I can’t express how disturbing it is to see several Facebook friends posting links to wacky, even deranged blogs claiming little Omran Daqneesh is a propaganda trick to discredit Assad. One even dismissed his injuries by saying he only sustained “superficial cuts & bruises.” Is that what they call the extreme trauma so evident & so wrenching to the rest of us.

Syria is one of the most important struggles of our era. If you get it so wrong that you support a dictator & deny the popular uprising against him, it might not be fruitful to continue a Facebook friendship. Not only because we will not likely convince each other (especially if one’s sources are crazy-assed blogs) but because there is so much stress in reporting what human beings are being put through around the world that reading trash about a little boy pulled from a bombed out building is just too much.