"To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger." —James Baldwin

An aerial photo shows rectangular tracings etched into dirt, one rectangle after the other, creating a grid across the land. A yellow excavator pulls piles of earth out from within the rectangular lines until each rectangle is six feet deep, then it moves onto the next. Men jump into the graves and shovel out what the excavator couldn’t reach. We don’t know if these men are the ones burying their own daughters, or if they knew the girls at all. But in my mind, I think they do—maybe they’re the uncles or the older brothers, and I hope to God it isn’t their fathers having to do something so devastating.

Wars have existed throughout all of human history, and this isn’t the first time hundreds of graves have been dug at once. I do wonder, though, if I were born in another time, if I would have seen such an image. The only thing I can be sure of is the reason why I saw the picture in the first place.

My country bombed a girl's elementary school. My country killed around 160 girls in an instant. My country is the reason that the men and women who loved those little girls have to pull their severed, bloody limbs from the rubble; find their backpacks covered in blood; and bury them forever. Then people like Karoline Leavitt, who will be remembered forever for being the spokeswoman for the human meat grinder, will refer to the mass slaughter as “propaganda” when asked about it. Then, we all go to work on Monday instead of setting the world on fire—like nothing ever happened. Like 160 girls’ lives weren’t extinguished while neocons and liberals alike justify regime change on the basis of state-sanctioned violence against women. Have we not all been here before?

When people are being gunned down in the street for resisting immigration raids, and environmental activists are shot execution style in the woods—to be committed is to be in danger.

This carnage is not new to anyone who’s been paying attention. The protests in response to President Donald Trump’s war on Iran were small, and I would be lying if I said it didn’t depress me. Have we all gotten so used to this? Did seeing the videos of children broken to pieces in grocery bags or hanging from their own intestines from the sides of destroyed buildings in Gaza wear down our nerve endings? As time goes on, and the depravity continues, are we more content with our lives if we ignore our own humanity?

Ultimately, and this may be for my own sanity, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not because Americans do not care about the slaughter being carried........

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