I am half way through my non weight bearing sentence, less than three weeks to go, fingers crossed, and while I am gettig pretty good at hopping and standing on one leg and of course using all the gadgets, I am slowly nursing the hope to become once again a two legged creature.
On top of it, we all got another virus, the house has been reverberating with coughing and sneezing over Easter. Also, we were dog-sitting a much older, much slower and totally blind but sweet and gentle and handsome version of the family dog. By day three, we all, humans, cat and dogs, had enough of it, the visiting dog decided to seek shelter on my bed where he remained for most of the time. Which somewhat impeded on my sleep.
Airline ticket prices back to Europe are going up by a thousand NZ dollars per week.
And we watched an actual US president explain an actual war to his own citizens in what is supposed to be a democracy. What he was telling them is that Iran went from having no physical nuclear programme left at all to being on the cusp of deploying an unprecedented nuclear weapon. It did this apparently in something like six months, which would be one of the most astonishing technological achievements in all of human history.
As a result, the president of a 250-year-old country threatened a 5,000-year-old civilisation with total annihilation including the regime’s opponents, in whom he had placed such high hopes just a few weeks ago. Never mind that he changed his mind. That it may have been just a ploy, a minor Trump-style tantrum. No big deal.
I acknowledge that Trump’s critics in the US are making their voices heard. But it seems they do so in the way one would in a normal democracy: three times a year, on Saturday afternoons, between 2 and 4 pm. Afterwards, they roll up their banners with their creative slogans and go home. A president who threatens to wipe out a civilisation must not be treated as if he is normal.
Where justice turns into injustice, resistance becomes a duty, obedience becomes a crime.
(Some sources claim this quote is from Thomas Jefferson, others that it's from Bertold Brecht, he certainly wrote it in the 1930s, but apparently it's originally from pope Leo XIII, late 19th century.)
A cyclone is approaching from Fiji, the storm warning for the weekend is orange, subject to change at any moment. I ordered wool and knitting needles, we have coffee.
That’s the best analysis of the terrifying idiocy here that I think I’ve ever read.
ReplyDelete"I ordered wool and knitting needles, we have coffee."
ReplyDeleteAnd this is how we go on.
I assign a lot of blame to news agencies who seem to refuse to address the obvious insanity of that man but instead seem to want to try and frame his actions, his words, into some sort of normalcy, as you said. I don't know why they do this. I cannot come up with a rationalization.
That's got to be a worry, getting home I mean. God only knows what three weeks will bring. I think the world thought world war 3 would come from Russia, not the US. As for trump himself, I don't imagine he understands why he does things, but why have all the guardrails been removed? It's criminal.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad your ankle is healing well, and hope your sleep is okay, despite your new bedmate:) Does your husband know?
Jack has lots of questions lately about his life so a friend suggested we write a book together, me and Jack that is. Last night we started with five sentences, what ever he wanted. We'll see how it goes.
Thank you for the clarity of your voice. This is not a normal democracy.
ReplyDeletehttps://snyder.substack.com/p/the-president-speaks-genocide
This song came to mind just now as I daily seek a way to go forward as an American in these dark times:
" ... A million candles burning
For the help that never came ..."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCVghyHRXUU
I'm glad you'll soon be back to bipedalism!
ReplyDeleteThere's also a certain amount of "resistance fatigue" in dealing with Trump, I suspect. He's like a verbal machine gun, the bullets flying so fast that it's hard to deal with any single appalling utterance before the next one comes along. He says these outrageous, appalling things and after a while people just shrug and say, "well, he doesn't really mean that" or "he'll change his tune tomorrow." Which may be true, but we can't lose sight of how abnormal all this is.
I have no words. Well, I do but they are mostly fuck that fucking asshole.
ReplyDeleteGlad your recovery is going as planned but so sorry it's going to cost you so much to get home all because of that fucking demented asshole.