TWTWTW - WHAT THE HELL!!!

  For those of you 'little ones' out there, TWTWTW stood for That Was The Week That Was, just about the first dedicated comic-serious review of the crazed week that had just passed. Timely, wacky, iconic, the progenitor of the plethora of such TV and streaming shows of today, where we can now pick and choose our favorite. It will be the one that bolsters our own already preconceived opinions. We can so easily insist that we remain in the muck and mire of our own making. Oh, such progress we have made!

The Beatles sang "all we need is love", a pathetic reminder of an era when an entire generation of young adults (now we elderly 'statesmen/women') of that time believed they could change the world via love. Well, that idea crashed, did it not? That love we 'needed'? Still MIA. The 'fake' love, the love that will kill you -plenty to go around and then some. That love sung rotted at the roots, twisted this way and that and has become the love of damaged souls who will love you to death. They are the modern descendants of the Inquisitors, of the rigid Puritan leadership, the Imams, the Rabbis, the religious leaders who 'knew' the Lord up close and personal.  Self- appointed prophets, spewing forth the words of the Devil instead. 

 More and more it feels as if we are the ones, the dogs of that statement of Kinzinger, that we all have caught the car we chased, and are far the worse for this 'achievement'. Referring to the most recent whine of Trump, who "refuses to partake" in the system of justice that will, hopefully, at last, put him to bed - in an orange jumpsuit, justice meted out and the inadequacy of McCarthy, we, the great clumsy mass of humanity, here in the USA and the world, failed to understand that truly, beware what you wish for - for when you do, uh oh in spades!

Yes, we laugh at the routines of the late-night shows, at the amazingly inaccurate biased reporting of anything but the truth. Are we laughing or crying as we mull the underlying truths?  Do we truly understand the present, imminent, existential danger of our present crossroads? Why have we chosen to follow those who have transgressed the rules of society, who wish to place us under their feet, subject to the sting of their lying tongues and cold hearts, souls that are more noticed for their absence rather than in their presence? Why have we so willingly become their victims, even as we, totally wired into their falsehoods, condemn all who differ from us, demonizing, calling, shouting, ranting, for more severity of punishments? We indeed have become the dog concussed by those cars we caught, mortally so, I am thinking.

The hatred, the rigidity, the antagonism growing in the very acidic air, has eaten holes within our souls. Our most sacred institutions, our prides, have been corrupted, become the cynical purveyors of more hate, more acid, in their benighted, purposeful behavior. The Supreme Court- anything but that. The Presidency - a desired home for the facists among us. The armed forces - rotting from within by the heavy number of whiteright wing extremists present in their ranks. The political system, our once vaunted democracy, is just about down for the count, no Rocky within to resuscitate it. Rescuers? Few and far between as outliers become the 'mainstream', pushing new rules, oppression within our nation. Miseducation and reeducation. Corruption and hate. Insistence upon a forced national 'Christian' religion, most definitely not christian. Pushers of lies, hate, of violence and corruption.

As an American loyal to the true America, its dreams, its ethos, its promise, as a woman, as a Jew, I feel a dangerous wind at my back, pushing me where I do not wish to be. I see before me the deadly swamp, rife with dangerous critters and quicksand and sinkholes fatal to those who encounter them. I see eddies of frothing water which provide for no escape once caught in their current. I see very few along the shores and paths who can and will provide for rescue. And I wonder - what have we done? What have we allowed? 

Why were we all so blind, deaf, unwilling to recognize the imminent dangers we placed in our own path? Why have we become so acidic, so hateful of all humanity other than our very own, our insistence upon the whip rather than the book, the selfishness that hurts rather than the outstretched hand that benefits all? Why have we turned a deaf ear to the cries of the starving, the emaciated bodies of little ones caught in a mess their very supposed protectors created? Why do we not feel the swollen tongues, see the sunken eyes of a deadly dehydrated human?  Why do we not see the rapidly rising to the point of no return devastation we have sown and now are reaping from our dying home, our one planet we all share?

The fate of one is the fate all. We must learn that there is no escape from the deterioration we have been championing in our own fatal stupidity. Judaism has long admonished us to treat each other as we wished to be treated ourselves. To love your friend and neighbor as you love yourself. It tells us that one who saves another, is as if one has saved humanity. Consequences are for all - yet we refuse to see the truth of that.

Once again, I beg you to feel that truth, walk in the shoes of another and know deep down, the horror of that life. Know your responsibility to move heaven and earth to ameliorate that awful path of those shoes. Judaism tells us that to redeem a captive is one of the greatest mitzvot, good deeds, and commandments that is upon humans to fulfill.

 Thus, once again, with horrid additions, here is

Brittney Griner.

32 years old; 

a mother; 

a wife;

an athlete;

 a person;

persecuted for being American, Black, Gay, woman;

Condemned to a hellish freezing penal prison;

known eyewitness reports of:

torture;

slave labor;

starvation;

 no medical care;

little food;

inadequate clothing;

inadequate shelter;

zero life expectancy;

a plaything caught in a maelstrom of other's creation.

TIME TO BRING HER HOME.

WAY PAST TIME

IT IS UPON US - 

RESCUE THE CAPTIVE

SAVE A LIFE

BRITTNEY GRINES CALLS UOONUS.

HEAR HER CRIES.

FEEL HER PAIN.

SHE IS US, YOU AND ME 

AND WE ARE HER.