The saber rattling is getting more intense. NATO jets intercepted Russian fighters yesterday, or recently. Not a good sign. Wonder what the chances are that cooler heads will prevail.

Putin probably doesn’t care if he takes the world down with him, or even if he survives a nuclear holocaust. Or more likely he’ll be the first one holed up in a mountain somewhere, comfy and cozy while the rest of the planet burns.

We need a miracle. Hard to believe this shit-stained relic is still in the driver’s seat.

Treasure every sunrise.

Think what you will about Rachel Maddow. As mentioned in previous posts, I prefer to trust her take on most things of a political nature. I trust her intelligence and intuition, her research, her ability to peel back the layers and keep us grounded in reality.

With help from author Timothy Snyder, along with her own understandings and insights, she laid things on the table in last night’s show, trying to awaken anyone who will listen to the fact that the dark underbelly of human nature is being exposed right here in America. What was going on in Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia is happening here at home. Not as far along yet, but heading in that direction. The ground is growing increasingly fertile.

Our version of a Big Lie is alive and well. People creating a bogus issue from whole cloth, or taking something insignificant, blowing it way out of proportion, and harping on it until people start believing that it’s something serious. And real. A lie so huge that believers believe it because they can’t believe their elected representatives would go to such lengths to create it!

Our Big Lie involves an erosion of trust in election integrity and the rule of law, among other things, along with the ugliness of mistrusting certain groups of people, ie pretty much everybody who’s not of Anglo-Saxon or northern European descent. Everyone who’s not white and Christian. The same tired shit.

We just cannot get out of our own way. The prospect of having power makes us weak-kneed, near-sighted, and ruthless.

There are very few people who have the wherewithal to ask good questions. This includes the people you’d think should be good at it—reporters and the like.

College professors sometimes ask good questions, but often in the context of a classroom, and these can take on the air of mere attempts at sounding smart and eliciting a response that has no real-world resonance—more intellectual exercise than anything of consequence.

When a reporter does ask a legitimately probing question, a politician can just sidestep, anyway. Most of them are pretty good at that. It’s a dance, I guess—reporters always looking for the scoop and a feather in their cap, and politicians wary of such intent. It could make one wonder about the place honesty holds in our discussions and conversations.

There may be times we ordinary citizens can’t handle the truth.  But that rings kind of hollow.

Still wondering if I need to consider the second booster. Seems like the jury’s out on the necessity of it, though saw a recent article that stated the effects of the shot wear off after a few (4 or 5?) months. Gotta find a trustworthy source of information. You’d think the CDC would be that source. It’s frustrating to see the effort being put forth to discredit these folks. Erosion of trust is as debilitating as anything else these days. Why the hell is that? Is there anybody left who’s not assumed to be in somebody’s pocket? To be somebody’s mouthpiece? Is this the concern? Sometimes I think one could get more satisfaction from banging their head against a wall.

-Macron prevails in France. Phew. I’m gonna call that a victory for sensible people. LePen had designs on scaling back NATO involvement and warming up to Russia. Why would she want to do that?  

-So Elon Musk has apparently bought Twitter, for $44 billion. What’s his plan? What’s he up to? What does he think he’ll be able to accomplish? Time will tell. Forty-four billion dollars. Seems there might be better uses for such a fantastic sum. Freedom of speech has its limits, Elon. But people like you probably embrace the whole “money talks” understanding of the world. Money certainly is power.

-Humans can take something good and ruin it in no time. They can be dumb or smart when they want to be, conveniently ignorant, ready to plead the 5^th if necessary.

-The way of the world is characterized by unbridgeable differences, apparently. Walls that can never be removed. At least this seems to be the take among the autocratic set and many Republicans. There always needs to be an Us and a Them, which is somehow neat and convenient, a North Star of sorts, a warm blanket for lazy, fearful people.

Are we more concerned about Ukraine because the victims are mostly Caucasian? There is unrest, and wars going on all the time in Africa and other places but they don’t get the attention this war is getting. Apart from certain geo-political implications of this current conflict, why does this one get so much more attention than, say, something going on in Somalia or Yemen or Afghanistan, the coverage of which might be hot for a few days but not every day like what’s happening in Ukraine?

Is it fair to assess this, to some degree, in terms of a racial bias, or is it more because the world currently stands at a precipice staring at the possible use of nuclear weapons? Is it easier for white America to relate to the shocking upset to what in many ways looked like a familiar way of life in an urban setting that could have easily been New York instead of Kyiv?  

When I first heard someone utter this take on things, I wasn’t sure what to think. But anymore I wonder if there isn’t something to it. Any way you look at it, though, what’s currently unfolding is horrendous and wrong, regardless of the skin color and socioeconomic status of the victims. The bad guy here is Vladimir Putin, who apparently takes no issue with unprovoked acts of terror, and who has no qualms about making life miserable for anyone who doesn’t think the way he does.

I’ll let someone else with more expertise tackle that other view of things.

People are dying in Ukraine and we get footage of an Easter egg hunt on the White House lawn.

Life goes on here, while men, women, and children are being viciously and indiscriminately vanquished as they huddle in a cellar or otherwise try to survive but don’t. This is terrifying and sad and infuriating at the same time. Ghastly, unprovoked evil.

