My son’s kindergarten friends pretend that things are bombs. Muffins, rocks, lumps of clay, snow balls. These kids might hear the word “bomb” 100 times in any given week, if their parents play the radio or TV news. On 6 PM TV, bombings look like a few soot-covered survivors, a frantic ambulance, then some funerals. The family watches TV and then the the kids go play. They throw bombs, laugh, test their imagination, blow things up. And the parents say nothing. It’s just child’s play. It means nothing.
I watched unedited footage of the aftermath of a bombing in Gaza this morning. I’ve seen this sort of thing on video before. No one, seeing this reality, would let the word “bomb” slip from their child’s smiling mouth again. “Bomb” would be seen as a disease of their child’s mind and the bloody, full-throated roar of hell-on-earth.
But ignorance and innocence are at odds. Parents’ ignorance kills the child’s innocence, like a slow, defiling explosion; not shredding, but corroding them away, sound bite by sound bite, giggle by giggle, silence by silence, as the war toys fly.
Unending vigilance. Fight militarized culture. Fight mass culture. Make your kids hate you, if that’s what it takes. Go down swinging.
