As harsh and divided as our country and our world can often seem, Hurricanes Irma and Harvey have brought forth some of the best humanity has to offer. These horrifying storms have terrorized communities and torn lives apart. Yet, our country has responded with an immense outpouring of aid and support and our politicians even took a rare bipartisan step.

Terrorist attacks often bring similar outpourings of love and support. There are those on both the Left and the Right who politicize these attacks--for better or for worse--but there is also undeniably an air of compassion and an extension of aid both monetary and emotional. Who could forget, after the deadliest mass shooting in American history, the 28,000+ blood donors or the $29.5+ million raised to support victims and their families?

But all of this empathy, compassion, support, and aid tends to be reserved for those who look and act like us, those from cultures similar to our own. It tends to be reserved for other Americans or, in the case of terrorist attacks, European victims.

How else could one explain the general apathy and lack of aid extension to those innocent victims of Hurricane Irma in the Caribbean Islands who faced the worst of the storm? Or our collective complete lack of care for the countless victims of terror in the Middle East? How else could one explain our country's vast indifference to and ignorance of the literal ethnic cleansing occurring right now in Burma of the Rohingya?

We Americans often think of ourselves as caring and compassionate people, and, truthfully, we are. But that care and compassion need extend much further than it currently does. For a country who claims to want to be the world's "global policemen," we are failing to an alarming extent.