Iris Chang, RIP

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader realizes that today has been a day where death has been in the news quite a bit. We mourn the loss of our glorious dead for the Veterans Day celebrations; as well as laud the living veterans. We are talking about the death of terrorist-turned-Nobel-Laureate, Yassir Arafat too.

But another death has truly saddened and angered your Maximum Leader. He reads that Iris Chang, the author of the superb book, "The Rape of Nanking," has killed herself. She was 36.

This is sad because she wrote an excellent work of history. Excellent in many ways. It highlighted a nearly forgotten (in the West at any rate) atrocity of WWII. It also was accessible to the great masses of history readers. (Many works of history are very boorrriinnnggg.) But "The Rape of Nanking" was a viseral book. You felt the suffering of the Chinese as you read it. At least your Maximum Leader did. He read the book once and is sure that he will remember the feeling in his gut as he read it. It is sad that such a young woman with such a bright future will not write again.

But her suicide angers your Maximum Leader as well. He supposes that one of the vestages of his Catholic upbringing is a complete repulsion to suicide. He supposes that it shows some sort of weakness or character flaw when a person kills themselves. He believes it also shows a blatant disregard for those left behind. Perhaps suicide offends your Maximum Leader because it is the ultimate statement of selfishness. Now your Maximum Leader understands that Chang was hospitalized for depression earlier this year. But somehow that doesn't mitigate the circumstance for him. It is a complicated feeling.

Iris Chang, requiscat in pace.

Carry on.