Yes, If You are Unbothered By The State of War and Genocide –

You are a bad person.

I have oscillated in the last decade on this conversation and how to convey this appropriately to achieve the results that I desperately want from people. Re: advising that if you are okay with genocide, war, ecocide, slavery, because it benefits you (and more importantly because it doesn’t negatively impact your daily life), then by all means continue as you are – but just know that yes, it does mean that there is something profoundly wrong with you.

You are in fact a bad person.

Something has gone wrong with the wiring that makes you. And while I am certainly compassionate to the indoctrination or propaganda that has resulted in your values and beliefs being such, that compassion only extends so far. Eventually, I have to resolve to the fact that I grew up in much the same situation, and have not ended up an villain in my own story, or the stories of countless others.

I started this journey in Texas in my youth, raised in a mix religious household both Jewish and Catholic, and ultimately put in the evangelical church. I went to private collegiate schools, where I learned abstinence only education and had bible study. I watched Glen Beck for fun after school, and was a proud country music attendant. I spent my summers in the country, dreamed of owning horses, went to the stockyards, shot firearms at shooting ranges for fun, watched football on weekends, had a favorite bible, and thought that 9/11 was the most transformative moment of my life in 6th grade.

I grew up lower middle class, always knocking on the door of poverty, but never quite there. Food insecurity was always a threat, and often a lived reality – though I didn’t quite realize it until much much later. Family drama was as normal as breathing, health issues started when I was young, but medical trauma started then too.

I was sexually assaulted the first time when I was 13, the second time when I was 15, the last time when I was 19. I grew up around domestic violence proliferated in my community, and experienced emotional manipulation at its finest with the son of a political figure when I was 18. I had my first job at 14, when I worked off the books for a local restaurant, and by the age of 17 I had regularly held at least one job throughout the majority of the year both in school and not.

I went to a Baptist university, then enlisted in the US Navy, and ultimately got married at 19 to a Navy man. I spent the broad majority of my 20s being a military wife, and had no issue bending all my dreams into that of what my husband needed, and what was expected of me.

I got divorced at 28, and since then…

I have found that we are not made solely of what happens to us or the lives and lies we survive – we are far more capable of learning than most people give themselves credit for.

It was perhaps the gulf oil spill that began the journey for me, but I am not certain that I can attest to that being the moment – I can just assume. The iconography that happened that year, animals covered in oil, the videos coming from submersibles that showed crude oil spilling in great waves from the bottom of the ocean floor, the way in which the oil slick on the ocean waves, looked like a beautiful rendition of planetary death, will forever sit with me.

Inasmuch as watching BP Oil never take any real consequences from it. My first moment when I realized that corporations appeared to be more powerful than our government.

It was also coincidentally (though I don’t believe in coincidences) the year that Citizens United v. FEC changed the landscape of society forever.

While America has always been on its slide into self-implosion, it’s perhaps interesting to a select few how fast we moved from 2008 (the recession that gave rise to the foundation of CU 2010 decision, and where we are today in 2025.)

Looking back, I have tried to figure out if BP Oil was my first boycott. I think it must’ve been, but it was less a decision more just a thing I began avoiding with a silent decision whenever the option arose.

Around the Libyan conflict (re: where Obomba got his nickname…) I realized how vile the military actually was to others countries, and more importantly to civilians in countries that weren’t our own.

The intimate knowledge that I had regarding our military capability, the weight of a 2tonne bomb, the power that it had and the level of destruction that was possible… the disappointment was visceral in this president who could’ve been so much more and ended up being so much less in comparison.

There were landmark cases in my life that I remember, ones that helped to shape the foundation of the person that I have become. Hobby Lobby v. Burwell 2014, queer marriage being codified into American law in 2015, some of the largest that I remember from that era. These cases showing the disparate views and potentials of the American people.

I learned of American overconsumption, Amazon and the pee bottle controversy, Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg’s flagrant buy out of half a Hawaiian island and the privacy of American citizens that was being stripped in small ways through legislation paid for by the same man, and the impact that Gates had on philanthropy and the lack of taxes paid by the wealthy; all between 2014 – 2018.

And yet… never once did I ever hear of Palestine.

