Bill Moyers and I...Reflecting Together
"They burned him alive in an iron cage, and as he screamed and writhed in the agony of hell they made a sport of his death." So began today's "Perspectives" column by Bill Moyers as he wrote about the horrendous death of Jordanian pilot, Lt. Muath al- Kaseabeh, at the hands of ISIS. I found myself feeling nauseated, held captive by a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach as, with my all-too-active imagination, I could picture the dreadful scene. Except there was no way I could accurately do this because it is so far outside of my personal experience, so far beyond what my mind and heart and intellect could take in. Barbaric, is what I thought, what I said aloud. But in his piece, Moyers goes on to recall the death of a young black man in Waco, Texas back in 1916. No, death is too light a word. His murder by lynching and burning alive for the death of a white woman of which he was accused and convicted by a grand jury in just four minutes, in ...