Reckoning With Their Deaths
This morning, I awoke to nothing.
It was silent. No birds chatter, no dogs signaling, no machines roaring. It was silent, save for the sound of my breathing and the pounding of my heart. Already, I was awash with fear. A fear born of the daily push me pulls and my battle to not assimilate this new way of living. It is a weariness that hangs. It makes itself known. And yet, I push on. Life’s projects.
I am up. I am safe in my home, confident that no bombs will rain down on it. My home is warm. I have food. I’m with my beloved. Simple, yet vital life-sustaining resources.
As I write, there are millions of people on our planet for whom such resources are scarce or don’t exist. It is the stuff of life. It is not unusual, so why bemoan it?
“You must compartmentalize.” “You cannot stop living.” “Life goes on.” I hear echoing within me.
This period has a hook on me. One that I have not been able to unhook from, nor do I want to unhook from.
“But this is not the worst time in history,” is an uninteresting claim. This is the time in history now; in itself, it is sufficiently terrible.
That I am attuned to this particular time is the result of many factors, amongst them the context in which I live. When the dangers are pressed close to one’s vicinity or skin, they cease to be merely theoretical. States have always inflicted violence on their people – the ones that, by their lights, transgress their dictates.
Post–Civil Rights era USA has not, however, been awash with state-sanctioned deliberate, ostentatious, unapologetic enactment of violence, not only on actual transgressors, but anyone who may be a transgressor. Even in the USA, where practicing race is a pillar of the social and moral order, racialized white people are not safe. Comeuppance might be yours if your voice or words are judged problematic by the regime. The odds of retribution increase if, instead, you are in the streets attempting to hold back creeping and actual infringement of laws.
What is becoming sedimented in our system of governance has been the case for many people around the world. Out of its deeply dark history, the United States emerged with scars that never fully calloused over, but this period marks a striking shift on a perilous path. Knowing that people have always had such experiences was a matter of history and theory. Those theories are now reality in the USA, en masse.
The regime has a vision of the order of things. He and they, his enablers and foot soldiers, know what is best for the USA and the world. We citizens, are all under their command. The system of governance, which functioned horizontally, now has a vertical structure, with the leader of the world at the top. He alone seemingly decides legal, economic, immigration, health, education, and now war policies.
The people who woke this morning in Iran, Israel, and the countries in the paths of the wrath of men do not welcome the dropping of weapons that are ripping bodies and burying them with concrete. They sought change, to live as they wish, to have the fists of their overlords removed, but not via their own deaths. Americans would not welcome the deaths of 168 of their children with glee. Americans would not be open and welcoming to bombs bearing down on Washington DC in the service of rescuing us. Our context is ours, and for many of us, we do not welcome it. We want change, but not with our deaths.
For too long, I have been well with the goings on over there. I was wrong. For too long, the distance made it less real. I was wrong. I have been rubbernecking, I’ve looked, I’ve been moved. But I’ve moved on. I was wrong.
To the long list of people-murdering projects – Sudan: 400k since 2023, Myanmar: at least 10k, Russia/Ukraine: 400k to 1.5 million since 2022, and Gaza: around 72k – the regime decided to add more people and more deaths.
The regime’s war issued in a cacophony of events that have swelled the death registry in the wider Middle East. The numbers are increasing. In Iran, 1000+ human beings, of which at least 168 were children. Poof! In Israel, at least 11 more, gone. Lebanon, it’s 200 plus. For the USA, 6 people. All those lives, gone.
The regime’s reason for this war at this time is not constant, but I am certain that they believe that all those deaths, with more to come, will be for a better world. No other method could bring about that better world. When they arrive at that better world, by dint of the Leader’s will, they will say, “Those people sacrificed their lives.” They will not say “We killed those people to get what we wanted.”