When your mothership arrives...

Most of my life I've felt kind of like an alien on Earth- people and their irrational, unreasonable, often unethical behaviour make little sense to me. So since I was young I've imagined the day a massive spaceship arrives in Earth's sky, announces that they're here for their missing 'president' of the Enlightened Cosmos, they beam me up, and once they've refreshed my memory and briefed me about the state of my empire they ask me "what about this planet you've been stranded on all this time? What do you make of them? How did they treat you while you lived among them? Should we invite them to join our civilization?"

And if I weren't already inspired to it then thanks to this movie, among other orders I'd give, I'd do the following: I'd have my ship erect a confinement forcefield around Iran, I'd project a holographic image that would be seen and heard in every corner of the country, and I'd announce that any woman within its borders who wanted out (as well as any gay person, since they're not much better off) had one week to make their way to the shield's perimeter. Men & boys too but they'd be intensely screened, their history scrutinized; if they renounced their misogynistic culture and their hands were clean, they'd be allowed. My troops would provide security for those wanting to leave, protecting them from soldiers, mullahs, fathers, husbands, or anyone else trying to keep them prisoner. At the perimeter they could petition for amnesty, to immigrate to another of Earth's nations or to one of my people's 'integration colonies' where they'd be educated and acclimatized into our culture until they were ready to apply for full citizenship. But at the end of that week, anyone who chose to remain would be assumed to want to reap what their society had sown. Having the power to do so, I'd pass judgment, and those who'd ruled purely by force wouldn't have a damned word to say about it. And the sentence would be death; I'd burn them down- raze every inch of the place. Turn it all to one vast, flat plane of glass.

A nation that stones women to death on the say-so of lying, adulterous husbands- I say it deserves to burn. A death sentence on the whole culture. Every man that ever tossed a pebble at an execution: dead. Every father that renounced his daughter: dead. Every son that collected stones: dead. Every brother who didn't slap the rocks out of hands, out of the air, or throw himself over his sister to protect her: dead. Every mayor that let it happen in his town: dead. Every cleric who officiated and said it was "in God's name": dead. Burned down in pain and terror. To hell with every last one of them. They believe in- they want- a world where might makes right? They could have it. For one week, they could live under the power of someone mightier than them, then they could die. They like to carry on about how "great and powerful" and "just" and "merciful" 'God' is... with great power, I'd show 'em justice. They'd have to wait and see if their deity showed them any mercy, though.

I think civilization is a matter of choices; we have to decide amongst ourselves what will elevate us out of barbarism. Choose well, do it 'right,' and we'll have no remorse. We'll sleep well. We'll be able to live with ourselves. Well I could give those orders, take responsibility for them, and sleep like a baby.


I'm an island- peopled by scientists, bards, judges, soldiers, artists, scholars, & warrior-poets.