Some years ago, a dude set himself on fire in front of my town's city hall.

It was a difficult year, and people took to the streets all over the country. They were not as divided by all the polarizing shit on the Internet yet.

So, early in the morning, this guy goes up to city hall with a can of gas. Cops come up to him, ask what he's doing. He says he's gonna set himself on fire unless the protesters' demands are met. I think that included the mayor's resignation, and rescinding the extortionate utility bills that everyone got that winter.

So the cops poured his can of gas all over him and lit the match. By the time I got to the hospital to donate blood, he had already left this pathetic excuse for a world to its own devices.

Well, a world where this shit happens isn't getting any gratitude from me, that's for sure.

Gets weirder.

Both his first name, and his last name, were rooted in our language's word for "fire". "Nomen est omen", as they say. Was he perhaps a pyromaniac, or destined to die by fire? Or did he never exist in the first place, the whole story being an early artifact of political technology, disseminated in order to get the mayor to resign (so that a guy who was actually good at graft could be elected)?

A world where I can't even be sure this shit really happened or some ad guys made up his entire story out of whole cloth to influence public opinion, isn't getting any gratitude from me, either. And idk if anyone's noticed, but that's the kind of world we've all been living in for some time.

So, if I ever caught fire, I would be grateful if the people who came to pour more fuel would at least be honest with themselves about what they're doing. And not frantically try to get me to convince them that they're actually pouring water, or ask me to justify the undesirability of being on fire in the first place. Because I've noticed a lot of people tend to do exactly that, any time someone is experiencing any form of suffering less obvious than being literally on fire.

user:	jesuschristmas
created:	December 25, 2023
karma:	1