No evil.

This is what I’ll call a recommendation.. with reservations.

My husband and I recently watched a short series on Netflix entitled “The Serpent.” It is based on the true story of serial killer Charles Sobhraj who preyed on travelers exploring the ” hippie trail” of South Asia in the 1970s .

The acting is superb, in fact it all feels so real that we had to take breaks simply because it was so deeply unsettling. So I recommend it, but with the caveat that it’s pretty darn unnerving. This is the kind of movie that really makes you think, in this case about the collision of evil and naivete. These back packing dreamers from the US and Europe were so blinded by their own enlightenment, they wouldn’t have recognized the devil himself if he poked them in the eye with his pitch fork. They were so fully invested in their idealized version of reality that all this killer had to do was step into their fantasy..

It was way too easy.

It just so happened that as we were finishing off the final few episodes this week-end, two more articles appeared in newspapers of note detailing evidence that this Covid-19 Pandemic originated in the lab in Wuhan, China and that it was circulating way before officials raised the alarm. And yet here we are, like those dope smoking hippies, discussing global warming in meetings with the same folks who refused to cooperate with the World health Organization when they arrived to study the origins of this devastating virus a few months ago. With over 3 million dead and thousands still dying every day we collectively continue to forge ahead as if we see no evil. Just like those starry-eyed, doomed fools in the ’70s, we are so invested in our idealized version of reality that the only thing these bad actors need to do is step right on into our fantasy.

Here’s the thing.. accidents happen, I get it. But like the meltdown at Chernobyl, covering it up wasted valuable time and cost lives.

And the cover-up continues.. aided and abetted by the same media that while willing to chase down the origins of every covid surge as long as it leads to a beach in Florida have seemingly no interest at all in the origins of the actual pandemic itself.

There is one awful scene in The Serpent where a drugged and incapacitated American woman asks Charles if he’s going to hurt her. He looks right into her eyes and simply replies “better than that..”

We can’t be so afraid of the truth that we don’t ask the tough questions..and my friends, it’s way past time to start asking them.