Is it just me...?

There are certain things that just bother me a little, unnerve me. I do not like gore, or crudeness. It's just not funny to me.

We recently killed the Romanov's in my history class. Right before that, we killed Rasputin. And there was a day in history class last year that I don't think I will ever forget: we killed William Jennings Bryan. It's not like I was particularly attached to any of these people. I knew very little about them until they showed up in our lectures.

Rasputin's death was just brutal. Cyanide, guns, and an icy river. We saw a picture of his body, after he had thawed out. It cycled the classroom as if it were a comic strip, trivial and entertaining.

The Romanov family was next. Our teacher had done her research. She knew that Alexandra had time to cross herself before the shooting began, and Nicholas died trying to protect his son. Moaning, piled bodies, acid and fire to eat away their bullet-riddled skin. Prior to their death, while they were being held captives, their hemophiliac son Alexi attempted to commit suicide. "What, did he trip himself?"

And poor William Jennings Bryan. He campaigned again and again for presidency, always losing, always on the same platform: free silver. We learned about the "Monkey Trial", his self-proclaimed expertise on the Bible, and how he was completely humiliated in court. And then he died a week after the trial. Our class cheered.

I know we're far removed from all these happenings, safe in our little classroom. But I don't understand. That was somebody's life. And our class cheered because he wouldn't show up on another test? Our class laughed because a fourteen-year-old boy tried to commit suicide?

And yes, it was absolutely ridiculous how long it took to actually kill Rasputin. Yes, we were tired of hearing about free silver. And yes, it all seems fantastic, like a story rather than someone's reality. But it was. It was someone's reality. And we find it so entertaining, so amusing. It just seems so sick to me. Our modern day Colosseum: history class.

And there are so many atrocities being committed in our world right now. People missing, kidnapped, brutally murdered. People tortured, abused, raped. I don't understand why there is such an industry for horror movies when there is so much real horror. It scares me that we can remove ourselves so far from it that it's funny. It scares me that we're that calloused.