Once in a while, I feel in need of a political diatribe.
First thing up in the morning, I prod my ancient limbs into movement, check with my brain to ensure I’m body, mind, and world-aware, and make my way to heat the milk for coffee, drink a pill down, and settle on the couch with my device—the whole world to be surveyed from the palm of my hand. How strange it all is….
I approach the day with The Guardian, the only legacy news source I still almost-wholly trust. My response to a scroll-with-stops is different each morning. Sometimes big sorrow and anger about the situation for defenseless human beings in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, West Africa, Central America, and on and on. There’s danger everywhere but only mass murder some places. So far. Sometimes, I’m bitterly amused by the mindlessness of nearly all political utterances to the point of uneasy laughter…I scroll on for a meaningful paragraph or two. Sometimes, I’m so bored with it all, I put down my device and do something useful like scrubbing the toilet or beating the dog. That’s a joke, okay! Usually, I just read on aimlessly, have another coffee, fume yell laugh, and get dressed for another day in my pleasant-enough life. Where useful actions are committed: reading writing thinking making-lists cleaning treadmilling doctor’s friend-coffee.
Once in awhile though, I must yell longer. And I’m doing it here—to post on my blog—which I will then print for posterity. Maybe a record for great-granddaughter Leila to read if words are still used. So, she’ll know that I cared. Did I do anything much about anything? Well no. But I did care. Yes, I did.
What triggered this morning’s fierceness, was reading about yet another Israeli bloodying of Lebanon, which triggered a memory from 2009, of entering Lebanon, headed for Beirut in a long-distance taxi. How beautiful the countryside. How I kept saying to myself, ‘I am in Lebanon. Me…from Northome, Minnesota…in Lebanon, Middle East, World. It seems a fine and peaceful place as we roll along toward the city of Beirut and the art festival I’m to attend.
Amman, Jordan had been a fascinating experience in a city of white structures and friendly people. In Palestine, the Jewish-Zionist settlers were stomping around with their kids and guns and “good intentions” as usual. On a ride to Ramallah (with a stop at Yasser Arafat’s tomb), I actually saw a settler compound on the hillside (think mean-Mexicans or rampaging-Canadians simply invading the US and setting up gated communities on our hillsides). In Syria, Bashar al-Assad hadn’t begun chemical weapons attacks against his people yet, although his autocratic and ruthless rule was in full swing. Nevertheless, at least the outward appearance of peace and plenty was all around on the drive from Amman through Syria with a Damascus stopover. And then the excitement of entering Lebanon and soon Beirut, formerly known as the Paris of the Middle East, a label already faded by then.
That was seventeen years ago. This morning everything’s worse in every way, except for an apparent end to the civil war in Syria—with no firm knowledge of how that will play out in the long run. Only now it’s even bloodier. Lebanon is being destroyed by Israel but also by the utter loathsomeness of the “leaders” within, all lusting for power it seems. Palestinian Gaza is sort of an Israeli abattoir. The settlers are having success after success in their brutal colonization of Palestinian land. And Hamas is as vicious as ever. What an effing mess.
I scroll on, particularly pissed off about how the world’s boys and their dangerous toys are destroying the lands I have found so beautiful and bountiful and beguiling (a landscape full of b-words) to pass through or visit over the years; I pause for a headline, an article, a statement about the next political or environmental catastrophe. Nothing makes me feel better. In fact, as I read, every political inanity uttered regarding harm to the natural or peopled world further infuriates me. But, it hardly matters what they, our political “leaders” think or say anyway, does it? There’s been this tune stuck in my head all morning…something about ‘pawns in their game’…! What? Whose game? Would that be the arms manufacturers; money-changers of Wall Street; newly powerful tech coterie; remaining oil and gas barons; dealers in cobalt, lithium, and other rare earth minerals—the autocrats, the billionaires/trillionaires, the 1%? Well yes Virginia, it would. They have purchased all of the politicians, all of the bosses, all of the voices, all of the pawns they need. We, in turn—their pawns. It has always been thus. We ‘huddled masses’ pay taxes and fight wars and worry about money and cook spaghetti and watch Netflix. We are the serfs, sort of yearning to be free.The lowest level of the pawn hierarchy.
“But he can’t be blamed/He’s only a pawn in their game.”
***
It’s afternoon now. I’m not even mad anymore. It’s too exhausting. And not a single thing I’ve said hasn’t been said so much better before. Even on Facebook (speaking of greed) … so many quotes about greed and power uttered by the major philosophers and thinkers and poets of the world since the beginning of recorded time. But they don’t leave a running refrain in my head that lasts all day.
“But when the shadowy sun sets on the one/That fired the gun/He’ll see by his grave/On the stone that remains/Carved next to his name/His epitaph plain/Only a pawn in their game” (Bob Dylan: “Only a Pawn in Their Game”)