Today there’s plenty to be horrified by. Wrapping one’s mind around it is near-impossible. I don’t REALLY blame people for picking and choosing what to be upset about, and picking and choosing the small hills to die on is perhaps a game of staying sane in this world. Add to that the disgusting proliferation of misinformation and doom-glorying social media influencers and the sheer MAGNITUDE of war, social unrest, and the slow unraveling of our physical environment, and no-one can truly cope with the scope of it all.
I could ALMOST forgive the politicians who spend so much time in their petty, small-minded bickering rather than worrying about truth, justice and the existential threat of war and environmental collapse except that it’s their fucking JOB to be higher-minded than whining, thin-skinned rich children on a playground.
Today I scan through the headlines (I do NOT scroll through Instagram or X for the “news”) like I do most mornings – and as Haiti and Israel both vie for the “who’s going to starve 100,000 children to death first!” award, and wars compete with one another for killing the most civilians… (man, Israel caught up to Russia FAST and though the Sudanese Civil War has tried HARD it was always doomed to be in last place since they’re having to do all their killing on the ground via infantry – lacking the luxury of artillery and air support). Yes, as all of that is going on, vying for global attention, I must admit this morning I zero in on our neighbor Virginia, deciding to return two local schools to their former names. Yes, in the midst of wars of aggression, invasions, and indeed a civil war, the thing that’s weighing on MY mind this morning is that a school board in Virginia has decided they need to reverse course and honour two men from OUR Civil War, who took up arms, and lost, against the United States.
I don’t care about what they thought they were fighting for, and I don’t care how successful they were as generals. That’s for history books and museums. A SCHOOL shouldn’t be named after a traitor to one’s nation.
But that’s just me focusing on something small in a vast world of horrors.
But context. Context is everything. I like AP’s “Today in History” section and today’s first entry is “on May 10th, 1940, German forces began invading the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium and France”. I’m grateful that TODAY we’re talking about wars that have killed tens of thousands because World War II killed tens of MILLIONS. Of course, the scars WWII left include the genocidal fears that lead Israel to it’s unilateral, hugely asymmetrical retaliation against HAMAS and anyone that happens to be in the blast radius.
Today I was reading that there was a member of Israel’s Parliament who said “if the U.S. doesn’t give us smart bombs, we’ll use dumb bombs and kill more people in Gaza.” There’s only one kind of person who hurts others and then turns to someone ELSE and says “look, look what YOU MADE ME DO!”
Step back from the news. It’s a beautiful grey day. Tuesday it was 90-something degrees but since then Baltimore has cooled and the sizzle’s been replaced with the susurrous of wind-blown wet branches. Dramatic shifts in temperature grow ever more dramatic but I’ll enjoy the contrasts where I can.
Open windows inviting the cat’s pertly sniffing nose. Take these moments of beauty. We are so very, very, very lucky. Crime? Racism? Financial inequality? Excitable hero-worship of traitors to the nation and the fact that we’re about to re-elect a disgusting misogynistic narcissist to our highest office… despite ALL that people still struggle to get here come Hell or literal high water.
But, context: WE’RE not being fucking BOMBED.