We all live in our little bubbles everywhere. In California, Massachusetts, and New York, I’ve been surrounded by liberals who accept homosexuality, interracial dating and marriage, and atheism, among other things. I grew up surrounded by Asians and was surprised when I traveled other parts of the country to see for myself that Asians weren’t in huge numbers everywhere. And because I’d only seen domestic violence and wife beating on television and in movies, I thought it wasn’t a real problem for most people. And then I read stories like this that won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, and realize that there really are cities and states where the lives of domesticated animals like dogs and cats are treated as more important than the lives of women. In South Carolina, a person can be jailed for up to five years for beating his dog, but put in jail for only up to 30 days for beating his wife or girlfriend on the “first offense.” Domestic violence and abuse is a huge problem in South Carolina, which has the highest rates of domestic violence cases of all states in the country, and little is being done about it. With a mix of old-school Christian marriage values, 2nd amendment nuts who want to protect even the rights of wife beaters and abusers to own guns, and dated, sexist gender roles, South Carolina is kind of like a domestic violence victim’s version of hell.

I read stories like this and realize that we have too many problems to solve for in the world. How do we prioritize these? How do we correct gender hate and the idea that beating one’s wife is “right”? I was deeply disturbed by reading this long, thoroughly investigated story in all of its seven parts, but again, I felt powerless to help. Powerlessness seems to be the theme of this week.