When all media and entertainment is awash with stylized and glamorized violence, it’s the cruelest of ironies that the current U.S. administration so agressively supresses access to photos of American Military casualties and fatalities. Only marginally less supressed is access to photos of Iraqi casualties and fatalities; this probably just because of the comparative excess supply of the latter.
We all need to talk to our kids openly about war– that rarely, after every possible avenue of de-escalation had failed, rarely but stoically must we prosecute or propagate war. And allow our kids to see that the chaos we’ve instigated and perpetuate in Iraq is not a morally-justifiable spoiling of lives– this includes allowing them to see photos of soldiers’ Flag-draped coffins–(warning: shows actual GOP-Spec Flag Draped Coffins). We as parents, favorite aunties and tattooed uncles, neighbors and educators need to listen to what our kids themselves say about war, their fears, and confusions. We need to carefully (some say prayerfully) consider our answers and actions, to take a deep breath before lighting a fuse. We need to acknowledge and integrate our own fears in order to obliterate feelings of paralytic hopelessness.
And there’s good news!– we must also let them see that there is good news! The Real Grown-Ups are here now to set some limits and enforce loving discipline. The adult-bodied toddler-tantrums that are the current Administration have been up for days without nap-time, and they’re more than a bit cranky.
It’ll take actual hard work (and Government-employee medical insurance may not cover it), but as soon as the Real Grown-Ups have helped these sadly traumatized, primal beings get some lasting Psychological help, everything really will get better. Then, eventually they’ll be fit to stand trial and answer to the crimes they did indeed commit; at least, the ones for which they are a-judged mentally competent to face. The lessons of Action and Consequence can require repetition to learn, and some pupils just are slower than others. As Progressives and Liberals, we’ll do our best to help them, too.
We were taken into an ill-defined and therefore un-winnable war in Iraq for reasons that defy any justification under the most elementarily and universally-understood ideals of humanity. As of this minute, it’s cost us almost 3000 soldier’s lives– your relatives, your buddies, your spouses, your kids and your neighbors’. If you live in a rural part of America, the odds go WAY up that you and your family’s lives and livelyhoods have been torn directly by tragedy stemming from this cynical, strictly-cash-driven debacle which is still being sold as ‘the Central Front in the War On Terror’ –spewed from every fetid orifice of GigantoMediaGlobal and their CloneBot media mercenaries, er, Private Contractors in Conservative Talk audio-visual.
Our kids need to see that the Real Grown-Ups can spot a fib, and that eventually, the parasitic Imaginary Friends need to excised to give the child the freedom to become a Real Grown-Up.