He was Paingod for the universes, the one who dealt out the tears and the anguish and the soul-wrenching terrors that blighted life from its first moment to its last. Beyond age, beyond death, beyond feeling - lonely and alone in his cubicle - Trente went about his business without concern or pause
Unfortuntely for Trente, and the universe, he contracts a disease - Concern. He begins to care for his deeds and ultimately reaches a state where he cannot any longer support his acts. To learn more about pain, he comes to earth to study a person he has inflicted with much pain - a drunken sot of an orator, erstwhile a sculptor. He discovers the sculptor would not be able to create his creations if not for his pain. In the end, this matures Trente and he returns to his lonely seat of power, meting out pain, and knowing happiness.
Real life isn't like that, though.
As John Kerry stated in his Congressional testimony,
We who have come here to Washington have come here because we f eel we have to be winter soldiers now. We could come back to this country; we could be quiet; we could hold our silence; we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel because of what threatens this country, the fact that the crimes threaten it, not reds, and not redcoats but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out.
We as humanity, appoint many paingods to mete out pain and suffering. We cannot compass, however, the transformation of these men and women. For some, it is a means to reach higher understanding. For others, like a few in the Iraq prisons, it expresses the darkness in ways unimaginable. There are few who can bear such a burden and remain unchanged. The cycle of violence and reprisal that it breeds cannot be broken save through deep self-introspection & growth of the individual.
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