Your Tax Dollars Help Starve Children

That was the headline in yesterday’s Sunday Review of the Times for an article by Nicholas Kristof about the war in Yemen.  In the last three years, approximately 85,000 kids have died.  85,000.  That three-year-old war is mainly the responsibility of Saudi Arabia.  Which nation is the number one backer of Saudi Arabia?  Which nation supplies it with most of its weaponry?

I think you know.

And that is the problem with living in a “democracy.”  The government acts in our name.  If we lived in the Philippines, or in Turkey, or in Pakistan, we could sleep at night, knowing that our government did not represent us, and the evils it did were beyond our control.  Unless we wanted to make a public statement and then get arrested and jailed, and perhaps killed, government policy was unaffected by what we did.

But we live in a “democracy.”  Government acts in our name.  When kids are taken from their parents at the border, that is on us.  When Saudi Arabia fights with American weapons, that is on us.  When the U.S. pulls out of the Paris Climate agreement, the government is acting on our behalf.  

That is the trouble with living in a “democracy.”  We don’t really get to make the policy, but supposedly we do, and the government is acting in our name.  

So in the last three years 85,000 children have died in our name.  And I don’t have the slightest idea what to do about it.  Maybe go to the mall and buy something and watch Fox News and congratulate ourselves that we live in the best country on the planet.