Concerning

I find it concerning that not everyone is concerned with the president’s use of the word slaughter. As in, “There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end. Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left.” 

The open acknowledgement of what it really is, a slaughter, versus what it is reported to be, targeted defensive strikes, is mind blowing. But even wilder than that is the mild mannered reactions or no reaction at all from mass media and independent journalists. It’s been more of just a regurgitation of what was said, just part of the developing story.

It’s not that he’s first president to support a slaughter, we have a long history of that. In fact, my lifetime has been filled with them, and it’s likely yours has a well. And he won’t be the last. But he might be the first to call it out in real time, AND try to legitimize it as a negotiation tactic.

If you’re from the U.S. you know, or should know, that our history is littered with slaughters, although we don’t call them that. We call them wars, or operations, or conflicts. And we enter these wars, operations, and conflicts because there’s a resource we need like oil, land, labor, fruit, or rare earth minerals. But we don’t say that, we say it’s to fight terror, or free people from oppression, or stop the spread of a dangerous ideology.

Our president’s tell us we’re doing everything right, and we’re doing everything we can to stop what’s happening. And despite knowing what’s happening behind the scenes, the truth of the war, operation, or conflict, we hear those words and it gives us hope that our prayers might actually be answered, and that maybe we’re wrong. We don’t know what’s really going on.

But all hope goes out the window when the guy in charge calls it like it is, a slaughter, and no one flinches. It’s twisted, but maybe it’s what we need as a country to finally wake up. To stop believing all of the lies. To understand that when the president says “I’m doing everything I can to broker a ceasefire,” but despite his seemingly genuine intention the destruction continues, that what he’s actually saying is, “The slaughter will continue until we reach a deal.”

War good. Trump bad.

Every book or long form podcast contains at least one gem of information, new perspective, or piece of context that shines new light on an old topic. I was listening to Daryl Cooper on Joe Rogan. Daryl said, amongst many other insightful things, the reason that the youth so adamantly opposed the Vietnam war and protested against it, was because the war had the potential to directly impact their lives should they be drafted.

It was not simply a battle of ideology.

I heard that and a light bulb went off. The anti-war protests were not about saving Vietnamese lives. A group of people who in a far away land who most people had never even interacted with before in their life. It was about saving their own lives. Perhaps there was an anti-war undertone, but it was not the main motivation.

Suddenly a number of things made sense to me. Like why the U.S. government has been increasingly using military “contractors” in wars and foreign occupations. Why the military prefers unmanned drone strikes over ground invasions. It’s not because they are concerned with the loss of life, saving American soldiers. They’ve learned that when American’s are faced with the possibility of having to fight their unjust wars, it leads to unrest and protests.

Why more people aren’t outraged by the two war’s we’ve been funding over the past two years. We’re not directly impacted. Or at least we think we’re not, because we’re told we’re not.

There’s been an interesting parallel going on ever since Donald Trump’s inauguration, and the implementation of his drastic policy changes. In two months I’ve heard more complaints about Donald Trump and his policies than I heard in all four years of Biden’s presidency. This is despite the fact that under Biden’s leadership two wars broke that continue to threaten the safety and security of all those involved, and millions of people around the world as each conflict escalates.

Between Ukraine and Gaza it’s likely that at least a million people have perished. Millions more Ukrainians and Gazans have been displaced. Over $200 billion of U.S. tax payer money has been sent overseas to aid in the devastation. And yet over the course of 4 years I never once heard any unsolicited complaints about Joe Biden and his leadership. Not once.

But now I hear it about Donald Trump regularly. The cashier at the grocery store. People I volunteer with. Friends I grew up with. And everyone in between.

There’s two reasons for this. One, coverage in the media. Two, how media frames all of Trump’s policy changes. Every move he makes is covered relentlessly, and every move he makes is positioned as a threat to Americans. Tariffs. DOGE. The Department of Education. And some of it might be, although I have my doubts.