Nothing has changed about us since… forever. We all get one life to live and there seems to be a steady parade of heartless assholes for whom this matters not at all. There should be a way to stop this without the world spiraling toward Armageddon. We can’t let one person with serious issues ruin things for everybody.

The little weasel with a shit-eating grin needs to be vanquished, or somehow de-clawed and relegated to obscurity.

I’m tired of Wolf Blitzer. He seems to often ask inane questions, unevolved and obvious and baiting questions. In general, I’m tired of network coverage of this war. It seems to be more analysis and speculation and play-by-play, like a sporting event, than trying to drive home the wrongness and the gravity of it.

Commentators in the field gather and pat each other on the back every now and then, proud of their “daring” and “bravery,” commending local Ukrainian TV crews like they’re giving credit at an awards ceremony. Pundits and hosts back in the studio try to predict and plot next moves and strategy like basketball coaches in a time out. They play up weapons systems in terms of stats, like they’re in awe of their capabilities, and in order to heighten the drama and the stakes.

There’s just something off about all of it. Like they’re fascinated with the minutiae, and seem intent on turning the injustice and the massive unfolding human tragedy into a palatable and ongoing passion play.

The early morning bird songs are music, more so lately when I think about what the people of Ukraine are awakening to. Maybe they still hear birds singing, too, but it must sound different to them somehow. There must be more of a jarring contrast with the current circumstances of their lives. Less like music and more like an unwelcome reminder of better days, before Vladimir Putin started unbottling his wanton depravity.

Ah, the bird songs. Such a simple pleasure.

What are you, Vlad, and what was your journey to becoming less human? What the hell did your parents teach you? If it was anything edifying, it seems you long ago decided that wasn’t gonna work for you.

Everyone thinks they’re smart and those other people are dumb. Seems one or the other must be wrong, or right. It’s difficult to find terms that don’t insinuate a certain exclusiveness or judgment. If everything is relative, though, then maybe everyone does possess some degree of “rightness.” Yikes.

It’s just hard not to think that many are buying a line that reeks of faux patriotism and fear of difference. They’re unduly influenced by people who don’t want things to change, people who need unquestioning loyalty and adherence to “the way things have always been” (read: “the way I need things to be”).

I don’t know if there is anyone who always thinks for themselves, but those who try probably aren’t watching Fox News regularly or worshiping at the feet of Donald Trump or Ted Cruz or Lauren Boebert. You gotta be able to read between the lines. You have to be able to make peace with the fact that America is not infallible, that it’s not as pure and blameless and great as a whole freaking television network would have you believe, but at the same time that it is under attack by a foreign government (think hammer and sickle) that would love nothing more than to tear America apart.

I used to embrace that old chestnut: “America. Love it or leave it.” Not anymore, not for a while now. It’s just not that simple. Unquestioning loyalty? Sorry, can’t do it. And yet… somewhere under and amidst the flaming rhetoric and visceral discord and the voices trying to drown each other, there still exists the dream of a place that is guided by ideals, and shockingly color blind. I don’t mind looking for that place, working toward that kind of nation.

Maybe this is where we get stuck, though—always on the journey, never arriving, unable to agree on what that more perfect union should look like. Mired, instead, in this god-forsaken place where some people are magically better than “those people.”

After the euphoria of landing a job wears off, there is the matter of actually doing the job. The time interval between those two realities was never very long for me, and I wasn’t very good at the second part. I always overstayed my usefulness because I needed a paycheck, and the prospect of moving to another call was hard on my wife. I came to understand the potential mobility as something that came with the territory, but there wasn’t just me to think about.

It’s Good Friday. First time in 28 years, counting internship and the extra field work, that I haven’t had a service to think about. I don’t miss the prep part or the stress of Holy Week and Easter, but there is something missing somehow. We haven’t been physically attending anywhere since the middle of October last year. The virtual visits to various online offerings are… something, but of course they’re not the same. More of a conscience soother than truly edifying. I have to say I don’t so much miss the worship time as notice its absence– there’s a void where something used to be. I don’t know if that speaks of a longing, or just stating the obvious. I will say that between a bit of Covid hesitancy but more so just not feeling a sense of urgency to commit to attending anywhere, it has felt a bit like being unmoored. I’m not sure if this is Augustinian restlessness until my heart rests in God, or if I’m just another creature of habit simply coming to grips with a change in routine. 

Lots of time for review and assessment the last couple of weeks. I fractured the radial head in both arms on April Fool’s Day– not that that coincidence means anything whatsoever, other than wishful thinking that somehow it didn’t really happen. You know… since it was April Fool’s Day. Anyway, the healing process has afforded me plenty of downtime, which I have used in large part to sit in front of this laptop and record whatever comes to mind. I’ve found myself treating the ongoing mindlessness in Ukraine, along with other news items and random things that pique my interest or stir up some feeling.

And I need to acknowledge the great joy of having a partner in life who has literally fed me, early on, and continues to help me get dressed, wash my hair and keep me clean, and in general will keep an eye on me until the splint and the slings go away. Thanks, A. You are strong.