The absurity versus the banality

IMG_7441 Confronting yet another atrocity, it seems like there is no rational response.

At the Killing Fields near Phnom Penh, the mass graves are so full that bones can still be found just lying on the surface.
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There is a monument that houses layer upon layer of skulls and other bones. They have all been neatly categorized by gender and injury type.
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At the S21 prison there are 4 carved heads of Pol Pot next to some bars used to shackle prisoners together. Pol Pot’s Chinese backers advised him that he needed to do some repair to his PR image. Part of that was erecting some statues, but since they were imprisoning all of the Cambodian artisans and intellectuals and no foreign artists were will to take the job. They found some imprison sculptors and they were kept alive as long as they were producing for Pol Pot. This is the only reason they were among the only 7 survivors of S21.
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Another survivor that is still living was there at S21 selling his book. He was a mechanic who fixed a typewriter that a guard had broken. Since all property was the peoples property, broken property was theft and punishable by death. Since the prisoner saved the guards life, the guard in turn saved the prisoners life.