My uncle was blown off a destroyer in the Pacific in World War II. He clung to debris. The Japanese did not go back to kill him.
On Sept. 5, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order changing the name of the Defense Department to the Department of War. Was this another of his crazy notions thought up in the middle of the night, when “normal” people are sleeping, but he is not, manically posting and re-posting a steady stream of vitriol? Trump says that this change was meant to send a signal to our adversaries that America is willing to wage war to secure its interests. So it follows that Pete Hegseth is no longer the Secretary of Defense. He is the Secretary of War.
In September of this year, 2025, Trump’s administration began blowing up vessels in the Caribbean Sea. The claim was that this was a mission to fight maritime drug trafficking in Latin America to the United States. In October, strikes expanded to include the Eastern Pacific Ocean.
With these actions, Trump and company unilaterally declared war against Mexican and Venezuelan drug cartels without authorization from Congress.
The story of Sept. 2, 2025 begins with our military blowing up a 39-foot, commercial fishing boat. In the wake of the attack, waving frantically, two survivors clung to the burning boat. Their waves have been interpreted, by some of a select group of legislators from both the House and the Senate who have viewed the video, as either calling out for help or trying to fend off a second strike. A “double-tap” attack followed killing both men.
Sympathy is feeling for another person. Empathy is feeling with another person. With empathy we understand and share, “step into the other’s shoes,” so to speak, to feel what they feel. It is more than just feeling sorry for them.
In our brains there are actually “mirror neurons” which fire both when we act and when we see someone else act. In other words, when our empathy spurs us to action to help another person those “mirror neurons” create the basis for a shared feeling. Thus rests our humanity.
I think the risk is that, after 10 years, we are in danger of becoming, or have already become, numb to the atrocities committed by Trump et al. I fear our humanity is slipping away, our grasp becoming weaker and weaker and weaker.
My uncle was blown off a destroyer in the Pacific in World War II. He clung to debris. The Japanese did not go back to kill him. I need to hold on, hold on tight to the belief that our shared humanity saved him.
Barbara A. Rouillard of Springfield in an award-winning writer. She is politically active in her community.