passages-every-time-human-never-once-apologized

# Every time a human being kills a child,... > {{Every time a human being kills a child, civilization performs the same astonished little liturgy.}} The satellite trucks arrive. Neighbors tell the reporter that nothing seemed unusual. Commentators reach for _unthinkable_{Commentators reach for the word unthinkable{ the way a drunk reaches for a wall.}} Millions of people recoil as though something with too many legs had crawled through a crack in nature and into the human world. Lindsay Clancy strangled her three children one at a time with exercise bands while her husband was out picking up dinner. Andrea Yates drowned five in the bathtub and laid four of them on the bed under a sheet before she made the phone call. Susan Smith released the parking brake and let a lake swallow a Mazda with her two sons still buckled into their car seats. Diane Downs shot her children on a country road and drove them toward the hospital at a speed a witness put under ten miles an hour. Say the names and watch civilized society make the sign of the cross against its own reflection, because the{The{ spectacle was never only the dead child; the spectacle is the frantic insistence that whatever creature could kill a child **cannot possibly be us**.}} {{The killing of children is not unthinkable. Nature thought of it first, and nature has never once apologized.}} **Source:** [[books/Chimping Out|Chimping Out]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “Every time a human being kills a child, civilization performs the same astonished little liturgy. The satellite trucks arrive. Neighbors tell the reporter that nothing seemed unusual. Commentators reach for unthinkable the way a drunk reaches for a wall. Millions of people recoil as though something with too many legs had crawled through a crack in nature and into the human world. Lindsay Clancy strangled her three children one at a time with exercise bands while her husband was out picking up dinner. Andrea Yates drowned five in the bathtub and laid four of them on the bed under a sheet before she made the phone call. Susan Smith released the parking brake and let a lake swallow a Mazda with her two sons still buckled into their car seats. Diane Downs shot her children on a country road and drove them toward the hospital at a speed a witness put under ten miles an hour. Say the names and watch civilized society make the sign of the cross against its own reflection, because the spectacle was never only the dead child; the spectacle is the frantic insistence that whatever creature could kill a child cannot possibly be us. The killing of children is not unthinkable. Nature thought of it first, and nature has never once apologized.” — Bryant McGill https://bryantmcgill.com/passages/passages-every-time-human-never-once-apologized ```