Deeply troubling times

We missed our Monday coffee date because I was having a migraine, so today was our makeup date. We started with gratitude for a little sunshine, but the main topics of our discussion were the fires in Australia and the assassination of one terrible man by another terrible man. Margie said, “I hold it all right here,” gesturing to her heart. “I don’t think there’s anything I can do but feel it, and I do feel it.”

A whole continent is on fire. The people, the animals, everything. Australia’s leader is one of the oligarchs, like the leaders of the USA, Brazil, the UK. The oligarchs don’t care about anything but the billionaire class. It serves the oligarchs to keep selling fossil fuels and making war, so they go on doing it. The complexities of the centuries-old divisions between Iraq and Iran are lost on most Americans, but Soleimani was doing great violence, and the man who gave the order to kill Soleimani is doing great violence, and the suffering that has already resulted from their violence is beyond measure, and it seems likely that more suffering will come. 

“It's all connected," Margie mused. "Fossil fuels in Australia, fossil fuels in Iran. Climate catastrophe and war. These are deeply troubling times,” she says, softly.