Image by Andreas Fickl.

I sit here at my desk, looking out the window – and see someone walking through the parking lot. This is the most ordinary of moments. I shrug quietly. Life goes on.

My impulse is to stop writing the column here. That’s it. Nothing more to say. Life is totally fine and civilized and I’m here in the middle of it, growing old but giving no thought whatsoever to the darkness that lurks at humanity’s margins. Sure, the news covers that stuff, but what do I care? Things are fine where I live.

But the darkness tugs. I read the news. I know that hell consumes parts of the planet and certain lives have no safety – no value – whatsoever. Here’s a recent New York Times headline, as ordinary as the fact that someone was walking through the parking lot outside my window:

“U.S. Military Kills Another 6 People in 5th Caribbean Strike, Trump Says.”

Well, so what? They were transporting drugs. “The military has now killed 27 people as if they were enemy soldiers in a war zone and not criminal suspects. . . .”

Minor news, right? But consider the complexity of the context that emerges from these words. The story is critical of Trump for bombing boats and claiming without evidence that they were transporting drugs meant to be sold to Americans. But there’s a quiet assumption here. By........

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