Things that make me sad

I was (finally) reading my copy of the August issue of Glamour magazine. (YES, I AM fully aware of what month it currently is. ... I've just been busy and reading BOOKS that are due at the library in the meantime.)

And, in this issue, is a story of a hospital in the Congo. Where Dr. Denis Mukwege treats all these women who've been raped by soldiers in the civil wars going on there.

There are NINE YEAR OLD GIRLS who've been gang-raped. There's a woman whose brother was beheaded IN FRONT OF HER because he WOULDN'T rape her for the soldiers. She had to ingest his waste products and eat the flesh of a child ripped from its mother's womb by these soldiers.
There's a woman who, after being raped ... the soldier fired his rifle up her vagina.

I ... how can we as human being DO this to one another?

People in the Congo are making sure that the gorillas are being protected.
But when they are asked "Are you doing anything to protect these women?" ... They have no answer ... It doesn't even really occur to them.

Sex, a thing which is sacred and beautiful ... an act to show love and communion ... is being used as a cheap weapon of hate and terror.

These women are being raped in front of their families. Their poor husbands often cannot deal with this. They are forced to be helpless, they can't protect their loved ones. The children ...

I ...

I often am far too guilty of staying in my own little bubble of my world. I live in my little house, watch my children, read comics and celebrity gossip and emails from my friends on the internet ...
I've grown complacent. I like to think that the world is a good place. That things are all right.

But they are not.

Things like this should NOT happen. They should NEVER happen.

Michael and I talk about proper punishments for sex offenders here in this country. I would say that they should be castrated ... however, that wouldn't solve the problem. Truly, near-total dismemberment might be an option. And they can pull themselves along the dirty streets like the maggots that they are. (Oh, and when I say dismemberment, I include the tongue in the list of body parts to lose. Yes, I AM that vicious. Don't mess with me, 'kay?) ... Kind of like Wesley's "To the pain!" in the Princess Bride. ("My God! What is that thing??") That could work.
Michael would like to see them parachuted to some island commune in the middle of nowhere. (You don't have to die, but you can't stay in any community where you can harm someone innocent.)

I do check the National Sex Offender website. I try not to worry when I'm emailed (since I'm signed up to receive emails when offenders move in or out of the community) that offenders are moving in.
I try to memorize their faces from the grainy mug shots ... try to read between the lines and see what their preferred victim type is ... would I need to protect Bucket or Bruise ... or myself.
I think about investing in pepper spray. In moving somewhere else. I thank my lucky stars that one of our neighbors is a retired policeman.

I know that I can't live me life in fear about things that might never happen. But I want to protect my family ... to avoid the bad things. To keep my children from experiencing anything that I might never be able to forgive myself for not keeping them safe enough, close enough.

I miss being a child in a small town. I was carefree. We didn't lock our doors. Not even our cars when we went shopping (well, not in town. When we went to bigger towns, yeah ... but not in our town. Now I make sure that our doors are locked at night. We lock the cars all the time. ... When did the world stop being a safe place?).

Would I be happier if I hadn't read the article in Glamour? If I hadn't been reminded that the world is NOT a fairyland full of candy and sparkles and fun?
If the only things I had to worry about were paying the bills, getting the dishes sparkling, the clothes clean and sweet-smelling, educating the kiddos before they hit public school ... and when to visit family and friends?

I might ... but it's not like even then I'm not aware of bad things ... like my friend's brother being murdered. My hometown and the surrounding boonies are supposed to be SAFE, dammit. People aren't supposed to go to parties and go missing and be dead.

Of course, people aren't supposed to go in for heart surgery and end up dying because a doctor didn't do everything right. Surgeries are supposed to GO RIGHT so that your great-grandchildren meet you.

...

...

In other news, I'm voting for Oregon's Measure 50 (the one about raising the cigarette tax to cover healthcare [primarily children's healthcare] and smoking cessation programs. If you've looked at who's for it and who's against it ... well ... Big Tobacco's the one pushing for it not to pass. They'll be losing lots of current and NEW smokers. Smoking will be a real luxury, not so commonplace.

Yeah, Big Tobacco, I'm against you. Going after children with your Joe Camel, putting additives in your tobacco to hook people more, killing my Pop-pop before I ever got pregnant so there was no chance that he'd get to meet or hold his great-grandchildren.
You're going down.

And I'll be laughing to myself all the time I'm voting.
Because I don't respect nor like you one bit. And I'd love to see your companies fold, fold, fold and fade away.

You want me to like you?
How's about you use some of that $10 billion you've spent on advertising against measure 50 and solve some problems like genocide and rape or something.

I would start to respect you.

You could at least do like ten thousand kiva.org loans.
It'd be cool. Nerdfighter-esque, even.