[The Lizard of Oz]

True forgiveness is one of the most beautiful and profound human actions; it is one of the serious big MOVES that change the game of life. It is also often the most practical and forward-looking move -- which is, of course, something that does not negate or contradict its depth and beauty.

However, it has been of the special evils of the Year Zero left that their sleazy co-optation of the beautiful idea of forgiveness -- and its lesser bastard cousins, like "empathy" -- has cheapened and sullied these concepts and evacuated them of their true human meaning. The endless mounds of canting text invoking "forgiveness", written by monsters who forgive no one and nothing, has made one feel that the only humanly decent thing to do under any and all circumstances is to pick up a sturdy Rwandan machete, gleefully sharpen it at night, and then go out with the first light of dawn and keep hacking until your arm falls off -- and then reattach the arm and repeat the same procedure every day for the next hundred years.

There will always be a special place reserved for real forgiveness and real empathy within the modest and precious confines of what matters most: our everyday life and relations with family, friends, and strangers. But as a public concept, it is dead for now; the stench of decades of Year Zero cant is too strong, it has rotted the very words from within. The entire Year Zero discourse must be routed before some of the ideas that it has infected with its rot can regain public currency.

Fortunately, the world-changing election of Trump will greatly accelerate this process; we can already see the prestige rapidly draining away from every variety of canting text in the eyes of normal people who had, until now, accepted its authority without question. This process must run its course; and once it is completed -- and once some real things have happened in the world at large which rout and contradict every canting Year Zero dogma -- so many beautiful human ideas can be restored to their rightful place in the public discourse, with true forgiveness and fellow-feeling among the jewels in the crown, sparkling in their delicate way after they've been cleansed of the filth and slime that had encased them for too long.