THE UGLINESS OF IT ALL

  "maggot infested"  

"broken"   "corrosive"  "detached from reality"

"If everyone learns everything, there will be protests, -  referring to the awareness of the Russian public at large. “And I think that would be for the best. Because this war has to stop. There ought to be no wars at all.” AMEN!!!

"...we should just whack America with a nuclear bomb"

  "close calls go to the defendant." 

  "It is hard to deny this, of course. This is a crime which fulfills the features of a genocide,"

 " “Let’s be honest,"  says McCarthy (oh yeah!)

 "We will follow the facts and the law wherever they may lead," says Garland (uh huh)

 So exactly who are we kidding? Just look at the venom behind some of these words. Some represent international anger generated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the inevitable consequences of bodies returned home, en masse, to their families. Others are the remarks of United States members of Congress and holders of other governmental positions. They are either describing the nature of the vicious partisanship that has eaten away at the underpinnings of our democracy, or they are as busy as ever denying reality, looking it straight in the face and spewing garbage directly at it. With a straight face, ignoring their part in the whole stinking mess!

So who are we kidding? We are trying - and failing - to kid ourselves. We ignore the toxicity of our words, the continued harm they inflict on the global structure, on the need to remain at peace or at least a tentative peace. Anything better than war, though at times one needs to war against the immoral, the plain and simple wrongness of something. And yes, the evil that it has brought to this planet of ours.

I can understand the anger of a bereaved family, blaming it all on the opposing side. I can understand the anger directed at a government manifestly corrupt, uncaring of its population, and tumbling straight down to hell. And folks, do not think that the previous sentence has only to do with Russia. You would be sorely mistaken if you did so. Why? Because the government that we have at present is just about as corrupt as any other backwards, or tired, or confused country. 

 Apparently, we are suffering from a political version of a neuro degenerative disorder, eating away at our political brain, our civic intelligence, robbing us of the capability to govern in a positive manner. Instead of a caring government, we have become the epitome of a land which eats its own inhabitants. You ask, who is doing the eating? We are. Plain and simple. The rot comes from the top, sending out tendrils which infect the base, the bulk of a noisy, brainlessly shouting mob which knows not of what it speaks nor what harm it has wrought.

Biden, a fundamentally decent man, is walking a very thin, unbalanced and shaky tightrope, trying to maintain peace, avoid a nuclear war, yet stand up for democracy. He has had to come from behind,   hindered by the nasty consequences of a Trump   misshapen presidency, and a pack of howling, uneducated, nasty, mealy mouthed GOP members. They scream invective at people who disagree with them, shout out fascist themes. I believe that some of them truly are dangerously disturbed and are a present and clear danger to themselves and to the country. It is a party that has simply lost its mind, its values, its morals, its sense of responsibilities, as a party and as individuals. It is terminally ill and the longer this illness persists, the greater the harm to the nation, the greater the difficulty to slog back to sanity for all.

What is even more irksome, and that is a major understatement, is the careless tossing around of words which carry weight and should be used with great care. It is not genocide, this evil slaughter of Ukrainians by Russian troops and personnel. It is a massive war crime, the slaughter of a civilian,  non-combatant population, a war against old people, women and children. That is slaughter,  not genocide.

Nor should there be an insulting derisive, disrespectful use of the term Holocaust, comparing it to mask mandates, or rules for the safety of nations all around the world. How does that compare to the purposeful extermination - way beyond slaughter - of an entire race or religion, whatever term you wish to apply here. It makes no never mind, for the outcome was the same and worse, it almost succeeded. Today, decades later, the world population of Jewry is just beginning to equal that of  prewar population. That, is a Holocaust, not mask mandates. In fact, the objective here was to save lives, not take them, viciously, with cruelty prized above all. 

  We, the nation and the world, individuals and nations alike, have fallen victim to some mysterious virus which has incapacitated the ability, the neurons, which enable us to think rationally, to act accordingly, to talk with each other rather than to each other, the louder the better. We have fallen into a behavior pattern which drives us ever deeper into the abyss; the one where Nietzsche's monster is awaiting us all. Most definitely not a good place to be.

The ugliness of it all, the foolish, dangerous attempt to stomp on all who oppose us, the growing selfishness and greed of legislators, the growing malaise, the anger, the refusal to listen, carefully, to weigh and think - is this the world we want, the world we wish to bequeath to our children? If there is a world left to indeed bequeath!

Change is called for. If we are to tackle the existential catastrophic pitfalls awaiting us, threatening our very survival upon the face of this earth, we had better change and soon. Most definitely very soon. Time is fleeting. Opportunities are going lost. All our fault. All of us. Science has warned us. Common sense has warned us. History has warned us. And we have managed to negate them all. Aren't we proud!