So much waste. This evening I read a National Geographic article about feeding the world's population. In America we struggle, but millions of loaves go stale and then go in the dumpster. In Egypt they pass out government-subsidized bread and in Eritrea they starve. And by no fault of their own. How can they plant in arid, war-torn lands? In India they have bread but also cancers from the fertilizers and pesticides that run from the wheat fields, into canals, into thirsty mouths. Die by malnutrition and starvation or by painful disease? Tough call.
My relatives started arguing over the war. So much money wasted on new technology and so little spent on veterans. One relative kept saying 'we should have blown the whole darn country up'. I wanted to ask her which exactly she meant but she's vengeful and likely without answer, feeling that all nations with a majority of devout Muslims is just one big evil stain. We've wasted enough lives ('casualties', they call them. What a disgusting euphemism) as it is. How can you not care that people over are people? We're just people over here. That's all. Nothing makes us any more special or deserving though that's what we're brought up to believe. It gives us no right to live while killing others and thinking it just.
Someone chuckles and says they're glad at least they go to bed feeling safe at night, as if they would ever not be. I doubt many consider how others feel as U.S. bombs drop on their neighbors homes in the soiled name of democracy and so-called peace. They discuss the UT tower shootings in the 60s. They shake their heads over the 15 killed that day. I don't think they even consider how many died in Afghanistan under U.S. fire just a couple days ago.