But contrast that to how the war in Ukraine and conflict in Gaza are being covered. In Ukraine we are funding a necessary war to fend off the evil Russian Empire and Vladimir Putin. In Gaza we are continuing to fight the war on terror. If we don’t fight these wars, then our freedoms, sovereignty, and safety will be in jeopardy!

Increasingly people don’t know what they believe. They are told what to believe, adopt it as their own and regurgitate it. But one thing is true. People are selfish. They care about what affects them and what’s good for them. And so as long as the media continues to tug at this string, the people will continue to support war and fear Trump.

Crazy.

U.S. and Russia Collaborate to Save Astronauts

I guess this is where it all falls apart for me. A Russian astronaut was sent to help rescue two NASA astronauts stuck aboard the ISS. Here on earth we must believe that Russia bad. But in space, we’re able to cooperate and coordinate with Russia to help bring people home, potentially saving lives.

How could there be such disconnect? How could we be fighting Russia and the Soviet Union for decades, but behind closed doors be collaborating so seamlessly for huge, high risk, missions?

It’s the same way I felt after learning that the U.S. was supported China financially and militaristically during WWII as it tried to ward off Imperial Japan. My whole life the message has been clear: China bad. But within the last 100 years the U.S. had helped China fend off an invading force. China was an ally.

It’s the same way I feel recalling that the Soviet Union helped the U.S. win WWII. But somehow we’re still fighting the Cold War.

And what all of this makes me realize is that nothing is what it seems. That if the world leaders really wanted peace and stability, then they could negotiate it. It is a reminder that we, the people who are subject to the endless rhetoric and propaganda and destruction as a result, all are really a lot closer than we’re led to believe.

It’s a reminder for what the world could look like if only these people in charge were once and for all put in their place. That during a time when the U.S. and Russia are at war that we could collaborate on such an important mission speaks volumes.

Remember these events the next time someone tells you Russia bad, China bad, Middle East bad, Everyone bad. Remember that there are people on the ground in all of those countries willing to put their life at risk to save yours.

People’s Opinions Are Not Their Own

Most people don’t even realize that when it coms to politics and world events, that is to say things to which they are not intimately involved with, that they don’t actually have an opinion. That the thing or idea they espouse to believe is just a regurgitation of what they have been told. 

How else do you explain people supporting foreign wars that kill millions of innocent people that they have never met and have never threatened them, fought in a place they have never been to?

How else do you explain why people would so easily agree to shut down their businesses, stay locked inside for months, and allow loved ones to die alone in hospitals, nursing homes, and clinics?

Would it really be the opinion of the average person that this was all ok had the ideas not been shoved down their throat?

The same goes for the love and hatred of certain political figures. How do you explain why so many people hold Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden, in such high regard, despite the fact that they have participated in genocide, overthrowing foreign governments, and the relentless bombing of foreign countries.

People hate Russia, China, and Iran, and yet most of these same people have never been to any of these countries (most of them probably don’t even hold a U.S. passport). Most of them have Russian friends, Chinese friends, Persian friends, or have met people from these countries and have never had more than a disagreement with them, and yet they believe, because they’ve been told, that these countries and the people that populate them are bad.

They view these countries as evil and cheer on any talk about destroying them. Whether it is by financial and economic ruin, or through physical aggression. They view it as just and reasonable. And they believe it is an opinion they have formed. It never occurs to them that these countries might just be filled with people similar to the ones they have known in their own lives.

It’s similar to a conversation Jen and I were having during our recent trip to Guatemala. When we told friends and family we were going to Guatemala, many of them said things like “Be careful.” “There’s a lot of crime there.” Which is the same reaction we got when we went to Mexico a year earlier.

We realized that only the people that have never visited these countries say things like “be careful,” “I wouldn’t go there,“ “couldn’t you go somewhere else.” While the people who have been to these places say things like “you’re going to love it.” “Have such a great time!” The former have formed their opinions based on what they see in the media and what they are told. The latter have formed their opinions based on real life experience. Going to a place. Seeing it with their own eyes. Meeting the people. 

