HORSING AROUND

 If it was not so funny, it would be so sad; in fact, it absolutely is.  So sayeth Seth Meyers on his return from COVID isolation.

 “I tried to get my hands on some of that horse paste, but they were out of it at my local feed store,” referring to ivermectin. So instead he went with “horse pudding,” which “has no medicinal value, and is not a great snack either, but you can definitely taste the horse.”

What we have, in reality, is a country that is indeed  horsing around, drinking the Kool-Aid, and closing  eyes to falsehoods, divisiveness and liars and lies aplenty, visible, yet apparently not so for too many people. They do not catch the message in Meyers's words. Add to that the moronic arrogant comments from those who apparently have a G-d inspired words of 'wisdom', connection. Arrogance beyond belief. Yet there it is, and there are the people who buy into it - hook, line, and sinker and all that comes with it. Even as they die. Even as they see their country disintegrate. Even as they remain  impervious to the idiocy, the dangerous idiocy and the arrogance of those who maintain falsehoods as Biblical truths.  Even as the clock hands move ever closer to midnight.

Now what? Do we have to go searching in the dark, like Diogenes with his lantern, seeking the truthteller, the honest man? Uphill battle, folks. Steep almost beyond any attempt to reach the top where truth remains. Apparently so, for what else can one say when a dangerous fool, a Senator, much to our shame, begs forgiveness for the sin of publicly stating, admitting, that the outrageous actions of Jan. 6 were indeed a violent attempt to overthrow this nation and bring about the downfall of American democracy. Really!! Meyers added “It was so pathetic I honestly thought I was delirious from COVID,” ... “But it turns out it was real and I was just delirious from my horse pudding.”

Brother! Sister! Do we need help. Immediate and immense.

We need help in all spheres of life, public and private. Small towns are losing their innocence as sense meets nonsense, as viciousness and  "otherism" lash out, as we are warned about "bubbles" of doom, be it financial, political, moral or anything else one can point to. We have lost the distinctive American optimism, the we can do it attitude that carried us from the American revolution to the victories of WWII. After that we lost something, defeated by a new world, a new realpolitik which baffled us and our leaders. We did remain hopeful corrections to our off route misadventures would be countered and made right. And we succeeded, to a point, but now, now, the bubble has burst indeed.

We have entered a phase wherein selfishness, greed, and hatred rule the roost, misguide our supposed leaders and leave us with a bunch of entitled imposters, false messiahs that herd us ever closer to the crumbling edge of the cliff. The metaphorical cliff that will collapse over our ship of state, mortally wounding us, as did that piece of cliff which fell on those poor tourists. We have become tourists in a land no longer our own.

Here in Century Village, we are facing our own Armageddon of sorts. Long a residence, a paradise of life for thousands, we are now under attack. There are those who are attempting an egregiously foreign and harmful act upon us, something that will change the entire gestalt of the Village, send a knife through its heart that can never be removed. The damage will be severe, too much so, and I fear we will never recover. I have written to this issue several days ago.

Up till now, the only commercial building within this Village has been the 'medical' building where doctors had offices which served the residents, hair salons were there, especially for those limited in ability to travel outside the Village. There is a drugstore which sells devices for physical needs, toiletries, and even food, even a sizeable amount of kosher food, all to serve the residents. Demographics have changed over the years, shifting, yet we were all one, one Village, disagreements and all. One Village.

Now we are being told that this building, entrenched in the heart of it, on the very corner of a busy four-way intersection, in a busy area of constant traffic, near the Clubhouse, will be morphed into a religious building, privately owned by a group out of Brooklyn and elsewhere, not serving the Village, but rather a segment of it. Separate gender segregated pools, foreign to the Village, after failed attempts to impose it on  associations of the Village, a large, overwhelming misplaced place of worship, and an addition, cramping the nearby associations, and complicating the movement within the Village while under construction and fouling traffic for the  foreseeable future - not wanted, not needed, not beneficial. Not to the Village as a whole.

This is an uncalled for, unnecessary, and in fact, harmful event. The Palm Beach Commissioners must vote against these plans. Anyone can own it, yes, but not to impede the peacefulness, the purpose, the unity, the gestalt of the Village, expose the residents to permanent danger simply by carrying out its plans and even adding to the building, most out of place within it, a jarring presence. The Torah, the Bible, tells us not to separate from the 'group', the kahal, in Hebrew. This is what this building and the proposed changes will do, if allowed.

This has nothing to do with religion or anything else. This would be wrong should any other private group want to change it all. In addition, there have been too many occurrences of some within this group who have not obeyed the rules and regulations of the Village, of the County, and in fact, have endangered residents both physically and financially. How would we even know the full story here re construction and rules, re the safety of the residents?

The Village has faced many difficulties over the years. We continue to face them. A huge development is planned contiguous to it. We have forced proper consideration of our needs and will continue to do so, just as we worked with the builders of another nearby development. We watch the traffic needs, for crossing the street, for the benefit of all residents. We now face a change of Atlantic Broadband, with whom we have, unfortunately, a ten-year contract. Now it has morphed into Breezeline, an unknown entity. Complications will abound, affect communication, our TV and streaming abilities. But we will work on this, for the benefit of ALL residents, not for a select, entitled few, not for a project which will change the entire Village, could realistically prove to be its downfall, a sea change from what it is supposed to be.

The Brady Bunch had a line in its theme song which stated, "It's time to rearrange", time to adjust to new needs and challenges in a positive, constructive, beneficial manner. We rearrange as needed, as it works for the Village, not only for a certain, but separate group wishing to enforce and enhance its separateness. Not the rearrangement proposed. Time to ensure the continued existence of our home here in Florida, certainly not to welcome, not approve, a project meant to change it permanently, harmful, detrimental to most of us who call it home, our only home. Change and rearrangement must be beneficial rather than harmful. Change must be judicious and positive. That is what we want here, what we need here, what we have tried so hard to do all these years. And so it must continue to be.

No horsing around here.