The commerce of suffering

During the chaotic withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan in August 2021, thousands of people stormed the Kabul airport. In a desperate attempt to escape the Taliban, some climbed onto a moving military cargo aircraft on the runway. At least two individuals fell from the sky, and one became trapped in the plane's wheel. A video taken by a cellphone from inside the plane shows a lifeless body and its limbs swaying violently in the wind at a high altitude. It was later reported that human remains were found lodged within the aircraft's wheels.

Just days later, a gun store in Auckland, New Zealand, began selling T-shirts emblazoned with the words "Kabul Skydiving Club." Beneath the text was an image of two people who had fallen from the plane, captured in their fatal descent.

At the same time, these same T-shirts were sold on the Etsy website in America. Today, I came across the picture of those shirts again, so I looked them up online to see if they still exist or are being sold. Today, I discovered that identical T-shirts, though without the image of the falling individuals, are still being sold on a website called "American Triggers Pullers." Who truly wants to wear these T-shirts? What must they be feeling?

After seeing the images of those t-shirts, it felt like a wound in my soul was torn open anew. It was a stark reminder of our profound suffering and how our experiences and traumas are stripped of their context and transformed into tokens to be sold. 

Ah, what a world we are living in! Our pain and suffering have been commodified, transformed into garments for others to wear and enjoy. Our agony is frozen into images and sold for profit, enabling people to build capital and indulge in pleasure. Our anguish becomes a pretext for mockery and scorn. Our misery fuels companies' profits, ensuring the chariot of capitalism never ceases its movement and our blood has become the lubricating grease for its wheels.