Yesterday's news video of the debacle in Kabul brought back so many memories from a similar situation in Vietnam, oh so long ago. Americans literally turning their tails and running. For their lives.
It isn't the fault of the thousands of Americans working in Afghanistan, nor the military who kept the Taliban at bay nor the rank and file of the Afghanis themselves. It is the fault of self-serving, naive and perhaps even stupid leadership - people we've put in power to lead us. It turns my stomach.
What makes it even worse is those among us who bow to their dictates because we are too lazy to dig beneath the surface to find truth. I think of the children of Afghanistan - both boys, who are subjected to a demented form of homosexuality, and girls who are sometimes not even in their teens spirited off to be the "wife" of some warrior. And more girls and women who are going to lose their opportunities for an education that can so vastly improve their lives.
Well, you might say, that's far away and it doesn't really affect us. Doesn't it? The illustration above could soon be Chicago or Portland or Seattle or New York if we don't soon get a handle on our own country.
I see hope, I hear people speaking who are angry. Really angry about what's happening be it CRT or mask mandates or defunding the police. The one thing that's lacking, however, is a lack of cohesiveness. Someone who is willing to pick up the reins and get a movement organized. A Tea Party movement without the capitulation to the Republican Party who are just as complicit in our current mess as the Democrats.
The ones I envision pulling it together are parents, no matter their politics. For those who are suffering the most are the children and don't get between a child and its parent. Mother or Father. Kids have lost far too much in the way of schooling during the lockdowns which have proven to be ineffectual at best. This applies to kids up to and including college. They're not getting the education we expect them to get nor the one they deserve.
A lot of atonement needs to take place. First with our feckless politicians, then to those who have hijacked higher education, to the teachers union and school boards to health care officials who have suddenly turned into petty dictators.
They say they are following the science. How can the science be so different in so many places if that's true? Truth. That's all we ask. Is that too much? Apparently so.
