Call a spade a spade

I watched a legacy media news program while I ate my breakfast this morning. During the hour with Margaret, I listened to the same wordplay I’ve heard from past administrations (this time obscuring extraordinary crimes, I suspect), I questioned the merits of the next big, beautiful bill with a congressman in the know, and I was updated on the war in the Holy Land. Over eggs and rice I watched a short clip of a five-year-old child on the street openly grieving the loss of her entire family. They were killed by a rocket, she said. I felt the familiar tightness I feel whenever a child cries, so often I numb to it. This time I called it what it was: heartache. Suddenly, instead of sharing agony with the child on screen, I felt anger toward the f*ckers who allow it. Not the accelerated heart rate, breath-catching, pen-throwing kind of anger, the anger that gets sh*t done. I thought to myself, finally.

Each week I sit down at my laptop with an intention to write about the war and each week I feel unqualified. Is there anything I could type that would help the situation? I only know what the nightly news tells me which is awful enough. I don’t seek out the history of the conflict, or the specifics of each attack. Was there really a leader hiding out in that school? How about the makeshift hospital? Was it defensively necessary to decimate the library? I have no way of knowing from my armchair, but I still ache to ease the suffering. What can I do from my home of comforts with it’s fridge full of food? I can call my representatives and ask them to do their job. I can scream in the streets until I am hoarse. I can send dollars. I can type these words here. I can be grateful. I am.

I’ve listened to the absurd narratives spun around what it means to be humanitarian. How is it defined? I am particularly disturbed by hunger. The solution is so simple. I am embarrassed we haven’t implemented something humane. It’s insulting how brazenly they cast “distribution sites” like lures for the starving so they can clear the desperate from land they’d like to claim. Is that called aid or strategy?

Thankfully, I am an American citizen so I can’t be arrested for dissent of my government, that goes against everything we stand for. I do dissent, for the record. I feel ashamed of my country’s role in the barbarism. I feel frustrated by my spineless leader who seems to only listen to the devil on his shoulder. I suspect his angel quit long ago, or maybe she was canned. I felt sick hearing him speak about the country as if it were an investment property in his personal portfolio. Now, he’s biding his time until he can fly over to cut the ribbon with a malevolent smile and clean hands. Are they really that small or are the scissors novelty? He won’t give a second thought to the blood spilled and children starved. How can I hope to convince a man like that? No really, I’m asking.