Infinity and Other Small Victories

Today, while eating breakfast, my elder brother thought it acceptable to spark a political conversation..
By conversation, I mean a one sided affair in which he spouts his beliefs on foreign and domestic policy, my mother placates him, and I fight the urge to regurgitate my cereal back into the bowl-either from disgust, laughter, or an unpleasant combination of the two.
This particular morning he began by stating that the U.S. should blow North Korea off the face the earth. His justification being that they are planning to do the same to us, so we should beat them to it.
When I questioned his right to make a judgement involving the loss of thousands of human lives, his response was simply: “survival of the fittest.”
Initially he seems like someone genuinely concerned for the well-being of his country, until he then asserted that those in the U.S. who are fighting for equal marriage rights, should abandon their efforts, because “gay rights won’t matter” when D.C. is just a leaky hole in the Atlantic coast.
Now keep in mind that he is not by any means verbose or poetic. This most likely contributes to my inability to respect most of his opinions, which are fundamentally ridiculous no matter how they are presented.
My mother added that North Korea is lead by a lunatic, and that the people there live in dirt and squalor.
I offered that just because someone else is a dumb ass, an asshole, or a lunatic, does not mean that you or I should be one, too. Perhaps the people in our country who are “wasting their time” fighting for human rights want to spend the time between now and our imminent destruction bettering themselves and their society. Perhaps the only reason these people would be “wasting their time” is because of people like my brother, who value a proverbial American “pride” more than a human’s right to live, whether in the dirt or in the arms of the person they love.

If nuclear war does erupt and our country sustains damage, I foresee that we will endure. Not because of our will to seek revenge, but because of our will to seek a better world. We have learned in the past that sacrificing innocent lives to save our own may be a source of great shame. I hope that my brother’s mentality does not prevail. I hope that enough citizens of the United States have learned the value of preserving human life.

They say write what you know, 

but at what cost?

It is those things most worth a show

that others wished forever lost.

(I mean this sincerely, rhyme just makes it worth the woe)