PSA

[MurderWeasel]

On July 4, 2012, the following letter was submitted to and rejected by every major newspaper in the state of Washington, as well as dozens of others throughout the United States. It was, however, published online, and was picked up by several underground papers in later days.

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By the time you read this, if you have not heard that the terrorists attacks known collectively as Survival of the Fittest have made a resurgence, you are probably living under a rock. The news reached me at about twelve forty-five this afternoon, and I had my phone switched off at the time. I wasn't watching television or listening to the radio or browsing the internet, and I still knew what had occurred within the hour. I'm sure it's put a damper on everyone's Independence Day, and I'm sure that many of you would just as soon not hear anything else about it. If that applies to you, you're probably not who I'm talking to anyways. To everyone else, however, I have a few things to say.

As you surely know, the fates of the children on the island are once again available for viewing, currently through various online streaming sites. While I normally am opposed to censorship in all forms, that this has been allowed to occur is a total travesty, a mockery of justice. We do not widely distribute crime scene photographs of murder victims; why should that change when the scale is so much larger?

Thus far, the government has proven either unable or unwilling to stem the flow of footage. Whether or not that changes, at the moment, everyone out there who hears about it has a personal choice to make. The film is there, and anyone with an internet connection can access it. Worse, I am told that some bits are already being picked up by the media, photographs inserted into stories and clips broadcast on the major channels news programs. It's not hard to find out if people are dying, if they're killing. I've even been asked who I think will "win", as if somehow I've had time to learn about every victim. I am sure that some people actually have done so.

The truth is, I haven't watched anything. I'm not going to, and if you're a decent human being, neither will you.

More than ever before, paying attention to the events on the island this year is an exercise in futility and self-deception. The kidnapped students have been missing for nearly a month. We know, from the last attack, that the terrorists are not averse to broadcasting after the fact, especially when doing so better protects their security. That means that everyone they show, every person on that island except possibly one, is already dead. There is nothing that can be done about that, no way to save anyone or change anything. Watching now is the same as staring at the aftermath of a car wreck, hoping to catch a glimpse of a body.

Worse still, the only reason this footage is being shared, the only reason the attacks continue at all, is because people watch. If they didn't, if they turned away and turned off the computer and showed some basic respect, then there would be no motivation for the terrorists to continue in this vein. Their message, by virtue of being rejected, would lose all meaning. They would finally know defeat.

And yet, people still watch. They still watch as children die. They still watch as children suffer, as they cry and panic and wish for escape. Oh, sure, there may be reasons, lies these viewers tell themselves. They say it doesn't hurt anyone, that the damage has already been done. They say they are doing it for research, or to stay informed. Maybe they've got family or friends there. Maybe they're worried. Maybe they want to be with a loved one in their last moments, even if only by proxy.

Well, if that describes you and you're watching, you know what I have to say?

Fuck you. By watching, by giving the terrorists the attention they crave, you are complicit in every death, every torture, every atrocity that crosses your screen. You are personally responsible for the deaths of the students of Aurora High School, more so than any of their classmates who may take up arms and do the physical killing. It's your fault. If you're watching your loved ones die, you're right there holding the gun, pulling the trigger.

I don't care if your kid was there. I don't care if your best friend got taken. They didn't ask you to watch. I can pretty safely say that none of them wanted you to. The island takes people and brings out sides of them that they prefer to keep hidden. It exposes the ugliness within people to the world. It forces them to be honest. If that doesn't sound so bad to you, I ask you to think of all the little white lies you tell every day, all the ways you couch your opinion in polite language and make compromises to avoid hurting those you love. Now take that away, and add in blood and death and the hopeless knowledge of how doomed you are, and then, maybe then, you are starting to understand the barest approximation of the least of the challenges and horrors these children faced.

And never, for even a moment, forget that they are already dead.

By watching that footage, by prying into the deaths of these children, you are victimizing them all over again. You are spitting on their graves and mocking their memories.

And, you may say, what about if they really did ask us to watch? What if they turned to a camera and addressed us? What if our sons and daughters had things to say?

Well, I say, if you really must know, then there are other ways to get that. I'm sure it will be transcribed. And, maybe, in that one little instance, there might be a justification in viewing one clip, one time. Maybe they truly did want to say goodbye. I don't believe it, personally. I think that there are many things that can cause someone on the island to turn to a camera and speak, and few of them are positive. More often than not, they are guided by hatred or fear or a need for a feeling of connection rather than by any real desire to have their pain and terror observed. I don't think you should take the risk of being wrong.

So I say avoid everything, a thousand times more if you have not been explicitly invited by those you are watching.

I know that this may not reach anyone. I doubt it will change any minds. I don't mince words, don't play nice. I am honest, these days. I don't know if I know how to be anything else anymore. I look at the world and I see it making the same mistakes again and again, falling victim to the same tricks and traps, repeating everything just as it did every year when I was in high school. I know I can't stop anything.

Together, though, we can. Every person who chooses not to watch makes a difference. Every person who turns away, who turns off the television and the computer and the radio, aims a blow more devastating than any bullet straight at the heart of all this horror. Every person who falls prey, who is drawn into watching, is a collaborator of the highest order, a traitor and a murderer, an ally to the terrorists.

It's your decision. What do you want to be?

Tune out. Spend time with the people you care about. Be sad. Be angry. Be destructive, if you have to. Mourn your friends and families. Do what you need to do to get through this, but do it without breathing more life into this beast. Do it in a way that just might really kill it this time. Do the right thing, and maybe I'll never need to write a letter like this again.

It's the best possible thing you can do, a thing that the world should have done years ago.

We were all counting on you. Don't let us down again.

- Kimberly Nguyen, survivor of the 2008 attacks