On Characters from Children's Books

Back when I was young ( not just by heart) I read books in which there was a clearly defined good guy character( who also looked good by the way) and a bad guy character( who of course looked bad). You could actually tell just by looking at the cover of the book as to who was the good guy or who wasn’t. Take the name of the story and the picture on the cover together, and there you have it, a working rough draft of the story. It made me feel happy and secure that I wouldn't have to read too much into the story myself. 

But when I grew up, I saw that things weren’t as simple as they seemed. For example sometimes good looking people were really absolutely nasty at heart (most of the times? nah) and really ugly (strong word lets change it) really reasonably okay looking people could be good people. I have to admit, that was a shocker. How was I now ever going to tell good people from the bad ones? My whole worldview had been changed. There was utterly no superficial way to know that anymore. Looks, apparently as it turned out, could be deceiving. Good guys didn’t just do random good things to strangers on the streets and bad guys weren’t always brooding over some evil plans to take over the world(preferably in a dark room at night) Actually all this was making me feel really sad up until again when it suddenly changed to what it used to be like before.

The Taliban are people who live in caves, mostly in Afghanistan and sometimes in Pakistan (that is if you actually know the distinction between the two countries and you don’t think one is a city within the other). Their weapon of choice is an AK47 rifle (mine too actually in the computer game counter strike). Their job is to blow things and people up. They have been doing it for years and as the architect of the Matrix says "have become increasingly efficient at it”. They sport beards and wear the traditional dress from the region which is "shalwar kameez". Most importantly they look and act DIFFERENT. Different than what I am. They are also generally seen on camera almost always carrying a rifle (even when the apparent purpose of the video is to talk to people from the media). They claim to follow the shariah law (at least their own version of it) and have sister organizations or daughter concerns virtually everywhere in the world. Literally anything wrong that happens anywhere in the world is carried out under the guileful command of the Taliban leaders, and only so that there is no confusion they are always quick to accept responsibility for things that happen in Iraq or South Sudan or Syria or well, unsurprisingly Afghanistan. 

So now once again I feel the same thing. I no longer have to think about the bad guys or the good guys. The news channels just do that for me. And then they just tell me what I have to think about. And I like a truly modern man of the 21st century, humbly always comply. So at the end of the day, I again know how/what the bad guys look like, smell touch taste feel say talk do. Yet again you name a news story containing that name and show me a picture simultaneously and I can tell what the story is going to be about. Ahh. It has made my life simpler once again.

Disclaimer: I detest and abhor to my very core the ideals that the Taliban hold and represent and wish that the world soon will be rid of people like them. The purpose of this blog however has only been to state that every time I hear something on the news, like this,  I feel there is more to the story than meets the eye.