Suffer the children

 

Children survivors of Auschwitz

Suffer the children

I'm hearing the screaming this morning. The

screams of Jamal Kashoggi as he was

hacked apart for telling the truth, and

wanting to marry his beloved lady.

I'm hearing the silent screams of the children

in the “showers” of Auschwitz as the

Third Reich ended innocent lives of Jews,

gypsies, Catholics, the disabled.

I'm hearing the impassioned wails of mothers

separated from their children, sent back to

South America without the young they bore

and nurtured and tried to bring to a promised land....

The land has lost its promise.

It survived its massacre of the Algonquin,

the Sioux, and all the other unique people

and cultures of North America.

It survived its enslavement of bewildered

souls transported forcibly from Africa, where

they had ruled the hostile jungles, but could not

overcome the more hostile—and well-armed--

Confederate slavers.

It struggles, now, to survive a platoon of

cockamamie self-styled pastors whose

similarity to their own saviour is as close as

is mine and yours to a rabid dog.

It struggles to survive an educational system

rendered impotent so George Bush's wastrel

brother could sell computers and standardized

tests.

It struggles to survive a health-care system in which

only the wealthy survive, thus ensuring that the next

generation will be saddled with too many useless, lazy

supernumerary trust-fund people for even the brawniest

economy to support. Unless, of course, the brawny workers

die out, leaving the helpless wealthy to carry on, which

equals the end of America.

It struggles with memory loss. Some don't even know

what the Holocaust was. Some forget that Russia has never

been anyone's friend, never. Not in all of recorded history.

And not now.

The population struggles to remember that they, too, can die

hungry and alone, unwanted and terrified. Indeed,

they don't understand that that end is more likely than

dying a self-made millionaire, a celebrity, or even

a Kardashian. Which is their dream, supported by

a culture that knows it is not possible, not for 99.999999%

of them, but profits on promoting the falsehood.

They don't struggle with uncertainty. Having to weigh

the relative merits of various courses of action is beyond

their pay grade. They lack the education to do it. Their

spiritual leaders are the cockamamie clergy, insisting

that Jesus would consign black or brown or yellow

people to earthly perdition despite abundant evidence

to the contrary in their own holy books. They do not

struggle with uncertainty; they are sure that black is white

and good is bad and they will arm themselves to the

teeth to make the rest of us believe it. They bear the

mark of Satan, all right, but also the vacant face of

the stupid person.

“Suffer the little children to come unto me”

does not mean, as one of the hollow clergy said recently,

excusing the Border Patrol, to make children suffer.

Suffer, there, means to allow. But...they are uneducated,

the clergy and their followers. And so, the words

of a man of peace are used as an excuse for acts so vile

that I cannot even list them without first taking strong drink.

I would scream. I do scream. My body, racked with pain

these two years since the UK referendum and Trump,

vibrates to the discordant notes—although discordant sounds

not strong enough—of the misery of two peoples, the British

and the American. There is no consensus on what is causing

my pain, but I know. It is the spectre of evil, settling on us

like a poison-laden mist. When it lifts, the physical pain will, too.

I wish I could pray.

Maybe they—we—deserve this misery, the misery that

has tripled homelessness, made prescriptions for anti-depressants

skyrocket. We spent out attention elsewhere

when the robbers were filling their satchels with our culture,

and enticing our politicians to join in the robbery. We spent our

attention elsewhere when the disaffected claimed all

politicians are the same, all clergy fools. There are some of

each, but we consigned all of them to the trash heap, bidden by

people too lazy to think, to discern, to decide, to act when

action was demanded.

It is our own fault, the vile situation in two nations. We

failed to notice the Russian runt as he weaved in and

out among honest, decent leaders. (Don't go there. Clinton

was a man, not a demon. Blair was a middle ground between

cockamamie socialism and the Tories, and not faultless.

In short, a man.) We must learn to accept partially flawed

leaders lest we get totally flawed ones, evil ones like Trump

and May.

Are you perfect? But are you good? Do you try? Are you kind?

There, then. How can we expect more in our leaders. Goodness,

energy, humanity. I'd settle for that.

I will settle for that and celebrate it if the US and the UK survive.

I give it no more than 50/50 odds. And I'm still hearing the screaming.

Stained glass: Alfred Handel, d. 1946[1], photo: Toby Hudson [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]

 

 

C. 2018, Laura Harrison McBride