Every one of us is unique, just like everyone else

I was reading Scrappleface and found this piece of surreal genius.

Hate crime laws address the proven fact that a victim feels greater pain when he or she suffers as a representative of some downtrodden minority group, rather than simply as a person.

However, nothing in federal law extends special treatment to a person whose attacker has mixed feelings about the victim’s race, gender or degree of sexual disorientation.

As a semi-fictional, pseudonymous creation I am not like everybody else. I am the only worker who works in a mine on Titan, mining Titanium, which is the most plentiful material in the core of Titan. Is there anybody else on Earth who can say that? I am an artist at my craft. I am blue. And I sing the song of the asteroids, mutely shouting into the glorious interplanetary vacuum. I am not a dog on the Internet. But I am unique. Just as everyone is. I am a minority of one. Thus, if I am attacked, do I not bleed in a manner uniquely deserving of pity, are my nerves not uniquely sensitive, are my claims of excruciating pain not uniquely to be respected? Well of course they are, to a unique degree, and so are yours, at least if you are as unique as I am.

In fact, as the U.S. Progress Congress has noticed, those who are less unique are not as sensitive as those who are more unique. Those of us who are semi-fictional and pseudonymous, as well as those who are legendary or mythical, are more unique than those of us who are simple meat puppets. For is not imagination purer, more ethereal than base matter? No question at all that imagination is a fair bit more unique than reality. I am more sensitive to your hate than you are to mine. My hatred is immaterial because I am imaginary. But to me, because I am imaginary, your immaterial hatred is very, very material. It is of the same kingdom of matter as am I, the imaginary kingdom of imagination, and as your hatred is as imaginary as I am, it wounds me to the quick, a sword or halberd or yea verily even unto a nuclear bomb of hatred to wound my imaginary soul. Your hatred could kill me in a microsecond, a nanosecond, or less. Do you understand why your hatred, or the hatred of anyone who is material, is so dangerous to we who are imaginary? We don’t have material existence like you. All we have is our imaginary existence, and your hatred will destroy us. Well, me, actually.

Hate me not. Pity me. Pity the Easter Bunny. Pity the monster in the closet, or the other one under the bed. Pity the Tooth Fairy and all the other fairies. Pity King Arthur and Charlemagne waiting in their mountain caverns. Pity the imaginary.

Protect us from hate crimes that would tear us asunder. We deserve all the protection your laws can provide.

Progress Congress, I beg of you, pass a hate crime law that prohibits hate against me and other fictional, imaginary beings and punishes it with the death penalty. That would be justice, because only by passing from life to death can the living being disintegrate and approach the status of immateriality that I already instantiate.

We need that hate crime law. Because every one of us, imaginary and real, is unique, just like everyone else, but I am more unique than you. Protect me first.

Thank you.

Technorati Tags: Satire, Politics, Hate Crime