“At least we’re not invading North Korea.”

That’s what our 12-year-old daughter said wryly we watched the evening news yesterday. The president of the U.S. had just said that the U.S. plans to take control of Cuba.

“I think I can do anything I want with it,” said the leader of the (no longer) free world as we watched.

Either way, said our daughter, “we’re cooked.”

Tracie and I struggle with how to talk to our girls about the world wars that unfold nightly on television. We feel strongly that they need to be engaged with world events. They will be exposed to the news, our thinking goes, no matter what we do. But we can help them deal with their feelings by guiding them through nuanced issues they may not understand. Giving them the opportunity to articulate their emotions is the key to their better health, we believe.

But how do you talk to your 12- and 14-year-olds when you can’t contain your weeping at the sight of children dying every day?

Here in America, it can be easy to tune out the wars. In other parts of the world, from what we can see, that’s not the case.

I have an Italian friend, a woman roughly my age, who posts updates on the number of children killed in Iran and Gaza nearly every day. She has kids not much older than ours. As hard as it is to see each night, I try to check in with her feed regularly. We mustn’t ever forget, I say to myself over and over, that children are dying every day in imperial wars driven by petroleum and humans’ will to power.

“All things are subject to interpretation,” wrote Nietzsche. “Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.” The philosopher’s (in)famous aphorism seems more relevant than ever, especially in the age and rage of social media.

We teach our children to look beyond the projections of power, to seek truth, however ethereal it may be.

Our truth? We must stop these wars before more children die. G-d bless the children.

Image: “Boy seated in wreckage of building after a bombing raid of London during World War II, Library of Congress, 1945.