A frustrating time to be alive

I read this article, I supported the Iran war. Now it’s time to find a fast way out, the other day, and I couldn’t help but wonder how this woman views war. I can’t help but wonder how most people who support war view war. I appreciated her willingness to be honest about her change of opinion, but it’s confusing to me when it comes to war. Because every war in the last 100 years has been based on a lie. So why would this one be any different?

Every war has been over control of resources or over ideology (often both). None have been necessary, legitimate, or justified in the amount of force that went into them. And this time has been no different. This time the lie was that Iran was a threat to Americans (a lie that is reused often, labeling everything “National Security” to invoke fear and justify doing something awful).

But despite the extreme risk posed by Iran, they have yet to mount even a semblance of being threatening. Closing the Strait of Hormuz, and launching missiles and drones from the ground into neighboring countries, does not count as a threat when your enemy is intercepting those missiles and drones down, flying unimpeded and dropping bombs, tracking down political and religious leaders and assassinating them, and so advanced that they can turn pagers into explosives. When the fight is that one sided, the truth should be clear.

So it’s frustrating that, despite the transparency of our wars, there are still people who believe the bullshit. It’s frustrating to hear someone say they supported the war, but, on second thought, they think it’s time to end it. End it, after day one of fighting killed 160 school girls. End it, after over 1 million people have been displaced. End it, after 31 Israelis have been killed. End it, after 3,000+ Iranians have been killed. End it, after 13 U.S. Servicemen have been killed. End it, after 1,400 Lebanese have been killed. End it because suddenly the objective is unclear, and unlike Venezuela, this one is dragging out.

We take for grated as Americans the fact that we even get to have an opinion on war. We get to debate it with our friends and family. Who’s right and who’s wrong. Who lives and who dies. What countries are ok to invade. Who’s oil, minerals, bananas, coffee, sugar, we’re allowed to steal. The privilege of watching war unfold on our screens without it ever having a direct impact on us or the people we love. Until it does. Until gas and grocery prices go up. Until we’re talking about cutting funding to Medicare and Social Security to fund war and increasing the military budget. Until we lose someone. The privilege to sit behind a computer and agree that we should start a war, and renege a few weeks later and admit it was a bad idea. Oops.

And it’s not just the author of this article. There are a lot of people who now feel the same way. And I just hope that one day they will fully appreciate the consequences of nonchalantly supporting a war. And how lucky they are that, while everyone who lost someone mourns, and the people in the line of fire live in fear, they get to go about their normal life, and debate what’s really going on. More worried about how much they have to pay at the pump, while people on both sides of the conflict are paying with their life.

Everyone gets to have an opinion, but it’s really hard when nobody forms their own opinion anymore. When people’s opinions are just the extension of whatever narrative they’re following.

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A lot of people talk about it being the best time to be alive. Maybe. For some of us, myself included, it is. But I bet the people in Sudan, Nigeria, Russia, Ukraine, Gaza, Iran, Lebanon, North Korea, and millions more, might disagree. 

But I think for the majority of us, it’s also the most frustrating time to be alive. A time when the answers to our problems have never been clearer, the knowledge never deeper, and yet, we keep pushing forward in the wrong direction.

We know that processed food is not food and is killing us, but we continue to manufacture it, promote it, and flood stores with toxic and cheap calories that are devoid of nutrition. 

We know the consequences of alcohol, but it continues to be part of every meal, celebration, and event. Alcohol brands proudly sponsor most of our professional sports teams. 

We know how addicting gambling is, but we legalize it in gamified form, and allow sports betting companies to flood our screens with relentless marketing.

We know how ineffective the judicial system is at rehabilitating people, and helping them get their lives back after prison, but we continue to lock people up, and sentence them to time in a cage. 

We know the horrors of war, and yet we continue to wage them, support them (see above), and believe in their ability to solve our problems. 

We know how important education is, and yet teachers remain one of the lowest paid professions in the nation. 

We know that food rotting in landfills is one of the major causes of methane gas in the atmosphere, and yet we don’t have a federally standardized way of composting discarded food. We just throw it in the garbage.

We know that plastics, pesticides, and chemicals, are polluting our waters, but we continue to allow their unregulated use by corporations, and we continue to allow them to be sold in stores for use by the general public. 

We know the important role that trees play in the environment, and the climate, and yet we continue to cut them down to make room for new developments, and pour concrete where vegetation used to be. 

We know that drilling for oil in the ocean disrupts wildlife, and carries of risk of causing a major oil spill, and yet we drill baby drill. 

We know how important nutritious food is for learning and development in children, and yet 14 million children remain food insecure (40 million Americans overall). If you consider the nutritional value of the food most people eat, there are probably 100 million people who are nutritionally insecure, a statistic that is not tracked but I think even more important. 

We know that most pharmaceutical drugs cause side effects that are worse than the disease they treat, and many are addictive, and that promoting and incentivizing a healthy lifestyle is the real way to treat any disease, and yet we keep prescribing and loosening the regulations that drug companies have to follow.

We know that one of the main drivers of chronic disease is living in a toxic environment, and yet we continue to poison the air we breath, the water we drink, and the food we eat.

We know that access to healthcare is something that every human should have a right to, and yet 27 million Americans don’t have health insurance, and 29 million Americans cannot afford or access quality healthcare.

These things, and a million more, are no longer debatable, and yet we debate them everyday, and waste time arguing when we could be solving problems and making progress. It is the most frustrating time to be alive. We live in an age with the knowledge and resources to make everything better, and somehow things are only getting worse.

Every Friday (today) I volunteer with an organization called Food For Thought. We pack bags of food for kids who are food insecure so that they have food to eat over the weekend. The founder spoke today about our 14th year in existence, and our growth over that time, from just 1 school to 91. To which everyone cheered and applauded. But he stopped everyone and said no, don’t clap. That sucks the fact that we’re still here doing this. It’s been 14 years and the problem has only gotten worse, not better. What the fuck are we doing?