The news used to make me sad until I realized: the people who die are no longer people. You no longer have to worry about them. You might feel bad about those who loved them. You might draw tear-jerking parallels to the lives of your own loved ones. But in the end, the poor fuckers who got blown to shit and mentioned parenthetically within a broad total are having a better time than you, fat-assed Andy Reid that you are, watching the news over a consolatory beer on your sagging couch. At the very least, they're having a less depressing time than you are.
Maybe the dead never were quite people, but rather scraps of formula in a bureaucrat's spreadsheet. To feel sadness or anger at this is trite, regrettable, and certainly not to be expressed. If the dead are Arabs, your discomfort is anti-Semitic or at the very least anti-American. If the dead are Americans, ask yourself, does the world need so many Americans? There is at least on the bright side a potential reduction in Northeast corridor rush-hour traffic.
Upon impact, the cluster bomb transforms into a beautiful butterfly.
