FEBRUARY 7, 2020 – Wednesday brought speeches by democracy’s heroes, Senators Jones and Romney, followed by the death knell of democracy—Trump’s acquittal. Thursday brought Trump’s unbridled hate and vindictiveness. For a man who can’t distinguish right from wrong, good from bad, God from the devil, Trump’s condemnation of House Democrats as “evil” was the penultimate irony. His vitriol at the National Prayer Breakfast, of all places, was the penultimate sacrilege.
Yet, the man without a moral compass is embraced by the arm of American Christianity that insists on using its moral compass to measure society. There lies the ultimate irony, the ultimate sacrilege!
I’ll have nothing of their moral compass and their brand of theocracy.
Who’s to blame for all of this? For nearly four years, many of us have been asking that question, and many have attempted to answer it: social media, FoxNews, unemployed and underemployed white people, fear, greed, ignorance, deep-seated racism, systemic economic change, elitism among establishment Democrats. And so on.
In truth, the causes are manifold, just as the forces of nature that create, then alter a landscape are multitudinous—infinite combinations and permutations of weather, climate, biology, chemistry, geology, even heliology. An examination of each contributing factor adds to a unified understanding, but no single such narrow study provides a free-standing explanation of the whole.
Meanwhile, in China apocalyptic fear—fueled by the supreme power of micro-organisms—threatens to overtake all other concerns. Are we in the early stages of a redux of the Spanish Flu? A third of the then population of the world was infected, and among them, the mortality rate was between 10% and 20%. Three to 6% of the total population succumbed. (Source: CDC) Science generally and epidemiology specifically have advanced substantially since 1918-19, but so has the population of the world and its intermingling, thanks to population densities and travel (over 110,000 commercial flights worldwide per day).
Notice, I haven’t yet mentioned . . .
Climate change. There. Now I have. And so, are we on some kind of precipice peering into an abyss of horrors?
“Cut!!” Yells the director. We don’t know the rest of the screenplay. Actors, camera personnel, sound people, and the director are in “freeze-frame” mode. Only our imaginations and speculations continue to roll, but into numberless scenarios from the brightest to the darkest or—shall we hope?—vice versa.
All of the foregoing weighed heavily upon my thoughts when yesterday evening I headed to Little Switzerland, my daily refuge. I skied on the groomed skating track to the top of a hill, then cruised down as if from the top of the world. Above me stretched the heavens lit by the moon, Orion and his entourage—all sharply visible despite my little “Little Switzerland” being in the heart of the city. A thin, whimsical cloud graced the sky just above the southern horizon from east to west. I drank deep from this quiet display and found poetic calm in the knowledge that the wonders of the universe are beyond my knowledge.
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
