New Year’s Reflections

Happy New Year to everyone. The last four years (with COVID and all) have been rough.

Let’s hope that 2024 will be better, despite the continued war in Ukraine and the horrific and ongoing genocide in Gaza. But before I get to that, let me share a personal note about my own privileged life.

I’m writing from Clearwater Beach Florida, where Peggy and I arrived last Saturday (December 30^th). Like so many retirees, we’re seeking refuge from winter weather, and we find Clearwater to our liking. For a fourth or fifth year, we’re renting in a 10-story high-rise condo complex on a beautiful beach comfortably far from the honky tonk part of this small town. We’re about a mile’s walk from a state park called “Honeymoon Island.”

As some may have noticed, my blogging has been spotty lately. That’s largely because I’ve been recovering from knee replacement surgery which I underwent on November 8^th. Recovery has been rapid for me. In fact, my replaced left knee now feels better than my right knee, which I intend to undergo an identical procedure sometime in April.

Peggy also had a knee replaced – about five weeks before my procedure. So, we’ve been busy helping each other convalesce. You know what they say: “A couple that has surgery together. . ..”

So much for such medical issues that I find myself talking about much more than I should.

Now, what about this New Year?

Sorry: my reflections are not happy. In fact:

• I even find it hard to say the words “Happy new year!”
• Don’t you?
• I can’t stop thinking about the thousands and thousands of children, women, and old people being mercilessly slaughtered by the genocidal Zionists.
• Or about the one many now refer to as “Genocide Joe” for his arming and otherwise supporting the Israeli war criminals. Who could vote for such a demon?
• More than 22,000 massacred so far.
• Again, more than half children, women, and old people.
• I dreamt about them last night.
• I’m wondering why the Pope and other religious leaders have not been more outspoken denouncing apartheid Israel’s atrocities that include collective punishment, population transfer, starvation, water deprivation, unrelenting attacks on hospitals, ambulances, schools, UN facilities, and members of the press.
• Every item on that list is a war crime.
• Where in all of this is “Love your enemies,” “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” “Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do unto me”?
• It’s such a disgrace. It makes me wonder about the value of religion at all.
• I’m also scandalized by the way war has become such a central part of U.S. policy. It’s now a first resort instead of a last one. And somehow, we all accept that as normal.
• I mean our “leaders” now talk casually about use of nuclear weapons, and about war with Iran and China.
• What for?
• No thought of diplomacy. It’s simply a lost art.
• And what about the U.S. with 4.2% of the world’s population overriding the expressed desire of virtually the entire world to simply stop the killing in Gaza?
• Reluctance to call for a cease fire? What’s that about?
• And did you see that Brown University report that since 2001, the United States has been responsible for as many as 4.5-4.7 million deaths in the war zones it has created?
• And that’s just since 2001. Millions and millions before that!
• Are we and the other colonial powers any better than the Nazis?
• It’s hard not to draw the conclusion that “our” government (like Israel’s) is simply a criminal enterprise much, much worse than any Mafia you care to imagine.
• That’s our tax dollars at work.
• That’s us!
• That’s U.S.

The only hopeful thing I can think of in this desperate situation is that THE TRUTH IS COMING OUT:

• We are not the world’s good guys.
• Quite the opposite.
• Now the whole world unmistakably sees us for who we are.
• The undeniable evidence is there in the ruins of Gaza.
• In those piles of dead Palestinian babies, their mothers, and grandparents.
• We are exactly in the position to which Adolph Hitler aspired.
• The irony is that our Zionist allies are now the genociders and so are we and the collective West.
• Our country is genocidal.
• We’re basically white European colonizers who believe in our racial superiority and with less than 15% of the world’s population want to control the other 85%.
• It looks like Hitler won that war, doesn’t it?
• Fanon‘s Wretched of the Earth are now rising up to reverse his victory.
• I find that Good News!