I don’t really understand what it is about the human psyche that makes people want to stick their neck out for a belief with absolute certainty without actually having firsthand knowledge of it. I don’t understand how people don’t hesitate and question what they are being told, and look back to their real life experiences for the answers.

It feels like the whole world is suffering from amnesia, forgetting how many times in their lives they’ve been lied to, and how many times something they believed to be so absolutely true turned out to be so absolutely false.

It’s so frustrating to live in an age of information surrounded by people who are uninformed and unconscious, and yet hell bent on making “their” opinions heard. People who just accept what they are told, and then repeat it as if it’s facts they’ve uncovered. It’s an insane world to live in.

Some learn from history, others want to repeat it.

So often I worry if what I’m about to say is going to offend people. Then I read an article like this, “If Indians and Pakistanis Can Relocate, Why Can’t Gazans?” and I think, “I’m way too kind.”

But I think that’s the problem. The worry I feel, and other good people feel, about hurting others. Because when you’re an innately good person, hurting people is the opposite of what you do. Rather, you consistently try to shield others from harm. And you don’t discriminate. It doesn’t matter who they are. What they believe. If they are good or bad. Or whether they agree with you or not. But that’s not how the other side plays it.

The side of evil doesn’t hesitate. They don’t worry. They go straight for what they want, and they take it by any means necessary.

I do wonder how all the people who write and talk about oppressing and displacing whole populations of people would feel if the script was flipped. If they were the ones on the losing end. If their possessions, their houses, their cars, were confiscated or destroyed and they were told to never return. Go start over somewhere else. I wonder if they would say “well it happened to the Indians, the Pakistanis, the Germans, guess it’s my turn.” Or if they’d fight back. History says, they’d fight back.

But the thing that’s so curious to me about invoking such events as the Partition of India, the swap of Greek Orthodox Christians and Muslims, or the expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, to justify the displacing of people from Gaza, is that these aren’t examples to follow. These aren’t examples of a time when things turned out okay.

Rather, these are examples of what not to do. They are, or should be, reminders of atrocities invoked on innocent people that should never be repeated.

By the author’s own words he says that the Partition of India “led to some two million deaths and uprooted 18 million people.” Not ok. He goes on to say that “both India and Pakistan worked hard to integrate the new arrivals.” Insinuating that everything was peaceful from that moment forward.

He leaves out the genocide, supported by Nixon and Kissinger, that took place against the people of East Pakistan (modern day Bangladesh) just a couple of decades later, in part due to left over hostilities from the Partition. And he omits the India - Pakistan war that occurred soon after in response to the genocide, in which an estimated 2 million East Pakistanis were killed and 10 million refugees that fled to India to save their lives.

Netflix has a show out called Black Warrant (I highly recommend it). The show is based on the real life experiences of Sunil Gupta, who was a jailer in India’s Tihar prison in the 1980s. In one of the scenes a fellow jailer describes Partition and how it impacted his family.

“My dad used to say, before the Partition, we had huge, huge farms. We had to leave everything behind overnight and come to this side. So, one thing is clear to me since I was a child. The common man, Hindu, Muslim, they’re not our enemies. They suffered the same as us. You know who the real enemy is? The assholes who play these political games.” [emphasis mine]

I wonder what could drive someone to advocate for forcing people to leave everything behind, suffer, and start over. I wonder how someone could be so brazen to suggest that this as a good option, when it’s not something they would ever voluntary for themselves or their family. I can only assume that unless you’ve ever been displaced before, you have no idea what it must be like. But then again, I’ve never been displaced, and yet I know it’s not something I want to push on anyone else.

I think it requires a weak, fragile, scared, and insecure type of person to be able to overlook the devastation, loss of life, injury, and trauma being displaced causes. A desire to sacrifice others because it makes them feel safe. I think that’s the only way you could sit in a comfortable desk chair, in a temperature controlled room, typing away, and think, “Yes, this makes sense.”