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A Modest Proposal For Protecting National Security

Inspired by Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal", here's a satirical take on the Syrian Refugee Crisis.

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A Modest Proposal For Protecting National Security
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Children are simple beings: there isn’t much you have to do in order to kill them. Naive, fragile, and afraid, you can have them in the palm of your hand without much effort. However, the best way to do it is to make sure you kill their families first. Blow up their countries, block all the exits, and call it “politics.” Creating that initial emotional trauma makes them more susceptible to losing all hope in humanity. Children who want to die are less likely to put up a fight when you kill them.

In a silly attempt to save their lives, many refugee families will take to small rafts to travel across the Mediterranean. The rafts carrying a surplus amount of people can barely float above the surface of the water. After many days of traveling at sea, the bodies on board begin to grow weary. The lack of food, water, and shelter will make your government-funded yacht look more like a hallucination, a rescue from heaven. This will make it easier for you to come with your spears of entitled democracy and pop their rafts like a balloon. Easy and quick. Mothers will scream and babies will cry, surely. Fathers will try to fight you off, and children will attempt to hold onto your leg, but understand that you must not hesitate. These people are parasites, leeching off of your privilege. Nothing more than just a blip on your radar. You must protect what is your own.

Several days after your deed, they will wash up on your beaches. You will leave their small bodies face down in the sand as a way to display your effectiveness. But then, you must dispose of them without a flinch. It is much better to deal with the remains of a child than it is to deal with the damage they will do to your economy. Cleaning up their toys from your oceans is much easier than giving them a home to put them in.

People whose countries are burning are not the responsibility of other nations. When the marginalized are dying simply because they are marginalized, no one is at fault. This is not human decency or morality, this is war, business, an impersonal engagement. Remind yourself that with every dead child, their inner terrorist dies as well. A massive responsibility is avoided, and your precious economy is saved.

After all, a cadaver in the water starts to sink as soon as the air in its lungs is replaced with water. Once submerged, the body stays underwater until the bacteria in the gut and chest cavity produce enough gas—methane, hydrogen sulfide, and carbon dioxide—to float it to the surface. If a human is exposed to the elements, their bodies will decompose more quickly. If this human is a child, that process will not take longer than just a few days. With this, their war-torn bones will sink and it will be as if they never existed in the first place. You will call this “fighting for your country.”

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This article has not been reviewed by Odyssey HQ and solely reflects the ideas and opinions of the creator.
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