I was all ready to write this great New Year’s blog. I
usually write in my head for a couple of days before I commit to paper so I was
ready to dazzle everyone with my profundity. I was going to write about how not
to drag all the crap of the last year into the new year. How to just take the
good stuff and leave the rest. How to turn grief into sorrow and ultimately
into sorrow lite. How to let go of anger and don’t even think about
revenge—such a fool’s game.
I wanted to write about how important forgiveness is, and
that in order to have a heart at peace you must forgive and mean it. I was
ready to admit that my dislike (ok, hate) of Donald Trump and the rest of those
Bozo’s in the GOP have made me somewhat bitter in the last few months but I
have tried- I mean with all my heart, to keep an open mind and try to
understand Freedom means different things to different people. But...
I keep reading about the Syrian refugees, the people I was
saying we should help three years ago, and seeing comments that exude hatred
beyond my comprehension. Really, I could not hate that much. I guess I always
try to put myself in other people’s shoes. Or I try to figure out how they got
the way they are. I wanted to write about that and say- stop it. Just stop being mean.
How to make a monster? Beat a child, starve a child of love,
of food, of clothing or a place to live or a place to even poop. Let them see
their mother raped, and their father blown up and their siblings beaten into
submission. Fill his head with shit until it explodes. (And takes a few people with him.) The kids
of the middle east have dealt with all of the above. Not just Syria, but Iraq,
Afghanistan, Africa, Palestine – anywhere there is poverty, there are people
there to take advantage of it. There will be more terrorist-- because the root cause is not being addressed. And hey people-- the root cause is not Islam.
So for anyone that does not understand that—let me assure
you – we have been making monsters in the Middle East and a few here too. There
is a reason why ISIL targets poor blacks looking for recruits. Who in this
country is more susceptible than poor people, with not enough food, living in
overcrowded project housing, with rats for household pets. If I were looking
for recruits that were already angry—I’d look in the segregated (yeah it really
is segregated) parts of the country where education is almost nonexistent,
where drugs are more available than food, where families have been torn apart
by guns and drugs and poverty.
And then mental illness. What some call evil. Back in the
old days – the 1960s for my mom, mental illness was treated with shock therapy
that fried your brain and left you vegetable. Oops, sorry about that, you’re
not crazy or evil after all, it’s just menopause.
All these mentally ill people that shot up movie theaters
and shopping centers and schools—all sick. And sure it’s hard to have
compassion for the people that cause so much death and destruction, but do
people hear themselves? The comments online are actually crazier than the
person that caused them.
“We” didn’t make them you say? Well you’re wrong. We most
certainly did. We made them here and we made them in the Middle East too.
Because we chose to spend trillions on wars instead of helping people. We chose oil. We decided to take a generation of troops and ruin many of their lives for oil, for greed and our complete inability to understand Islamic countries.
We chose to not spend money researching mental illness and
preventing it. We chose to see mental illness as an evil apparition instead of
a brain malfunction or undetected injury. We chose to see it as something we should pray about
because that works. Ridiculous.
We choose to elect officials who are led by their pocket
books and only think what people with money (the NRA, Koch Brothers) tell them
to think.
For Example: Totally misinterpreting the 2nd
Amendment, and blowing by the word MILITIA and what that is exactly.
noun:
militia; plural noun: militias
1.
a
military force that is raised from the civil population to supplement a regular
army in an emergency.
2.
a
military force that engages in rebel or terrorist activities, typically in
opposition to a regular army.
3.
all
able-bodied civilians eligible by law for military service.
So take a look at these graphs I stole from CNN. Interesting
right? – no wait. The word is embarrassing.
And then there is Trump who, if elected, would have us all
nuked in about 20 minutes. His friend Putin might do the job, or maybe China,
or Pakistan or our little, very mentally ill buddy in North Korea.
I wanted to write about all that. Maybe offer a few answers,
or quote Mother Teresa or Walt Disney. “It’s a Small World After All.”
But let me take a deep breath here.
Because yesterday I got a text from my grandson’s mom that
he was in the hospital. He’s got a virus, he’ll be fine. But it was a big smack
in the head for me. It immediately changed my perspective from the now—to the
future. I really want to leave this world better for him. I don’t think I can
blog my way there. I don’t know how to leave him a world without war or
gunslingers or torture or famine or air to breathe. I want him to be able to
grow up in a world that accepts single moms without condemnation, that excepts gay and trans people. I don’t want him to be afraid of
people that don’t look like him. I want him to have the best health care, the
best schools and have it all without being told it’s a burden on his family or
his country. I want him to not know the kind of fear that terrorism provokes.
I can write about it and I can vote. But there should be
more.
I guess I’ll figure it out. Whatever it is I’m supposed to
be doing, I always do.
Happy PEACEFUL New Year
