Last night while we were consuming some relatively innocuous (read: boring) musical theater, a gunman started shooting up a bowling alley in Maine. It sounded bad, and I immediately started to think about the Pulse massacre, which happened a number of blocks from the very theater we were in. It was happening again, as it has several times since Pulse.
All I could think about was the fact that this is the only country in the world where this routinely happens. Meanwhile, people not serious about governing or public service hold our legislative body hostage in Washington.
This is on top of the bloody war in Israel and Gaza. I have a whole post written about this, but decided against publishing it, when I learned that reputable universities had students being "outed" for expressing opinions about the war, and then today another university is facing backlash from donors (and one with a particularly shitty private equity firm) and alumni for allowing diversity in opinions.
And even then, I've watched Americans try to rationalize both sides of that conflict. Here's the thing, whether you're Jewish or Muslim, of actual Israeli or Arab descent, innocent people dying in a conflict that they did not initiate is not OK. I don't want to be accountable for Trump's nonsense, so why would I hold regular people accountable for the actions of their leaders? Whether you're critical of Hamas or Netanyahu, this does not make you an Islamophobe or an Antisemite. Have we lost our minds?
I don't know what to do with any of it other than stop reading the news and just try to be a parent and get my job done.
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