It is dizzying, the cause of much eye crossing and broken teeth! Names which are unpronounceable to the English tongue. Numbers that stand for what, exactly? Global leaders throwing around numbers and names, threats, and warnings, and the result is ... So much confusion. So much anger. So much fear. So many potentialities and realities of dangers that fill the atmosphere. For those people who have finally come to understand the interweaving of the entire world, well, what is sleep? Hamlet's desperate plea to sleep, perchance to dream, echoes in the minds and hearts of many.
Yesterday I spent a wonderful day at Disney. Crowded with holiday vacationing families, it was amazingly refreshing to hear not one argument, not one angry word when human traffic jams took place. Wheelchairs, scooters, of all sizes, along with countless numbers of strollers and wagons and all were polite, smiling and forgiving. Amazing.
We watched the interactions of people on long lines. We thoroughly enjoyed the unbelievable Disney magic, checking out old favorite attractions, finding new and improved ones, the technology way over the top! Much appreciated. We sang our way along in A Small World and laughed and sang, thoroughly enjoyed the gently twisted version of Frozen on stage. Escaping the enemy via a transport and a fun escape route, only to find ourselves facing of a troop of menacing, white armor-clad Stormtroopers. Whew! Made it out in one piece.
However, a huge however, there was a blot on the day and a guilt feeling in me. How did we enjoy ourselves so heartily, nosh on our kosher for Passover stashes, shop the souvenirs, all the while there were thousands, millions, of people in dire straits? Children just like the two babies in their parents' arms, just like the elderly couple accompanying their grandchildren, just like us, being slaughtered, warned to flee for their lives. Warned as to their almost definite fate if they remain - death by execution by Russian troops so ordered, brutality that goes way, way into the world of war crimes, of genocide. Of total horror.
Yes, we must be able to compartmentalize if we are to maintain any kind of sanity. However, how can it be that we remain blind to the lesson of the Small World ride? It is indeed. Doubts? Open a paper, surf the net, browse a bookstore's offerings, and know, simply know that this war, this criminal invasion, has reached the deepest depths of depravity and is digging down to more. Check the cracks in the global economy, the fears of hunger and starvation in faraway countries who have no apparent stake in this conflict.
Yet they do. We do. We can engross ourselves in our own bread and circuses which deny the reality, but that ugly reality is there, menacing, frightening. What is a "special operation"? What is a border? What do the signed alliances actually mean? Is there a limit to tolerated criminal activity by an outlaw, brutal nation? And the reaction to it?
78. What meaning is contained within that seemingly innocent number? It is 78 battalions of between 800 and 1,000 men per battalion. Along with the armaments, tanks, trucks, armored vehicles, the dreadful weapons that we have created, the more harmful the better. Ugly. Grossly inimical to life and humanity. A behavior that we should have long ago outgrown, learned to talk with each other, truly hear and listen, understand grievances, heal differences without resort to war and violence. All that remains a pipe dream, a failed vision of the United Nations so rife with all that has gone wrong with humanity.
5 million. 10 million. "Liberated states". Out of home, out of country. Out of their lives, literal and figurative. We have already learned the inability of humans to assimilate these kinds of numbers; hence we drill down. We find the family violated in its entirety. We watch the parent bury the baby, once the recipient of their love, their dreams. We imagine the cities of ours emptied, pulverized, echoing spaces reeking of blood and death. We imagine the unimaginable, ourselves in the same situation. Bereft of family, bereft of anything that we recognized. A Stone Age existence in a modern world. A world which once again has resorted to violence and inadequate response.
Nor can we look for relief from this ugly picture as we turn to our very own country. We have not yet realized the true potentiality of what awaits us round the corner if we do not straighten up and fly right. The violence is here. The mass shootings grow in numbers, almost eliciting a small "again" and moving on. We refuse to institute a rational gun control. We enabled, even approved the treason of a sitting President along with his evil and deluded henchmen and the danger remains. The peril grows each day that we refuse to speak the truth and act on it. We punish the stupid slobs who listened to exhortations of the leader to "fight like hell". All the while the big dudes go unpunished, evading justice, demeaning justice and fair play, encouraging yet more treasonous, outrageous thinking and behavior. Nor are the suggested possibilities of future leaders encouraging. DeSantis? Cruz? Rubio? Hawley? Greene? And the awful list can go on. And on. And on.
Our democracy is in a perilous situation, worse than at any time before, and yes, that includes the first Civil War. Just as we are actually in the early stages of WWIII, we are in the not so early stages of a Civil War II, only the casualties will be far greater. The permanent damage to any hopes for humanity to grow, to mature, to seek true democracy and rights for all, to live in peace, to be able to walk down a street at twilight, take an early morning run through the park, ride in your car, on a bus or train, attend an event -without fear of death finding you. In today's American world, in the world of global existence - simply a pipedream unachieved, growing ever dimmer.
"Mene, mene, tekal, oopharsin"
Such was written on the wall of the palace of a once mighty king.
"You have been found wanting, the accounting taken."
The future was not looking too good.
Perhaps we need to take our own accounting, heed the results and reform accordingly. How many warnings do we get?
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