Where is our humanity?

(Warning. Read at your own risk.)

This has been a tough couple of weeks around the world. From the wars in Ukraine and Israel/Gaza, to the mass shooting in Maine and the horrendous hurricane in Acapulco. Watching, reading and listening to the news has become the hardest thing to do these days. It just rips your heart out to see all of the suffering we humans have brought upon ourselves.

What I really don’t understand, though, is why so little is being done by those with the power to act.

The climate crisis

The hurricane in Acalpulco is a direct result of the world’s unwillingness to deal with the climate crisis. Even as most of us mere mortals have taken steps to reduce our carbon footprint by recycling, using solar energy and buying more energy efficient cars, our efforts will never be enough. Yes, changing our habits is important. But the real solutions rest in the hands of the largest generators of pollution — big businesses, fossil fuel producers, and the governments that regulate them. Instead of taking any meaningful steps, they deny and delay, passing the problem on to future generations. For god’s sake, grow up and take responsibility for your past failures to act and *do something* now so that your own children will have a world to live in.

Another Mass Shooting

The United States has once again reached a new low. The fact that the new Speaker of the House of Representatives can say that “guns are not the problem” in mass shootings is mind-boggling. What? You can’t have a mass shooting if you don’t have as much access to guns.

Eighty (80%) percent of Americans believe that Congress should act to stop the carnage and yet their government officials chose instead to blame “the human heart”? Clearly these are people who have no idea what it is like to live in fear of going to school or work, to the grocery store or a club. These are people who have never seen firsthand the aftermath of a teenager shot in the head by another teenager playing with his mother’s gun. These are people whose families don’t live in neighborhoods ruled by gun-toting gangs, shooting indiscriminately into their streets and homes. These are people who are so removed from every day life that they have no business running a country.

War and more war

And while they let Americans buy guns for “protection,” our elected representatives choose to withhold arms and support from Ukraine which faces an existential crises in its defense against Russian aggression. Entire towns are being stamped out of existence. Children are being stolen and indoctrinated against their own people. The war’s resulting world-wide food shortage is killing people thousands of miles away who have nothing whatsoever to do with the war.

The Ukrainian battles seem so far away, and yet what is happening there should terrify us. Putin must be stopped and it will take more than a war of words, threats and counter-threats to do it. His actions have put every free country at risk, especially those on its borders, risking a world war scenario that could destroy life on this planet as we know it.

All around the world, countries have recognized this threat and rallied around Ukraine, providing military and humanitarian support. The U.S. Congress, however, in its inimitable wisdom, has chosen instead to use their support as a bargaining chip in its political infighting. Rather than defend the rights of free people everywhere, their self-interested hold on power takes precedence over the preservation of democracy around the world.

Talk about short-sighted! Their myopic view will bring the battles even closer to our doorsteps. And if the former fascist-in-chief becomes president again? I fear all hope would be lost.

The Middle East battleground

In the Middle East, the horrendous attack by Hamas on Israeli citizens is by far the most disgusting example of the world’s inhumanity. It was an attack that was perpetuated for no specific reason and has led to an extreme response that will result in a massacre of innocent people who are simply “in the way.”

I support Israel’s right to defend itself. I am horrified by Hamas’s actions. Yet the hundreds of thousands of people living in Gaza are paying the price for the actions of a few militant leaders. In this respect, Hamas has won. They have let loose the Israeli monster that will devour them and the Palestinian people in its revenge. The world is not prepared to justify this result, no matter how horrible the original offense. We can already see the suffering being inflicted — the babies being killed, the hospitals without resources, the people without food and water. If Hamas wanted war, it got it. But at what cost? They must know they cannot win in a battle of bombs and guns against Israel. So why bring this horror down on their own people?

All any of us want is to live our lives in peace: to feed our families and provide them with food and shelter. We don’t want war. We want peace and prosperity. War dehumanizes us, reduces us to our lowest common denominator and strips all of us of our dignity as we claw through the rubble left in its wake. Meanwhile, those cowards who start them rest on their blind ambitions camouflaged in $1,000 suits in the halls of power while our brothers and sisters suffer.