We Gotta . . .
The new year brings with it baggage indeed.
There’s COVID — Omicron variant — and then inflation at a higher rate than in a long time.
It costs more to fill up the gas tank, for those of us holdovers still driving cars / trucks fueled with fossil fuel.
And a trip to the grocery store brings back less food to eat and a bigger hole in the wallet.
And there’s the climate issue. Some believe the extreme weather i.e., tornadoes, wildfires, monsoons, hurricanes across the world are the result of climate change.
Others believe it’s a natural progression. Will we ever really know?
White cops killing unarmed black men. This was very popular in the early 20th century and today remains an issue that causes great racial divide, with little end in sight.
The college football coaches make way more than the school’s President, but like Babe Ruth answered after he signed a big contract in the 1920’s, “I had a better year than the President.”
Voting districts are being redrawn across the country so that politicians like Adam Kinsinger and Katie Porter no longer have a district to call home.
The January 6th insurrection lingers in people’s minds, some say it’s a harbinger of a civil war, to the first knock on the door to eradicate the United States of America’s Democracy. A proud bastion of free speech for 246 years.
There are threats from each of our Big bad enemies. Russia appears to be building up a large number of troops on the Ukraine border.
Just waiting until someone looks away to cross the Ukraine’s Eastern border and annex a country that through the ages has been controlled by the Ottoman Empire and the Cossacks.
Ukraine only gained its independence in 1991, following the end of the Soviet Union. It is the poorest country in Europe, but its’ fertile farmlands make it one of the largest grain exporters in the world.
On the other side of the globe China forcefully closed down the remaining independent media outlet in Hong Kong. Thus giving the Chinese government less headaches.
The whereabouts of China’s leading teenage tennis player and the Uighurs in the Xinjiang province remain topics not to be discussed.
Professional sports athletes make more money than the GDP of small countries and parents pull their kids out of nursery school when the teacher enforces the state mask mandate, not thinking about the long term ramifications of their three year old’s departure.
How we go about 2022 will have long term effects with which your children and their children (your grandchildren) will have to cope. Pollution will change your children’s lives, which will be different from how you and I grew up.
They will not have many of the experiences we cherished as a child, i.e., lightning bugs in a mason jar (with holes in the top) to light up a moonless summer night, putting baseball cards in our bicycle spokes.
Clean drinking water will no longer pour out of the kitchen sink. By the time they return home from their workout or pickle ball playoff, the only water they’ll be allowed to drink with be bottled, not at the spring in some pristine New England state, but out of a spigot connected to super large tanks, safely positioned in what were shopping mall parking lots.
There are almost as many COVID 19 patients in hospitals as a year ago. Plus, 80% are unvaccinated — just as they were 360 days ago.
What is there to learn from this?
The question is, how do we move on?
Do we need to pump the gas into Manchin’s Maserati or empty the dirty water tank on his yacht moored in a swanky D.C. marina to grease the gridlock?
This is a family place, so I won’t be using bad words. But, in the immortal words of Eric Burdon and the Animals, “We Gotta Get Outta This Place.”
Stay safe.
Steven
