Take Up Our Quarrel With The Foe

When tragedy strikes, what's the first thing you absolutely have to know? First, obviously, is exactly how much money and energy a cable news outfit has devoted to a kick-ass graphics department and timpani drums.

Second, where all the victims fit in the hierarchy of international who-gives-a-shit.

-Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappears. Three Americans lost, including two Baby-Americans, plus probably other people.

-Tsunami in 2004 kills around 230,000 people, and especially 33 Americans.

-Malaysia Airlines (seriously, again) Flight MH17, some number of Americans killed between 1 and 23, depending (for a few hours at least) on your party affiliation. Obama's perceived level of outrage only applicable to this number, whatever it happened to be. Not that interesting in the context of the larger human tragedy involving 280+ foreigners, possibly shifty-eyed ones (again, depending on your party affiliation).

-Japan suffers tsunami/earthquake/nuclear-meltdown triple whammy. Americans killed: PROBABLY ALL EVENTUALLY.

-9/11/01, 2,977 killed, all automatically American. Not killed? Our freedom.

-9/11/12, 4 Americans died in Benghazi which, if you're the president, is enough to get people whispering about impeachment. Crazy people, so more of a muttered self-directed monologue, but still, the word was used. "If our government knows who perpetrated the attack that killed four Americans, it is critical that they be questioned and placed in custody of US officials without delay," scary bigface U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa said. "Delays in apprehending the suspected Benghazi killers will only put American lives at further and needless risk."

So what's the point? The point is that like any good citizen, I learn what I need to know about what's important between short films about the implied virility-making powers of light beer and, not ironically, old couples painting a fence to mid-tempo soft jazz under a softly voiced recitation of the possible side-effects of ED medication. Even before and after the ascent and decline of cable news, from all other sources, I know that when death happens, anywhere in the world, the first thing I'm going to know is how many Americans it killed. And if the number is large enough or if the context can be bent into something politically opportune, the point will be reinforced as it is forged into either policy or (100% more likely) some high-production-value political theater.

The lives of Americans are precious. They're the most important thing. If you're reading USA Today the day after the tsunami killed literally hundreds of thousands of people, the lede is going to include the number of Americans. Because why else would you bother to care? Those aren't the important ones. The Americans... they have names we recognize and hometowns that look like our hometowns and middle class aspirations and shared values.

Unless... the American dies in America? At the hands of another American? And is male? And is black? Now we have controversy?

Trayvon Martin. Michael Brown. Tamir Rice. Eric Garner.

If they'd gone down in a plane or were blown up by a bomb in a nightclub in Bali we'd get some non-partisan candlelight vigils for them and soft-focus retrospective TV news features starring slow-zooming close-ups of smiling photographs accompanied by tinkly piano music. They'd be the most important thing: dead Americans. The only thing worth taking notice of in a world full of news.

Instead, nah, hang on. These ones we have to talk about.

When I see the protests, though, even though nobody is saying it directly that I've seen, this is the central point the protesters are trying to remind us of: these are Americans. And American lives matter. Before I give in to despair over the polarization, I remember: as long as there have been Americans, there have been those of us willing to risk all, to arrive, to fight and to die to win the dignity and safety of their countrymen that those protesting may already comfortably and presumptively enjoy, without regard to the idiot visual shibboleth of racial commonality. As horrible as it all is, has been and will continue to be, there's palpable evidence that we--the sane and unafraid--are winning. But as fast as it's coming, it will never be here fast enough.