When the wrong Senator from California announces her retirement

Why.

Why why why.

Why is Barbara Boxer retiring from the Senate and not Dianne Feinstein?

Je Suis.....

I am Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical magazine where twelve people were shot dead by religious fanatics for the capital crime of drawing the prophet Mohammed.

AND

I am Ahmed, the Muslim cop who defended the principles of free speech on which Charlie Habdo relied, who those same religious fanatics also shot dead.

AND

I am every other satirist wondering which religious fanatic is going to shoot at me next.

AND

I am a nameless Muslim teenager in the slums surrounding Paris, whose detachment from French society is nearly impossible to talk about because French law all but forbids such discussions, and yet, whose religion and culture Charlie Habdo habitually satirized.

AND

I am an 18-year-old kid from those same slums, who watched too many slickly produced ISIS videos, and who just woke up to the fact that this falsely-so-called jihad shit ain't all it's cracked up to be.

AND

I am a French voter giving Marine Le Pen another look.

AND

I am the aging war hero neoconservative Senator on the Sunday morning talk shows who argued for arming the very religious fanatics that probably carried out the attack.

AND

I am the news producer playing an endless loop of the attack, carefully edited so's not to show too much blood, rubbing his hands at the prospect of what kind of war ratings this could generate later.

AND

I am the ISIS asshole who's producing another slick video.

AND

I am the FBI analyst who's trying to figure out whether to put maxomai on a watch list for this post.

AND

I am the Kurdish woman on the front lines, hair tied back with a beautiful scarf, FN-FAL throwing lead at an ISIS position, war photographers capturing her fight.

AND

I am the Syrian mother nobody sees, just trying to get by in a Lebanese or Turkish refugee camp.

AND

I am another would-be Caliph.

AND

I am Barack Hussein Obama, leader of the Free World.

AND

AND

AND

And I am the blowback from the Syrian Civil War, the Iraq War, the Gulf War, the Afghan Civil War, the Cold War, World War Two, the Great War, and Crimean War....

And man, I wish we could figure this shit out.