In Which I Fear my Fellow Citizens and Quote David Bowie

I have moved to Wyoming, a clear indication that I have lost control of my life.  That's not important right now. But on the way to Wyoming, while on one of several planes,  I was waiting in a line for the lavatory, because planes have such things, at which time I was chatting with a nice gentleman who was complaining about having to wait in line for a plane lavatory.  I did that annoying thing where I explain how much worse things could be and start telling stories about Peace Corps Tanzania, where we would be on a bus, and the lavatory would be when the bus pulls over maybe once every 4 hours and people run out and use the bushes.  And by people. I mean men, who get out of the bus first, and then the bus often isn't stopped long enough for the women to get off, much less find a place farther away than the men have to go, and deal with the logistics of excreting while female.  So women tend to just get dehydrated on long, unairconditioned bus rides.  Healthy!

Anyway, once I got off my returned volunteer soapbox of how much worse I've had it than you (such the fun soapbox) the nice gentleman responded by telling me that I must have a heart of gold (not really) and no fear (also not really) and that East Africa has this terrible problem called Kony who is next on "our" (the US' in general?  Or is he DOD?  Less savory acronymed people?) hit list and he's going to be killed soon.

Umm.  I said I thought it was illegal for the U.S. to engage in assassination activities (which technically, it is, not that anyone seems to care.  Well, sort of, it's a matter of executive orders rather than law.)   He told me it was only illegal to kill legitimate political leaders, which I'm reasonably sure is not how the executive orders are phrased, but I didn't have an internet connection to check at the time, and I'd rather not argue based on my fuzzy recollections of official documents.  Also, I was a little disturbed and managed to get out of the conversation by entering the lavatory.

However, among other considerations, for example human rights and due process of law and respect for the sovereignty of other nations, killing big name evil types isn't really a sustainable approach to making the world a better place.  Also, Kony?  Not really a thing right now.  Al-Shabaab is much more of a problem if we want to talk about how folk are dying violently in East Africa.

All other things aside, that the reaction to hearing about another part of the world is "there's someone there that should die and 'we' are going to arrange it" is a little creepy. In the immortal words of David Bowie, I'm afraid of Americans.