Waking Nightmares

I had a nightmare a few nights ago. A rather violent, and all-too disturbing one. Essentially, I was stuck in the midst of a genocide war. A "superior" blond-haired military was actively hunting down and slaughtering a race of foreign black-haired gypsies. You'd think I'd be safe, being just about as blond as they get. But you'd be wrong. If I remember right, my family was sympathetic toward the gypsies, and thus we were labeled as traitors. My parents were killed and my little brother and I had to escape by sneaking out of the country with a party of the gypsies. We did so by dying our hair black and tricking them into believing we were like them. However, our group was found out before we could get out and the soldiers opened fire into the crowd. My little brother was killed. My memory's a little vague here. I'm not sure how, but some of our group did escape the massacre and crossed the borders into "safe" territory. Safe as long as your hair's black, anyway. My hair went back to its natural color, and thus I found myself at the mercy of those I had traveled with, who had now turned vengeful. Random people from my waking life often walk into my dreams. In this case we had a cameo from a friend named Marie (whom I haven't seen for about half a year, as she's currently living on the opposite end of the globe) . She was also wanted by the gypsies (though I'm not sure why, as she's brunette), so Marie and I were on the run together. We ran through a dusky forest until we came across a barn (not sure what it was doing out in the middle of the woods) and ran inside to hide. Our hunters weren't far behind, though. They cornered Marie first and shot her. Then me.
Naturally, witnessing the murders of friends, family, yourself, and even strangers would be distressing. But there was something else even more unsettling about it. I realized what it was when I described this dream to a friend and he jokingly stated, "I'm glad I don't live in your head." The fact is, slaughtering masses of innocent people because their hair doesn't match yours is something that should only "make sense" in a distorted dream world where the rules of logic and reason don't apply. But in Hitler's Germany, the Aryan ideal of a world filled with blond haired, blue eyed, "superior" humans became justification for the butchering of 11 million people (6 million Jews, 5 million from other races). And in Rwanda, the Hutus and Tutsis were divided by the size of their noses. Could there be a more ridiculous reason for starting a war? And yet it happened. And it wasn't in someone's warped dream world where it makes sense for your best friend to be an android or for you to get pregnant from eating potato chips. This nightmare happened in the waking world. More than once. How is that possible?


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Mood: Awake... right?
Music: "The Sound of White," Missy Higgins
Quote: "In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart," Anne Frank