Winter at War

So, America is currently fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and now Libya. Bombing is so "in" this season.

The current political discourse has disintegrated to levels that are so dishearteningly simplistic, I think ever Republican, Democrat and our new media beloved Tea Partiers have simply lost their minds. We have turned from the Representative Government the founders envisioned, or at least the one the American People have come to expect, to a de facto corporate controlled monarchy that leaves little room for people with less than a million dollars to even matter unless we maintain our value as "consumers".

On the home front, it's been a hellish winter here. The weather has been bitterly cold, save for one week of false Spring in early March. We ventured happily out into the warm weather only to be shut back in with cold and snow for the Cincinnati Red's Opening Day.

Our family has had a lot of illness. Ye-Olde-Matey has been in the hospital with pneumonia and is, at present, in ICU with an unknown illness that threatens to close his airway. Never have I taken off so much time from work due to illness. In addition to Ye-Old-Matey having been sick, I had good old fashioned influenza that knocked me on my but for a week and a half and later a bout of a 24-hour stomach bug that left weaker and wasted than the flu had.

Things aren't all bad. CollegeArabella won a couple of scholarships that will help her continue in college next year. Freshman year is nearly done and she's doing very well. I'm proud of her, but after a year, it's finally sinking in just how much we miss her and how this is only the beginning of her leading her own life. She will never be back home to stay. It's simply not her way.

I'm nearly done with my college adventure as well and after 3 years spent chasing a 2-year degree I am the oldest intern at an awesome company. I pray they will hire me when it's all said and done, but if not, then I have the job search of my life ahead.

So life is bittersweet right now. There is so much sorrow and death in the world. I have been to so many funerals this winter and heard of many more. It's as if the Winter Storms are purging more than tree branches and Nature's refuse, but must also take their human toll. However even the losses my family and friends have endured pale in comparison to the tragedies in Japan, New Zealand, Haiti.

And the wars. Not content to battle nature's elements, we insist on warring against each other. Every day death and sickness do not take their toll fast enough. We must hasten our own demise with war, murder, poverty, hunger, pollution; all born of sheer human ignorance and greed.

We're at war all right. But it's a fight we can only win by losing.

And America will never be losers. More's the pity.

Comments

Popular Posts