When it comes to death,

which do you feel more concerned over:

"The death of one is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic."
Stalin
In a way that's very true.

who you are close to. You miss them and it hurts terribly. Those that you don't know have just become numbers, sad as it is, especially considering the rising body count in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The news rarely provides enough information to let us care, more's the pity, though I am sure that the families and friends of American soldiers and Iraqi citizens who have been killed care plenty. Bill Maher summed it up, recently, saying that the deaths, beheadings, bombings, etc., are just part of the general noise on the news. Blah, blah, blah. I find this really sad, since every life has value, but the Bush* administration doesn't feel that way and they are passing on their lack of values to the press and, in turn, to the American people.;(

we also truly care about the deaths of anonymous others, whether they are relatives or friends of those who have lost someone and post their grief on DU, or whether the dead are Iraqi children, whose photographs we have seen. I think most DUers are pretty equal-opportunity grievers. And we also grieve over the pets that we and others have lost. It's tough to choose, since liberals seem to grieve over any loss. I know that I do.;(

But on an intellectual level I know that many others are feeling as I would because of the distant deaths, so I'm still concerned about distant deaths, just not viscerally. Isn't that what empathy is?

Thanks. I think that's a sentiment that many of us can identify with.:-)

but both are unsettling.

My Honey's sis died suddenly, and he is "in a bit of a midlife tailspin," about it, and I with him!

The children who were recently killed -- that is more than terrorism, which implies a cause for some greater good. It was plain evil, and very upsetting.