...and You Think You Have It Tough?

The news seems to be, invariably, bad these days: government "spying" on us...political parties refusing to discuss any ideas to end partisanship...immigration laws being pooh-poohed...shootings nearly every day claiming multiple lives...it all seems like our country has lost its rudder, and we are merely going downward in a spiral that will end badly: and not at all funny like the latest movie concerning the end of the world.
And yet, despite all the horror we feel is being inflicted upon us, I'd like to point out that we're not in Taksim Square in Istanbul, mired in the Arab/Israeli conflict, or worse yet, in Syria. Thousands die every week there, but none more terrible, I think, than the way Mohammad Qataa had his short life cut even shorter.
His father was sick, the family needed a wage earner (women being mostly excluded from anything like free enterprise), so Qataa fashioned work out of selling coffee on the streets in Aleppo, a town in Syria where many factions (most of them extremist) seem to roam at will. On Sunday, three men approached him, and one man asked if he could have a cup of coffee on credit. Mohammed replied "Even if the prophet Muhammed were to come down from heaven, I would not give you credit for coffee." At that point, the three men grabbed him, shouted aloud that he had blasphemed against the prophet, and dragged him off in a car. When they returned him, he was beaten so badly that he could not stand...he was thrown to the ground and shot dead in front of his mother and other bystanders who were too afraid to intervene...at age 14.
We should all stop whining about how tough it is to live in this country.