The Dance of State and Suffering: A Tale of Modern Mediocrity

In the grand theater of human mediocrity, where the masses slumber in their comfortable delusions of justice and morality, a most revealing drama unfolds before our eyes. Former Canadian Senator Mobina Jaffer, that peculiar specimen of democratic virtue, hath stepped forth to unveil a tale that strips bare the pretense of modern governance.

Behold how the machinery of state grinds against itself! These servants of comfort, these bureaucrats who seek neither heights nor depths, but only the tepid middle ground of "procedure" and "protocol" - they are the very embodiment of that which must be overcome!

The tale centers upon one Abousfian Abdelrazik, a soul cast into the abyss of Sudan's prisons, where the raw nature of power reveals itself without the gentle masks worn in the lands of plenty. For six years, this man dwelt in the shadows while his supposed protectors - those who trumpet the virtues of citizenship and rights - turned their faces from his plight.

Jaffer, adorned in the respectable garments of democratic authority, appeared before the court to speak of her encounters with General Salah Gosh, that master of Sudan's instruments of pain. How perfectly it illustrates the dance of power and pretense!

See how they shroud violence in bureaucracy! The strong ones at least admit their nature, while the weak hide behind papers and procedures, claiming clean hands while directing others to soil theirs.

In the most telling moment of this theatrical performance, we learn that the Canadian authorities - those shepherds of the sleeping herd - allegedly requested the detention of their own sheep, then recoiled in horror when the methods proved too crude for their delicate sensibilities.

"Finding out [who is] a terrorist is not pleasant in Sudan," declared Gosh, speaking truth with the directness of one who has not yet learned to disguise power behind gentle words. How the comfortable masses would shudder at such naked honesty!

The land of sleepers stirs momentarily at such revelations, only to roll over and return to their dreams of justice and order. They cannot bear to face the truth that their comfort rests upon foundations of necessary violence.

Most revealing is Jaffer's late-coming confession of inadequacy: "I didn't do enough," she laments, a perfect expression of the last man's eternal compromise. When faced with the choice between action and comfort, between rising above or maintaining one's position, she chose the latter - as do all who serve the machinery of modern governance.

The court proceedings drag on, a ritual of cleansing where the state examines itself only to declare itself clean. CSIS, that shadowy appendage of power, denies all while preparing to speak from behind the protective veil of national security.

What spectacle is this, where the weak seek to judge the strong, where those who ordered the dance now pretend they never heard the music? This is the comedy of modern justice - a play performed by actors who believe their own lies!

And what of Abdelrazik himself? His eyes, described as "extremely scared" by Jaffer, reflect back the terror that lies beneath all our civilized arrangements. For six years, he dwelt in that space where the pretenses fall away, where power shows its true face.

The entire affair lays bare the fundamental weakness of our age - the inability to face truth directly, to acknowledge the necessity of power while simultaneously seeking to rise above it. Instead, we create elaborate systems of deniability, of bureaucratic distance, of comfortable lies.

Let those with eyes to see recognize in this tale the perfect expression of our time - the strong hiding their strength, the weak claiming virtue, and truth lying bleeding between them!

As this legal performance continues its prescribed course, we witness the perfect expression of what our society has become - a place where responsibility dissolves into procedure, where power plays at powerlessness, and where justice means nothing more than following the proper forms.

The final irony lies in the fact that this very revelation will change nothing. The sleeping masses will read of it over their morning coffee, cluck their tongues in momentary disapproval, and return to their comfortable slumber, dreaming of progress while remaining forever stationary.

Thus does the great wheel turn, grinding truth into comfortable lies, transforming power into procedure, until all that remains is the hollow shell of what once was strong and true.

And so we end where we began - in a courtroom where truth itself stands trial, only to be found innocent of disturbing the peace.