I had many conversations and studies on Africa. I could speak in depth, and vociferously on the unimaginable horrors of what Western countries had done and were doing to the beautiful people of the African nations, but I couldn’t have told you what Palestine was, or where it was on a map.

The first time that I came to know the name Palestine, was on a Philip DeFranco episode in 2022, when Journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was murdered. The images of her life, and her career, began the revolution in me.

The awareness that whatever entity would kill a journalist, would be one to not trust, was clear – inasmuch as I never connected the dots, that that entity was israel, and by proxy, America.

I learned of the Free Palestine movement, in the way that I learned of most things, social media. Instagram had some videos around this era letting me know that Shireen wasn’t the first to have been murdered overseas, but to me – it was all under the banner of “Middle East affairs,” a remnant of a chapter in my life where I thought of all foreign policy in the manner that I was trained in the military.

I never got granular unless I was educated on the topic. If I wasn’t, then it was a policy decision and while policy decisions were often not to my taste, they were ultimately out of my control.

Even so, I knew of the atrocities that happened in the Middle East, and was blessed by God to never have blamed it on Islam. It never occurred to me, to be quite honest. It was a territory issue – that was clear, but it was never religious. Which looking back, is a wild assessment for me to have come to, considering my considerable knowledge of the Biblical texts, the classical conditioning that I was raised in with the evangelical upbringing, and the Jewish family and holidays that I had been surrounded with.

God is ever the Best of Planners.

All of this to say, that I didn’t have a wealth of knowledge of Israel prior to October 2023. I didn’t have some deep knowledge of the ins and outs of the occupation state in the Middle East, to me – they were separate things, with different goals, and had no interest in one another.

How wrong I was.

It is impossible to not see what is happening now. You may’ve been able to protest some level of awareness just at the beginning of the catastrophe that we are witnessing, but in the ensuing 16 months, if you have remained ignorant, it has been willful.

And that, is rather the point that I am intending to make.

I know people of all walks of life. I know Southerners, Muslims, anti-zionist Jews, politicians, witches, small business owners, corporate businesspeople, Christians, impoverished and wealthy, people of all races, mountainfolk, surfers, islanders, and a great many more that don’t fit into easy boxes, and the reality is – everyone has some level of awareness regarding the state of the world and where we find ourselves.

There isn’t a group of people in my life that the conversation of israel, Palestine, and the Middle East doesn’t come up at least once. Part of that is certainly by design – I refused to leave this as a topic uncovered in any of my relationships, but the truth is – most people have profound feelings, and if you offer them the space, they will make their views known.

Few people are okay with what is occurring – the harsh and honest truth is that even the most burnt of rednecks, the most devout of Christians, and the most fervent of blue collar workers are experiencing a dissonance that they are struggling to reconcile in a way that allows their lived reality and the American governments support of israel to live in the same space in time.

Many people are experiencing a lack of security, both financial and physical in a way they never have before. Many people are seeing their social security disappear, their workers’ rights be stripped away, their freedoms be consumed by a government they were taught would be in their corner so long as it donned the right shade of blue or red, it is an untenable situation for many people.

That realization is coming for them faster than they can reconcile, and I believe that the government is losing a battle it isn’t taking up to fight.

However, the people that disappointment the most, the people I don’t have the tools to talk with, to sway, to bring a moral clarity to – are the liberal corporatists that are fine with their collective advantage of working in glass buildings and brunch dates on the weekends.

The people who haven’t felt the knifes edge of hunger and assault on social security nets, the people who uphold the tyranny of oligarchy with an ease of a spreadsheet on a Monday morning meeting – the people who have no desire to care about anything other than not losing the wrung on the ladder that they have crafted security holding onto.

Liberals.

In the way that a Conservative American will have no problem telling you of their racism, their bigotry, their hate – a liberal will mask all of the above with tone policed language, and academia logic that will have you wanting to punch them in the face while pulling out your own hair straight through your sheitel or hijab.

I can deal with someone who has hate in their mouths, it is easy to talk with someone who is honest in their indoctrination.

