In dehumanizing Gaza children, we dehumanize ourselves
More than 10,000 Gaza children have died in six months of war.
They are being killed by our 2,000-pound bombs, by Israeli Defense Forces tanks and snipers and by man-made famine.
But, really, they are being killed by us — by our silence, our self-censorship, our double standards and the selectivity of our empathy and outrage.
They are dying because we go about our daily routines while they are orphaned, while their limbs are amputated without anesthesia, while their broken bodies bleed out in the rubble.
They are dying because we won’t call a war in which children account for four in 10 deaths by its true name.
They are dying because we are content for them to be killed with our weapons in our name, and we choose not to know their names.
In dehumanizing the children of Gaza, we dehumanize ourselves.
STEVE BABB, LAWRENCEVILLE
Trump is more Shakespearean melodrama than tragedy
Maureen Dowd’s April 14 column (“Trump speaks the language of tyrants”) pointed out parallels between blood imagery in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” and blood-soaked rhetoric at former president Donald Trump’s rallies. An additional overlap occurs to me: In desperation, both tyrants refuse to face facts. Macbeth shouts, “Bring me no more reports,” when a servant reports that Birnam Wood is coming to his Dunsinane Castle. When Trump hears he has lost Georgia, he tells Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find 11,780 votes.
A major difference, however, exists between the Scottish king and the former president. Near the end of Shakespeare’s play, after learning his wife has just died, Macbeth describes his life as “a tale told / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury / Signifying nothing.” He acknowledges a painful insight.
Trump shows no such humility or conscience, which places his story closer to the melodrama of “Richard III” than the tragedy of “Macbeth.”
BILL BROWN, ATLANTA
