I'm jealous of people who don't know what violence is.

They watch action movies with badass looking actors and fixed narratives and conflate it with real history, like some past event must have looked like what they're seeing on the screen.

I know this because I hear them and I hear the way they talk about it. It's always about glory and respect and crushing the bad guys and all that BS.

In real life it's pain and misery. With few exceptions, there is almost no real world situation that can be handled in a black and white manner. In real life, almost always, no matter what the TV tells you, innocent people are crushed without the slightest consideration for their wellbeing.

If you think you want more of what you see on TV, picture this instead: going hungry for days, living without the basics like showers or clean clothes, being forced to follow orders that make no sense, and watching the people around you mentally unravel. Imagine having to choose between harming someone who never deserved it or risking being branded a traitor, or worse. That's what violence really looks like. That is what you vote for, hope and pray for.

I know this post will be seen as whining and I know that for whatever reason, most people don't talk about this. I don't care. I'm posting this because I'm around people every day who treat violence like entertainment, and I can't help but wish they understood what it really does to people. Not because I want them to go through it but because then maybe they'd have some empathy instead of glorifying something they don't understand.

Real violence is misery. Not glory.