A mother white dove mourns the senseless death of those who die in conflict and violence, civilian and soldier alike; the loss of the futures that could have been; and the oft-repeating interment of peace.

This is a pretty hard Memorial Day to swallow. America’s first Memorial Day after the end of the War in Afghanistan, a war that lasted ten years longer than it should have; and two recent massacres in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas. Combine them with leaders at every level of government who pay lip service to ending violence but are too financially beholden to arms manufacturers to do anything about it, and you start to see why people like me question the claim that America is a liberal representative democratic republic. And with the Russo-Ukrainian War raging for the past several months, it’s easy to lose hope; I myself am rather cynical and pessimistic to begin with. But we can do something: pressure. If, as stated above, America is the liberal representative democratic republic it paints itself as, then we can and should put social and political pressure on our leaders to implement the changes we the people want. Protest at their offices and, if need be, their homes to force them to do their jobs. If after all that they refuse to listen, and especially if they resort to siccing the police on people practicing their right to assemble and petition their leaders, then we boot these guys out at the ballot and whoever we replace them with we keep up those same pressures to do their damn jobs for us.