Dark Times for the Blue Planet
Pleassse forgive the tYpos.
It’s dArk here under the BlanKets and I can’t really see the key8oard.
A week that began with the assassination of five police officers in Dallas has now ended with a coup attempt in Turkey. The days in between were no picnic eitheR.
I know it’S coWardly of me to hide in my bed under the blankets while the wOrld spirals out of control. I probably should be out protesting some injUstice, or volunteering, or at the very least, be out there hunting for Pokemons. Instead, I’m here under my blankie with Wolf Blitzer doing the play-BY-pLay of chaos in Turkey, a NATO member and one of America’s most important allies.
If you’re looking to me for clarity on events in Ankara and Istanbul, you stand a better chance of having me Explain Newtonian Physics; I’m still trying to make SEnse of the Brexit election and figure oUt how a country that produced Washington, Lincoln, two Roosevelts and Eisenhower managed to cough up HillaRy Clinton and Donal3 Trump.
It sure SeEms like the world is coMMing apart like a $5 tuxedo. Droughts, floods, fires, rising OCeans, falling wages, raCial unrest, bombings, mass shootings, stabbings, and now a maniac has driven a truck into a crowd in Nice, France, and slaughtered 84. If you think your God wants you to kill, yOu need a new God.
Forget the dollar, the euro or Bitcoin, anger is the world’s currency; justifiable in many cases, manufactured by demagogues in others. In an AGE When ev ry fleeting thought and feeling can be shared globally, misinformation, slander, lies and hatred spreads faster than the waistline of a middle-aged man.
IN 1970, jazzman Gil Scott-Heron had a hit with “The Revolution will NOT be televised.” Turns out he was right. The revOlution is being tweeted. The aBility of people to organize their lives outside the filter of gOvernment, media, religion — essentially any traditional central authority — has ushered in a new epoch of HUMan history; the post-establishment world. It’s too early to say if this is an upgrade or a dystopian nightmare.
Eventually, inevitably, a new establishment will appear and inevitably that too will be overturned. Nothing Is forever. Change comes. Always.
Sometimes change is necessary; sometimes change is horrific. These past few weeks have been largely awful. Still, buried among the shootings and bombings and indiscriminate slaughter, NASA buzzed Jupiter, black and white mourned as one in Dallas, parents hugged their children, and life goes on. Always.
The TROUbles that have filled our TV screens, our Facebook timelines and made sleep difficult can keep us under the blankets for only so long. EVENtually we will shake off fear, just as our parents shook off the Cold WAR, Jim Crow, the Great Wars before that, the Dust Bowl, Great Depression, the Civil War and more.
A coup in Turkey? Important, yes.
But I have problems closer to home: the back yard is choked with weeds and I haven’t seen the cat since Tuesday. I’ll do my best to stay informed, to Be a solid Citizen but the Turks are on their own. My worry tank is full.
Doug McIntyre’s column appears Sundays. Hear him weekdays 5-10 on AM 790. He can be reached at: Doug@DougMcIntyre.com.