With the assassination of Khashoggi, and public statements by our president and his cabinet comes a brutal realization that the cheapness of human life has found it's way into mainstream thinking. I've been fortunate to have traveled a lot and one thing I've always held close about this country is that life was valued in a way that it wasn't in some other places. I'm afraid that even that token thought is gone now.
And it's not that this president has introduced anything new - we have valued money over human life for a long time. We did so quietly.We did it by robbing money from social security, by allowing "pre-existing conditions", by not funding public healthcare, welfare, education. By waging wars. By encouraging people to eat a double serving. By giving tax breaks to the wealthy and denying care to the poor. We did by allowing multinationals dictate environmental rules. But these are all "slow moving things". They don't grab the news cycle the same way.
Khashoggi is a shock because of the brutality it highlights in the light of day. The reality is that as brutal as the murder was, the reason it is in debate is the shock value. And by saying this, I'm not trying to take away from the value of Jamal Khashoggi's life - I weep for him and his family - it's more to say, these decisions are made every day, more subtlety.
By all means, please, please be appalled by what happened to him. But in your day to day, remember, this is being done to us - and to the ones we love, by us. The only way we change that is to change how we live and what we demand from ourselves, our society and our leaders. And we need to demand a hell of a lot more.
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