Last nite I had the pleasure of attending a concert by Ethan Bortnick, a bright and talented young man who gives hope to the audience that perhaps we can look to the younger generation, the kids, to put things back together again. Besides his immense talent at music, the piano and singing, he has a heart of compassion, a mind which asks questions, and has an affinity to some of the older songs, the songs of a once optimistic generation that we used to be.
How many years, the song asks, how long must it be, until we recognize the humanity of others? How many years till we recognize the futility of war? How many years will we wonder about the answers to these questions while "too many people" die? Yes, the Peter, Paul and Mary classic of Blowin' in the Wind unfortunately remains just as meaningful today as it was four decades ago when it was our generation that sang these words, that manned the barricades, both literal and figurative, hoped for a better world. Somewhere along the line we lost our way and succumbed to the negativity of the world, when money became the target and end goal, when racism crept once again into our vocabulary, when we gradually lost it all.
And so we have come to this. We have come to a time when the presumed leader of the country has questionable mind function, when he screams and reeks of hatred and prejudice, when he pushes lies over the truth and in fact, does not know nor recognize truth. So we are being pushed by him into a world destroying war with North Korea as the army now practices with heavy cold winter gear - all the better to fight in frozen North Korea.
But lest you worry, do not, for the old Roman use of circus comes on strong again. Now the idiot is planning a parade, a costly, unnecessary, dictator like ploy, wherein we will spend millions shipping weapons around all so he can indulge his little boy fantasies of himself as King of America and I am sure the little princelings, Junior and Eric will be there to enjoy it as well! What the hell are we doing? We have a huge deficit budget in the offing, we do not even know if the government will function by the end of the week, the country is riven with divisions of hate and misunderstanding, often seeming to be the six blind men who felt the elephant and came up with six different answers, not conferring with each other.
We are those six blind men. We hear not, we speak not, we care not, we feel not for the other. Trump screams of bad immigrants yet the statistics say that there are fewer of them who commit crimes than of native born citizens and in fact, much of the imprisoned "criminals" are there due to immigration violations!! Yes, it was terrible to hear of a drunk driver in a deadly crash, but he is not all the immigrants and MAD was not formed to go anti immigrant, but rather to stop the carnage of teen drinking and driving. So does that make all teens bad if one does the wrong thing? Branding of one group leads to branding of others. Hatred is contagious and dangerous.
The majority party in government and its leaders allowed Russian, perhaps even solicited it, interference in the 2016 election. Now that it looks like the 2018 elections can lead - I so hope! - to a Democrat Party rout of the Republicans, suddenly Tillerson is waking up from the dead and 'warning' us about it. Already looking for an excuse to excuse their poor showing.
So are there answers, my friends? I do not see any on the horizon for even if we shed ourselves of this man and his puppets and shills, perhaps even charge him as a criminal for perjury, for obstruction of justice - whatever - for no citizen is above the law!! The damage he has caused is enormous and will take a huge effort to overcome, but listening last nite, hearing the voices of my grandchildren as they press for answers to the same questions of the song, the same questions that we tried to answer so long ago, I think, I hope , I see a glimmer of light in our now benighted country. And we begin to find those answers, to walk in the proper paths by voting and by protest and by resistance and by running for office and by combat of the soul!! Those are the answers right now.
No comments:
Post a Comment