No American should be overly upset by this, one would have to reluctantly agree, particularly since there’s nothing anyone you or I know who can do anything about it.    The old prayer about having the serenity to accept the rape and murder of children if you can’t do anything about it comes to mind.  

In war civilians die, we now call it ‘collateral damage’ instead of murdered children, old people, regular law-abiding citizens.  ‘Collateral damage’ is so much more comfortable than ‘slaughtered civilians’, it’s just one of those inevitable, collateral things, right?

The current president, a man-child whose entire philosophy of life is “winning”, whatever that means and whatever means must be taken to achieve that ephemeral goal,  dropped the “mother of all bombs” on a section of Afghanistan the other day.  The GBU-43 Massive Ordance Air Blast, the largest non-nuclear bomb in the American arsenal, a giant weighing 21,600 pounds, the equivalent of  eleven tons of good old fashioned TNT, has a blast radius of one mile.  It creates a fire storm that sucks the oxygen out of the air in the blast zone.

The coverage of the bombing in the mainstream media, like the media’s reaction to the recent telegenic night-time cruise missile strike on the Syrian air field, has been one of almost unanimous praise.   We are asked by wealthy talking heads to see such violence as bold, decisive and ‘presidential’.   Here is a wonderfully modest quote from the man himself, “very, very proud” of the military might he manfully unleashed against America’s godless enemies:

One tremendous difference is the dramatically increased number of dead civilians since this decisive new leader has taken over.  The dropping of the “mother of all bombs” follows the worst month for collateral damage in Syria and Iraq.  In March 2017 more than a thousand collateral damage losers were inadvertently taken off the books by the good guys due to the increased ferocity of a military unleashed by the candidate who won applause for vowing to “bomb the shit” out of those murderous fuckers who hate our freedom.  

Of course, you’re right, this is all very depressing and there’s not much any of us can do about it.   In a more decent world, we would be shouting, and marching, and calling our representatives in Congress (not that most of them are in a position to do anything, unless they’re members of the Grand Old Party that repudiated this current president, before his historic victory).  This is not a more decent world.  

At a time when this new administration is furiously turning the clock back to the good old days of segregation, women knowing their place, coal mining, no questioning of authority, no regulation of the environment, no government interference with employment, health, education or welfare, the open rule of the wealthiest citizens and our most powerful corporations, well, who could blame us for not getting worked up about a thousand more or a thousand less anonymous foreign dead in an area where a million or more have become collateral damage since our leaders launched their endless, heroic wars in the Middle East fifteen years ago?   The ingrates don’t even seem to appreciate the freedom we have brought them.  SAD!