I have no desire or ability to speak with people who hide their truth in lies, and pretentious speech patterns, people whose algorithm shows them crafting videos and American propaganda while they mindless scroll past anything that would make them feel any emotion that isn’t comfortable. Who would act like they care, by donning pink pussy shaped hats, go on a march in their best ‘revolution attire’ and then go to a $50 brunch with cocktails and a movie supporting Zionist media.

If you are someone who can’t risk giving up anything so that others may have something, then you are someone who will ultimately lose everything, after others have lost their very lives.

The harsh reality, as much as you don’t want to hear it, is that you are a bad person.

If you cannot boycott, if you cannot give up coffee from a big business, or movies from a company that is pushing a Zionist hero, or food from a fast-food chain that has fed an immoral military – then you cannot be trusted.

You are not part of the community you profess to give a damn about.

It isn’t hard to not consume!!!! And while there are a vast group of people in America who are giving things up out of a desire to have a better world for all people, there are people who are having things taken from them, money out of their paychecks that stop them from being able to partake in the world in the same way.

If you are unable to see the merits in having less so that others can have more, then what the fuck is the point of your life?

Maybe you don’t believe in God, or a god at all, and more fools you to whatever you imagine will happen in your death, but I cannot imagine what a life that must be, how purposeless it must feel.

And if you do believe in a god, and you believe that wanton destruction, immeasurable bloodshed, and fervent hatred in the name of empire is what your god wants – then your god isn’t a god for which I wish to be associated.

I would challenge why you’d wish to be associated to such a god of vengeance and vile evil.

“So Be Patient for the promise of Allah certainly is true. And do not be disturbed by those who have no sure faith.” Surah Ar Rahm 60

Let’s say that it isn’t either of those things, and it’s just that it doesn’t happen to impact you. I’d challenge how you can maintain a level of ignorance that would allow you to not see the blood woven into the fabric of your clothing, the poverty in the food you eat, and souls that were spent to make the tech you desire, and the fate of the things that are left behind when you eventually die.

Do you feel like if you don’t think of your death that you don’t have to worry about what happens after?

Maybe you don’t think about what will happen to you after your death, and how lovely that life must be – but what of the things you leave behind. The ephemera of life that will be spread among the people that will mourn you, and the deleterious that will line the trash heaps of landfills in your echo.

Do you imagine that those things will cease to exist once your body departs the mortal coil?

Do you imagine that your consumption will end, when you leave the living world?

Do you imagine that the impact you had was only the impact you saw?

Do you imagine the actions you took, only had an effect on your life?

Do you imagine that you are a story outside the narrative of the world around you?

What a shame to be so singularly aware, so disappointingly boring, and so fastidiously unwilling to see the world outside of yourself.

I don’t imagine that you will care, what is another essay on the internet telling you of the ways in which you fail the society that you live in? You are living a life of lies, built upon mountains of bones, and rivers of blood – what are words to someone who doesn’t know the power of their own voice?

But, yes, it does mean that you are a bad person.

There is no equivocation, no argument, no value summation that doesn’t result in this being a truth.

If you have no moral value, or if your moral value only ends at where the impact is direct to you – then you are not someone who has a moral value worth estimating.

If your ethics only apply to that which you know, and not who you don’t – then you hold no truth ethics.

If your revolution is only in terms of what you want, and not what the collective needs – then you are no revolutionary.

You are a bad person.

Something in you is fundamentally flawed.

And while it is always possible to learn, to do, and to grow – you must start from a place of giving a damn.

Because unlearning, learning, growing, and doing, takes a level of discomfort that will only motivate you if you get out of your head and become something bigger than yourself.

If you can’t see how the poverty that impacts the south side of Chicago, the mountains of West Virginia, and the broken towns of east Texas, is connected to the heart of destruction that we see at the end of the bombs that we send to occupation states like israel, then you are perhaps willfully blind and ignorant to the reality that you live in.

Only you can open your eyes.

I pray God makes your heart soft, and your voice loud.

But if He doesn’t, then I imagine that your life will continue to be unfulfilling and your goals will always feel like they are never attainable, and your desires will always seem a bit like they are suffocating.

Because no matter what… the truth is, as much as it sucks for all of us.

If genocide, war, poverty, famine, and ecocide don’t matter to you…

You are a bad person.

x o x o - Jacks