David McElroy

It’s just another random message-board discussion among crude and nasty men. There’s nothing special about it, because it goes on all the time. It’s sleazy and vile guys — old enough to know better — talking with gusto about “banging sluts.”

And every time I see such filth, I am livid.

I ran across yet another example of this on a sports message board late Monday night. It was a three-page thread about which universities of the Southeastern Conference have the “sluttiest” female students. By the standards of such discussions, this one wasn’t among the worst. But the attitude it betrays — that these men believe women are “sluts” to be hunted for their lustful conquest — is far too pervasive.

I am sick of living in a world where this is considered acceptable behavior.

Many men grow up accepting that good guys have as many sexual conquests as possible — and they see the women they conquer as sluts. Even more sickening, many women grow up in a culture that accepts this and tolerates it. They come to accept it as normal.

Worst of all, women knowingly marry these vile creatures and have children with them — pushing this sleazy cycle into another generation.

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Monday marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. I’m not sure the world has yet learned the lessons of the horrors discovered there.

The Soviet Red Army reached Auschwitz first on its way through Poland. That was on Jan. 27, 1945. U.S. and British forces coming from the west found and liberated similar camps in the weeks to come.

In each place, the story was the same. There was evidence and testimony of an efficient killing machine. Those still alive were used as forced labor. Those who became unable to work were killed. Mass numbers of people were also executed as part of Hitler’s “final solution” for ridding his world of Jews. The survivors were emaciated and dying.

I frequently come across people online who claim that the killing that went on in these camps — of Jews, gypsies, gay people, mentally ill and other “undesirables” — either didn’t happen or else has been exaggerated.

Every time I hear such claims, I want to show these people the photos that I printed from very old negatives when I worked at a University of Alabama photo lab while I was in college.

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I haven’t had the nightmare for years, but it used to terrorize the darkest of my nights.

It always started out in a familiar place, with people all around. I would try to speak to others, but they wouldn’t respond. It seemed as though they couldn’t even hear me. When I couldn’t get their attention, I would start frantically trying to get someone to notice.

I would try to touch the people around me, but my hands would go right through their bodies and then the image of the person would disappear. One after another, everyone around me would disappear — until I was left all alone.

And then the place where I was — home, school, office, whatever — would start getting hazy and dark. The physical world around me would slowly disappear. I could still see my body if I looked down at myself — as though something was illuminating me — but there was no physical substance of any kind for as far as I could see.

I was in a dark void. I was all alone. Worst of all, I would always feel as though there was no other presence that I would ever experience again. I knew I would be alone forever.

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