Friday, Feb. 26, 2021, 8:10 a.m.
Instead of writing first thing, it is two hours since I woke. I’ve done the morning crossword, lathered up some outrage — Biden bombed the Middle East, meet the new boss same as the old boss what a surprise can you hear my sarcasm — fed the dogs and cat and hedgehog, shut off the TV with its yammering about nothing, and now I sit with the wind chimes singing away, even though the trees show no sign of a breeze — oh wait, if I stop to look, I can see a branch sway here, and a skinny young tree dance back and forth there.
I am relieved that I am still able to get angry at a president who decides to flex his bomb bays — “Look at me, I can kill people good as the next guy.” Why on Earth does anyone think this is a good idea, the constant “I kill your people because you killed my people” barbarism, as if people were belongings and not walking universes full of ideas and dreams and knowledge and experience, and you can and should snuff them out at will? What good does it do except show that you can do evil as terrible as the evil done to you?
How ironic that I wrote today’s blog post about peace and getting together, and I wake up to more war. How terrible are these creatures in charge of this government … rampaging over the landscape as if it were a giant chess board, moving your pieces around, except you get to stay above the fray, you may be face to face with your opponent but the carnage is down there on the board — you and your adversary manipulate the fight, drink tea and eat biscuits.
This is why most days I write about anything but politics, because I have no power to change the essential core of politics, which is to deny human decency and refuse to accept the sanctity of human life. To the politician humans are pawns or perhaps pets, to be sheltered and fed but unable to make their own decisions because we — are — animals to the political mind. And so I write about not-politics: I write about humans who have the power and yes the freedom to live their lives and make their own choices, and if death comes — scratch that, your honor — when death comes, at least we scratched out a little bit of authenticity that spat in the eye of the insane demagogues who believed we were just pawns in their grand game, to be sacrificed in the name of a greater plan.
Sacrificing humans is not a greater plan; it is an ugly misuse of the purpose of a life. Patton’s observation that he was not there to die for his country — he was there to make sure the other fellow died for his country — overlooks the basic fact that killing and dying for a country is still killing and dying, and every religion and other appeal to a higher purpose has a set of commandments that proclaims killing is an evil thing, a sin — as the song says, “Only God has the right to decide who’s to live and die.”
When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?
I can’t change the carnage, but I can refuse to applaud. I can sit here in my comfortable chair, listening to the wind chimes, and declare my independence from a mindset that believes there are times it is appropriate to shred human bodies and extinguish souls.