I wasn't there when Moshe Rabenu killed the last of the Rephaim. I wasn't at Masada, and I wasn't born when my great-grandfather punked an armed British soldier or when my grandmother was one of the first five women to graduate from her medical school. In the end, all these stories are equally false because no story about a hero is real.
It's a funny thing to be descended from heroes. I've never known what to make of it other than protecting what they left me, which consists primarily of a way of life that I follow more subconsciously than consciously at this point, and a country that can't even write its own constitution.
When I requested to be exempt from service, I missed my shuttle and took a later one that dropped me off at 2am at a stop five miles from my house when it was snowing outside. My duffel bag strap broke, and I had to carry it over my shoulder. If there is somehow a god in this world, they decided I would serve one way or another.
I was DMing a classmate, and after telling them where I was from, they asked me what I thought about the war crimes. I pulled up the very long Wikipedia page of United States war crimes and asked her what she thought of those. I hate when they criticize us for overreacting to threats, as if we all aren't currently living in the most vengeful country on Earth.
I would have supported you through anything, I would have killed and died for you. I desperately want to show you how cheaply I value my blood, even now after all this. I've always wondered what my limit would be, I used to say I would support you until cultists ran the country. That was a lie because I loved you after they gained a coalition. They turned a body of law that outlawed marital rape in the first century into a legal system that tries children in military courts. If somehow a god that gave us two thousand years of exile for the relatively minor transgression of a corrupt and wealthy aristocracy forgives them, there are many people, myself included, who never will.
So I guess my limit is 20,000 deaths. There isn't really any way to come back from this other than to wait ten years and talk non-stop about how you feel soooooo bad about what happened, you'll never do this ever again, sadface emoji. Like some other countries I could mention. Power really does corrupt, it would seem, although I'll admit I had hopes that we could be a people worthy of respect even when we aren't being pushed to the brink of death. We aren't so different from the "nations" after all. We might have to start changing the liturgy.
I hate that I have to ally myself with keyboard warriors who know nothing yet talk with the confidence of somebody whose children have been deployed. I hate their lies and ignorance and slander but at some point it no longer matters as long as they are fighting for this to end.
If all I had to do to solve this problem was draw a numbered pottery shard and stab the person next to me, I'd be the first to do it, but I don't see what that would solve.