recent reading/watching/listening
I finished reading I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual the other day. It's a stunning book, written in simple and direct language with an immediacy and understatement that is haunting. The man survived concentration camps, the sight of his lover killed, he was forced to fight on the Russian front. After reading the last page, I wondered what life means to him today after seeing the things he did.
Sunday, I watched the documentary Fog of War by Errol Morris, about Robert McNamara the former US defense secretary. Totally astonishing, the self-described "sensitive man" showed no signs of difficulty in reducing the value of human life to cold numbers. He admits that if the United States had lost World War II he would have been tried as a war criminal. I have no doubt of that.