When this reader sees bombs exploding and flames leaping across buildings and habitat for some reason I see no reason to celebrate.  “Not one American life lost” is presented as the ‘good news’, but later in the news story in the last paragraph someone always sneaks in the number of civilian lives lost.  In Venezula we aren’t sure yet but estimates are 100 lives lost. We know the astronomical numbers in Ukraine, Gaza, parts of the Middle East and Africa. For the innocent citizens we seem to use a scale of accelerating zeroes to the right (ie. 1, 10, 100, 1000, 10,000 etc). No one knows anymore what a “serious military conflict” costs in terms of the rightward shift of zeroes in civilian fatality counts.  It doesn’t help this problem when the leader buries the hidden tragic costs of military conflict under superlatives of self praise and dances his delight. Whatever good is accomplished by military our American military deserves the dignity of truth. We as a nation need know and acknowledge the courage and cost of their actions. Every single death is someone’s heart rending tragedy.  

Just as disturbing last week a young mother was fatally shot in an immigration operation. The state news network for the US started abstracting this tragedy from the moment she breathed her last. Her death initiated a desperate search for memes, and phases that could sufficiently neutralize the horror of the video evidence.  Under our current administration her tragic death joins the rightward march of the immigration operation’s zeroes of abstraction. Yes, they seem to reluctantly say in any mass roundup there will be a few innocent casualties. When the death march of the calibrating zeros to the right goes unnoticed, rest assured we have encountered evil. Not even the thin blanket of memes like “collateral damage” can cover the shape of that evil. 

Urgent Proposal for Good

Grieve all loss of life.  Reject the calibration of life’s value from the propaganda machines that churn out the material that keeps our human feeling numbed to the losses.  When a child dies, look at the child at your dinner table. The child that just died in the collapsing house was no more or less innocent or beautiful than the child at your table. When a nursing mother dies, look at the nursing mother in your immediate community caring for the infant child. The dead mother and the hapless child are a perfect mirror of the miracle in your own community. Think of your elderly parents as the news video shows the old person slipped into the anonymous body bag when they couldn’t outrun the sudden fire of the bomb in the front yard. The runaway zeroes to the right are evil propaganda and the truth of that is right in front of you in the people you live with. If the human beings who remember the value of life is beyond calibration were to vote as a block, the war games would stop and peace would break out. That would be very good.