No More War Pigs

I saw a photograph of a father holding his baby that doesn’t have a head and I don’t know what to do. I didn’t even “like” the post so it could gain traction. Someone will notify IG that it is offensive and the photo will be taken down, but not the act itself. 

I watched our government give Benjamin Netanyahu standing ovation after standing ovation after I watched the body cam video of Sonya Massey being murdered in her home by a police officer she called for help. It was an intimate portrait of a woman afraid, she was in her nightgown in her home, making tea.

I haven’t been able to get the word “stain” out of my head for a while. I just think about how we want the world to be, a tidy sum of cause and effect, and how it truly is, messy bloodstains of history and trauma and violence we keep painting over and over, like a landlord with a window sill until you can’t open it anymore. There’s a grotesque quality to its appearance that catches the eye in its attempt to blend in. The stains are ever-present, the ones we think are long gone in the past just keep spreading. Over the past ten months I’ve heard it in regards to the genocide in Gaza, that this war is a stain on all of us. And the word has lingered, it’s made me consider what it means, how it moves, how it affects us. I can’t shake it. That’s how it works. That’s the stain.

We think the world makes sense, we use myths and religions, science and statistics, conventions and stereotypes, cards and stars—we all have our methods. In mainstream thought, we love a straight line, point A to point B. We insist upon a binary world of right and wrong, good and bad, and we don’t say black and white anymore, but really, we always do. Because a physical action has ended, people should stop being affected by it. We want time to heal all wounds, and we want that to happen fast. Victims never say that time heals all wounds. The wounds just change.

I don’t know how to remove this stain. I imagine it takes more care than we have. But we are all affected by this, even if you don’t believe it’s a problem, or think it’s your problem. The utter indifference takes its own toll. Life isn’t just a division of the people paying attention and the people who refuse to, we are all touched by humanity, and consequently, our own inhumanity. Abuse and grief, unacknowledged pain, these cannot be sequestered to the origin of their actions, the specific land it was committed on. 

I feel like I’m in danger of becoming one of those people, it’s fine that I just watched one child’s head be put in a bag and another child without a head held by their father. Another innocent Black woman murdered by the police, that’s going to happen, so what’s the point of letting it get to me. Another dead journalist in Gaza, fully designated in the PRESS hat and vest, an end to reporting and information. We either witness the horror, burned into our memories and move on, lying that it hasn’t changed us as we go about our days, or we know refuse to watch and acknowledge, always moving on.

I see, I feel how quickly we begin to accept the things we think we cannot change. I know how rapidly we have expanded our definition of what those things are. We say “it is what it is” so much in this life. If I adopt that casual mantra then I become truly powerless, instead of just feeling powerless. Because I let these motherfuckers, the architects of this violence win. I know the people who ignore it are delusional. I know that moving forward is not an option without addressing it. I almost write “fixing it,” but I know that is a problem in and of itself. 

That’s another problem, with my language and my mind, that something can be fixed. This is not about language, this is about expectations, and what we consider success to be, a tangible destination. That suddenly there’s no violence poverty hunger and war and this is the only acceptable end. If that’s not what we’re achieving, then what’s the point? And this mentality comes from a point of privilege, another either/or, one of considerable comfort with the time to wring my hands. 

What do I do? That’s my question. I know I’m writing this to push my way somewhere else, taking myself to task. The terrible is piling up, and I feel the exhaustion of acceptance knocking at the door. I can’t answer. What I know is that ignoring this stain won’t make it go away. We just get used to it, like we always have.¹

1. Any advice for actions, for what you do, is welcome in the comments. Please don’t make me regret using the word “welcome.”