Typically, when I sit down to write, the words come so easily, without angst or hesitation. Their sound rattling around in my head for days before I put them to paper, but these are not typical times. These days I find myself twisted into a mass of anxiety, frosted in a thick layer of dread with a dash of hopelessness.

The state of the world, my country and the state I live in defy understanding; although everyone has an opinion or theory as to how we have managed to arrive at this juncture. None of that matters now, this is our reality. Should we have seen it coming? perhaps. The truth is that the people in positions of power no longer care what happens to any of these entities and by extension, to those that reside in them. As long their viewpoint, whatever it happens to be, is the one that comes out on top, they are unconcerned by any pain, suffering, discrimination, or disenfranchisement that occurs. Collateral damage as they say.

In the days of the cold war the driving philosophy was one of mutually assured destruction (MAD). If you were insane enough to start a war you could count on not surviving the resulting retaliation. That has now changed, each ideology no longer has any room for any other viewpoint. The ability to work out a compromise, one where everyone gets something and no one gets all that they seek is seen as a fatal weakness. Combined with our dismissal of facts and science and the total lack of compassion for anyone other than themselves this does not bode well for the human race and our little corner of the world in particular.

If they can’t have it all they are content to burn it down, all of it. So there, are you happy now, nobody gets anything, we showed you!