I don’t like not knowing, so I watch and I read and I listen with apologetic distance from the multiple horrific epicenters of the daily news. I guess I don’t possess a nationalistic predisposition, (although I am vividly aware of and grateful for the luck of my geographical inception), so I don’t find myself siding with or hungering for the annihilation of groups of organized or otherwise connected factions of the oppressed or the oppressing in the name of one cockamamie cause or another. It’s all historically pointless anyway. No good comes from the escalated surge of testosterone that leads to the ‘bar fight’ mentality that tilts our good nature, the inbred capacity to love one another, toward our hormonal inhumanity. That’s not to say that I don’t want to hold the inciters, the button pushers and the indiscriminant bomb lobbers accountable and permanently, even with prejudicial extreme, banned from pissing in the gene pool. But, as our ability to attack, game-like, with lethal drones and other robotic devises, by firing ordnance seven miles into the sky to obliterate 298 unsuspecting and blameless souls and to retaliate against such cowardly aggression despite the awareness of “acceptable”, innocent casualties, we have allowed our humanity to atrophy. For those of us not in harm’s immediate vicinity, as heartfelt and sincere as our empathy may affect our moral footing, the story or the video post, the sounds and the fury are too fleeting in import or outrage as replacement atrocities pop daily to the fore. I watch the wailing and inexplicable heartache of the parents and loved ones of the fallen and it’s the same for everyone, everywhere. Why can’t we stop?