Mourning. Not for flu victims, or police victims, or justice, or common sense, but for the kid.
Like everyone, I’m sorry for the boy. His father betrayed him.
Not that the lad got much help from churchgoers, who flooded the altar for close-ups and then oozed outside to post them online while the murderer waved his bloody bayonet and raved that Abraham caught a break when God called off his attempted sacrifice of Isaac. This guy thought God was just kidding.
The miracle is that no one killed the man. Will a jury find him insane, infuriating, or both?
Meanwhile talk shows pretend to debate God’s role in the pandemic while sneakily wondering why the boy lay still as his father wielded the blade. Was he hypnotized? Drugged?
I suspect the father and son had practiced performing Genesis 22. The kid thought it was just an exhibition. Dad expected The Word to call off his shtick at the climax.
Maybe Americans think the president will stop just short of dismembering our Constitution. When a voice from above says we’ve suffered enough, the authorities will relax.
Me, I see my people prostrate, licking the blood off their screens, fearing one another more than any God—and bowing to Caesar.